Lessons for Law School Deans Regarding Catholics in Political Life

Let me again extend my appreciation to Deans Kearney and O’Hear for the opportunity to serve as December’s guest alumnus blogger of the month, and to all of you who joined the conversation in the comments section. I’ll be right there with you starting tomorrow. 🙂 Let me also take advantage of my month’s unique position on the calendar to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

My final post is, in fact, the abstract of a piece I have just posted to SSRN. Earlier this year, you may have seen that Fordham’s law school received some heat from Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York, for its decision to confer an award on pro-abortion Justice Stephen Breyer.  The story led me to do some investigating, drawing in part on my own experiences as a Marquette student, and voila, an essay emerged. I hope to begin shopping it around to law reviews in the spring submission season.

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New Issue of MU Law Review

I’ve just received my brand-new, hot-off-the-presses issue of the Marquette Law Review, which has several articles I am looking forward to reading.  Here are the contents:

Nantiya Ruan, Accommodating Respectful Religious Expression in the Workplace, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 1 (2008) (SSRN version here).

Scott A. Schumacher, MacNiven v. Westmoreland and Tax Advice: Using Purposive Textualism to Deal with Tax Shelters and Promote Legitimate Tax Advice, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 33 (2008).

Michael W. Loudenslager, Giving Up the Ghost: A Proposal for Dealing With Attorney “Ghostwriting” of Pro Se Litigants’ Court Documents Through Explicit Rules Requiring Disclosure and Allowing Limited Appearances for Such Attorneys, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 103 (2008).

Barbara O’Brien & Daphna Oyserman, It’s Not Just What You Think, But How You Think About It: The Effect of Situationally Primed Mindsets on Legal Judgments and Decision Making,  92 Marq. L. Rev. 149 (2008).

Joan Shepard, Comment, The Family Medical Leave Act: Calculating the Hours of Service for the Reinstated Employee, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 173 (2008).

Charles Stone, Comment, What Plagiarism Was Not: Some Preliminary Observations on Classical Chinese Attitudes Towards What the West Calls Intellectual Property, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 199 (2008).

Congratulations to the student editors of Volume 92 for the successful completion of their first issue!

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On the Freedom of a Congregation

Some of you may have seen the story last week that the American Anglicans who have left the Episcopal Church have formed a new nationwide organization. The realignment within the Episcopal Church has brought with it a number of lawsuits over ownership of each parish’s property, and more will doubtless be filed as other parishes and dioceses leave TEC. The most visible suit is probably the Falls Church litigation in Virginia, which has drawn significant amicus and media attention, even though it is only at the trial phase.  Many of the mainline Protestant denominations are struggling over the blessing of homosexual unions and the ordination of actively homosexual persons. As these denominations make significant decisions, the possibility exists for the litigation frenzy to spread elsewhere.  My own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will issue a churchwide policy statement on human sexuality in August 2009. If the ELCA votes for policies that condone homosexual activity, many congregations will choose to leave.  The litigation that will almost inevitably follow between congregations seeking to leave and their dioceses will be tied up in interesting questions about the Establishment Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court has considered a number of these cases over the past 150 years, and has basically created two categories of churches: hierarchical and congregational. The categorization of a party in litigation is often times determinative of which faction will win the suit and hold on to the church’s assets.

During the second semester of my 3L year, I wrote a paper for my Non-Profit Law class, taught by Profs. Werner and Boynton, evaluating which category fits the ELCA. I have since taken the paper, lengthened it, updated it, beefed up the footnotes, and submitted it for publication. It will be coming out this spring in the Texas Review of Law & Politics. For the moment, however, I have posted the working draft on SSRN. If you’re looking for some light reading on your train ride home for Christmas break, I’d appreciate any thoughts or improvements you might suggest. The paper is titled, “On the Freedom of a Congregation: Legal Considerations When Lutherans Look to Change Denominational Affiliation.”

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