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John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads
No full textOn March 29, 2022, the Faith in Action speaker series continued with a program featuring The Honorable Robert J. Conrad Jr., United States District Court Western District of North Carolina. Judge Conrad discussed his new book, John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads, while also providing his thoughts aimed at law students on acting with integrity and pursuing one\u27s vocation as a lawyer
Jones v. Mississippi and the Court’s Quiet Burial of the Miller Trilogy
Get PDFIn addition to its status as the world\u27s largest jailer, the United States is an extreme outlier in its juvenile justice and sentencing practices. As recently as 2005, the United States permitted juvenile execution, and today the United States is the only nation that allows children to be sentenced to life without parole. In the last fifteen years, in a series of cases known as the Miller trilogy, the Supreme Court had been slowly chipping away at the nation\u27s use of the most extreme juvenile sentences-the death penalty and life without parole. That process came to an abrupt end this past term with the Court\u27s decision in Jones v. Mississippi. While not a surprise, the Jones decision was a blow to the juvenile justice community and certainly to Brett Jones himself. Youth advocates have decried the Jones decision as barbaric, abhorrent, and ludicrous, but, as I argue in this Essay, ultimately Jones is a loss for the Court and its institutional reputation-perhaps more so than the juvenile justice community. In the last two decades, juvenile advocates have been very successful at educating the public about juveniles\u27 diminished culpability and enhanced capacity for rehabilitation-and at translating that education into policy changes at the state level. There is reason to hope such changes will continue notwithstanding the disappointing realities of Jones.
This Essay proceeds in three Parts. Part I briefly describes the Miller trilogy, the question presented in Jones, and the holding in Jones-at least as the majority presents it. Part II analyzes the Jones decision, identifying the ways in which it is an enormous break from precedent, woefully out of touch with the realities of criminal justice, and cruel in its language of indifference. Part III turns to the question of how juvenile advocates might proceed in the aftermath of Jones, mapping out a path for sustained reform in legislative, judicial, and executive bodies. By way of conclusion, I examine an avenue for challenging extreme juvenile sentences that the Court itself raised in dicta and query the viability of this path
Pursuing a Right to Genetic Happiness
Get PDFWith the continued expansion of assisted reproductive technology (ART), and society\u27s inability to regulate it, complex medico-legal issues and ethical and social dilemmas are arising. Although the desire to prevent or limit genetic disease by, for example, gene editing and mitochondrial transfer is noble, what has been termed the customization of birth, raises the fundamental issue of procreative liberty, and, more specifically, the extent to which the state is obligated to assist in the use of ART which, in turn, validate the quest for genetic happiness. There is a current notion that reproductive freedom includes, within it, a right to a genetically connected child free from disease or, in other words, one who has benefitted from positive eugenics. Presently, there is no right, qua right, to genetic happiness, nor is there any obligation of the state to assure that progeny born have good genes. Today, when medical errors occur during usages of ART, the eponymous tort of negligence is available as the most traditional approach to recovery of money damages. The inherent weaknesses of this practice are explored critically and suggestions made for new strategies - especially through recognition of the new torts of Reproductive Negligence or Wrongful Genetic Manipulation
A Student\u27s Guide to Relevance, Character, Habit, and Impeachment
No full textRelevance is the basic concept of evidence law. Professor Fishman, who taught evidence for 41 years at Catholic University of America Law School, covers the entire subject—including conditional relevance, inferences, direct and circumstantial evidence, and order of proof—in all its applications, particularly character, other acts evidence, and habit. The book then covers every aspect of impeaching and rehabilitating a witness\u27s testimony: perception; memory; narration; prior consistent or inconsistent statements; and potential bias or motive to lie. In other words, this book covers Rules 104–106, 401–415, 607–613, and 801(d)(1) of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
When an offer of evidence implicates several of these rules, Professor Fishman explains how to identify the rules (and sub-rules and unwritten rules ) that need to be considered and those which need not be; the procedural and tactical trial context in which these issues arise; and how to figure out what your professor is looking for in class and on exams.
Each chapter contains numerous essay and multiple-choice questions and answers applying the rules. In addition, he reveals the evidentiary relevance of (a) animals large and small; (b) cultural icons, including Shakespeare, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Blake Shelton, and Linus van Pelt; and (c) major historical figures, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Confucius, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Howie Kendrick.https://scholarship.law.edu/fac_books/1144/thumbnail.jp
The Trouble with Farmouts: The Problem of the Innocent, Nonperforming Farmee
Get PDFThe oil market is a volatile universe. The price of the commodity has a profound impact both on the national and global economies and on the lives of everyday consumers. Consider the high prices of 2022 compared with the record lows seen in 2020, the price of oil affects almost everything. The United States is one of the top oil producing nations in the world. The size and importance of the industry has led to a somewhat unique area of the legal practice known as oil and gas law. Among its many tenants is an instrument known as a farmout contract. Farmout contracts have steadily grow in use by the industry since their inception, supplementing and even replacing the oil and gas lease, which traditionally has been the primary legal mechanism under which oil drilling takes place.
Oil and gas leases generally obligate lessees to drill continually or else face breach liability. In response, many courts eased this requirement of strict performance by way of novel and established legal doctrines when the lessee’s nonperformance was caused by circumstances outside of its control. However, even though, farmees – the parties that are obligated to drill under farmout contracts – are generally subject to the same drilling requirements, they do not enjoy the same judicial protections as oil and gas lessees. No current legal doctrine can readily excuse their nonperformance, no matter how blameless the farmee may be. This is the problem of the innocent, nonperformance farmee. The following comment examines the problem’s relevant background, analyzes the shortcomings in the current law, and suggests two solutions for future parties and courts to consider
The Virtues
No full textAn ancient question asks what role moral formation ought to play in education. It leads to such questions as, do intellectual and moral formation belong together? Is it possible to form the mind and neglect the heart? Is it wise? These perennial questions take on new significance today, when education — especially, higher education — has become a defining feature in the lives of young people.During his two decades of presiding at commencement exercises, first as Dean of Boston College Law School and then as President of The Catholic University of America, Garvey made a single virtue the centerpiece of his remarks each year. The Virtues is the fruit of those addresses. More reflective than analytical, its purpose is to invite conversation about what it means to live well.Following Catholic tradition, The Virtues places the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love at the center of the moral life, and the cardinal virtues — justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence — with them. Alongside these major virtues, Garvey considers a collection of little virtues, habits that assist and accompany us in small but important ways on the path to goodness.Though he treats each virtue individually, a common thread unites his reflections. The intellectual life depends on the moral life, Garvey writes. Without virtue we cannot sustain the practices necessary for advanced learning. In fact, without virtue, it’s hard to see what the purpose of the university is. Learning begins with love (for the truth). If we don’t have that, it’s hard to know why we would bother with education at all. The Virtues invites its readers, especially students, to appreciate that the cultivation of virtue is indispensable to success, academic or otherwise, and more importantly, essential to their ultimate aim, a life well lived.https://scholarship.law.edu/fac_books/1143/thumbnail.jp
