EU Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

The European Union was last week awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Previous institutional recipients of the award include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), the United Nations (2001), and the Red Cross (1944). While the announcement was met with pride and applause by many within and without Europe, the Euroskeptics have been equally vocal in their derision of the award, pointing to ongoing social instability in many regions of Europe due in part to the Eurozone economic crisis, and the ongoing existentialist crisis the EU seems to be facing.

Such objections somewhat miss the point of the accolade, which has clearly been granted in reference to a longer-term contextualization of the ‘European project’ – after a century of continental turmoil, the creation of the European Communities in the 1950s, which eventually led to the birth of the European Union, was a watershed moment, marking the beginning of a new era of intergovernmental cooperation, an unprecedented single market project, and supranational implementation and enforcement of a new legal order for the benefit of European citizens.

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North Midwestern Bewilderment – A Bio Piece

The other day I was walking along the Milwaukee River in Estrabrook Park amazed, as I am every year, at the colors of the leaves changing. I noticed around ten different individuals wading in the water and casting flies into the current. My mind went back to John D. Voelker, the attorney, author, Michigan Supreme Court Justice, and fly-fisherman who was as at home in the north woods and spinning a narrative as he was in a courtroom.

One of the most cited Michigan Supreme Court decisions authored by Voelker is Mitcham v. City of Detroit, 355 Mich. 182 (1959). In it the court examined a tort case by a couple who had been injured while riding in a “trackless motor coach” that stopped abruptly, hurling the wife into a metal stanchion. The legal issue turned on whether or not the plaintiff’s prima facie negligence argument was of proper form. In finding for the Mitchams, Justice Voelker, writing for the majority, took the opportunity to make some broader assessments about litigation and the aims of procedure:

“The cause of a deserving litigant is no less dead when it is slain by a procedural arrow than if there were no cause at all. . . . It is bad enough that individual litigants have thus been made unjustly to suffer, but that is not all. This has frequently been done with the helpless acquiescence if not active aid of our courts. Too often the trial of cases has become a game of legal hide-and-seek. Just as bad has been the accompanying bewilderment and cynicism of the public—including the jurors who vainly sat on the case—over the baffling mysteries and vagaries of the law. The public has sometimes been righter than it knew.” Id. at 196.

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The Law School’s Conference on the Wickersham Commission

On October 4 and 5, 2012, the Law School held its Conference on America’s First National Crime Commission and the Federalization of Law Enforcement. The conference was the brain child of Dean Strang, a member of our adjunct faculty, who was assisted in its planning by Professor Michael O’Hear and me. Attracting large audiences of academics, lawyers, students, and the public, the conference featured lectures by historians, law professors, political scientists, and criminal justice experts.

The conference began with Professor Frank Zimring’s (Berkeley, Law) lecture, “The Accident Crime Commission: Its Legacies and Lessons,” which was delivered under the auspices of the Law School’s Barrock lecture in criminal law. Professor Zimring provided historical insight into the composition, work, and legacy of the so-called Wickersham Commission. His lecture is summarized here.

On October 5 the conference continued with three panels. The first panel provided additional historical perspective on the Wickersham Commission. Delivering papers were James Calder (Texas-San Antonio, Political Science), who placed the Commission’s work in a paradigm of “brain” and “state.” Samuel Walker (Nebraska-Omaha, Criminology) provided an overview of President Herbert Hoover’s life, emphasizing how his support for the Commission was fully consistent with his role as an early twentieth-century Progressive. John M. Cooper, Jr., (Wisconsin, History) commented on the papers while offering additional insights into President Hoover’s progressivism.

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