Lincoln Foreword and Painting

The just-released issue of the Marquette Law Review includes nine articles and essays growing out of (and comprising the written version of) last fall’s “Legacies of Lincoln Conference.” It was a great privilege for Professor Daniel D. Blinka and me to work with Marvin C. Bynum III, the editor-in-chief of Volume 93 of the journal, and his (our) colleagues to present this symposium. Some time ago we posted one of the papers from the symposium, the remarkable Klement Lecture delivered by Gettysburg College’s Allen C. Guelzo, which led off the conference. The Foreword of the symposium describes briefly each of the contributions and contains as well an observation on the substantive link that the Lincoln Conference provided from Sensenbrenner Hall, our historic home where the bulk of the conference occurred, to Eckstein Hall and its Aitken Reading Room, whose impressive commissioned painting, Laying the Foundation by Don Pollack, the conference helped to inspire; it also includes a reflection of sorts on broader matters. A link to the Foreword, which includes an image of Pollack’s painting, can be found here. Posts in the near future will describe and contain links to the individual articles and essays.

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The Modern Prometheus: A Halloween Story

It’s Halloween.  Time for my annual attempt at political satire (see last year’s effort here).  Apologies to Mary Shelly, Monty Python and Buck Henry.

Setting: A laboratory located in a decrepit castle in Eastern Europe.  Test tubes and electrical transformers fill the room.  Outside, a thunderstorm rages.  The year is 1789.

Dr. Madison: It’s alive!  It’s alive!  They all called me “mad,” but I have done what no man has done before!

Igor: Master, what is this creature?

Dr. Madison: I have transplanted the brain of John Locke into the body of the Magna Carta.  I engrafted bits and pieces of Montesquieu, and gave the body a transfusion of Polybius’ treatise on the Roman Empire.  Then, I immersed the body in a vat of the Iroquois Constitution and applied a charge of electricity.  And it lives!  This is a great day!

Igor (looking out the window): I don’t think everyone agrees with you.

A large mob of men carrying torches bursts into the laboratory.  They are dressed in simple peasant attire except, oddly, all are wearing safety goggles.

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The Beginning of the End for Life Without Parole?

That question is the title of a new paper I’ve just uploaded to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This essay introduces a new issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter that is devoted to different aspects of the sentence of life without parole. An important question raised by many of the articles is whether LWOP, after two decades of explosive growth, is entering a period of decline. For instance, the Supreme Court declared LWOP unconstitutional for most juvenile offenders in May 2010, possibly inaugurating an era of more meaningful constitutional limitations on very long sentences. Additionally, many cash-strapped states have been developing new early-release programs in order to reduce corrections budgets, some of which hold out hope even for LWOP inmates. This essay considers the likelihood that these and other recent developments will contribute to a decline in LWOP. In the end, none of the developments portend dramatic changes, at least regarding LWOP for adult offenders, although it is possible that LWOP will undergo a period of slow, long-term decline, much as has occurred with the death penalty. After laying out this perspective, the essay then considers whether the United States ought to welcome such a period of decline.

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