Self-Defense: Sending a Moral Message

What kind of message should the law send when it comes to a woman who kills a man who has been abusing, assaulting, or threatening her?

“I think it is important that we send the right moral message in the law,” Joshua Dressler, a respected authority on criminal law and procedure said in a lecture at the Marquette University Law School. 

In the annual Barrock Lecture at the Law School last week, Dressler said that even as some feminists advocate for expanding what is justifiable under the label of self-defense, the law should proceed cautiously. 

Continue ReadingSelf-Defense: Sending a Moral Message

Who Will Replace Justice Stevens?

The legal community is still digesting the news that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will retire at the end of this term.  The New York Times recently ran a profile of Justice Stevens consisting of the recollections of his former law clerks.  Here is the link, in case you missed it.  Justice Stevens was never considered one of the intellectual heavyweights of the Supreme Court, but I predict that we will come to miss his consistent, and traditional (some might say quaint), view of the limited role that the judiciary should play in crafting the laws that we live by.

Speaking of predictions, it is time to weigh in with your prognostications.  Who will President Obama select to replace Justice Stevens.  I will go first.

Continue ReadingWho Will Replace Justice Stevens?

Capital Punishment and the Contemporary Cinema

American cinema of the last century includes a large number of films with major characters on death row.  James Hogan’s silent film “Capital Punishment,” for example, screened in 1925.  During the 1950s, the death penalty was at the forefront in such respected films as Fritz Lang’s “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” (1956), Robert Wise’s “I Want to Live” (1958), and Howard Koch’s “The Last Mile” (1959).  The late 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century saw an even greater number of films inviting contemplation of the death penalty.

The latter flurry of films perhaps relates to the period’s especially pronounced campaign to end capital punishment.  In keeping with the often-heard assertion that Hollywood leans to the left politically, most of these films seem opposed to the death penalty.  Some express their opposition in the fashion of a “message film,” while others proffer more subtle dramatic narratives.

Continue ReadingCapital Punishment and the Contemporary Cinema
Newer Posts
Older Posts