Law Commons^™

In Memory Of Professor John Broderick, Thomas F. Broden

Journal Articles

John J. Broderick, professor emeritus of the Notre Dame Law School, died February 28, 1997. He was born in New York in 1910. He graduated summa cum laude from Washington and Lee University in 1932 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1936 he graduated summa cum laude from St. John's University Law School and practiced law in New York City and Yonkers, New York until joining the Navy in World War II. In 1947 he became a member of the Notre Dame Law School faculty.

I first knew Professor Broderick as a student in the Law School …

Edward J. Murphy: A Professor For All Seasons, David T. Link

Journal Articles

Ed Murphy taught more Notre Dame law students than any other professor in the history of the University. To his students, he was more than a teacher; he was mentor and even legend. A mainstay at the Law School, Professor Murphy died in July of last year at the age of sixty-eight.

I was privileged to be his student, his colleague and his friend. I miss him very much. We all do. But, of course, his example lives on. He continues to be a part of the great Notre Dame spirit. Our recently appointed contracts professor tells me that every …

Edward J. Murphy, Catholic Scholar, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

Permit me to explain, with some background, why Edward J. Murphy was an admirable Catholic man and why I and many others are in his debt for his friendship and example.

Profiling Minority Law Librarians: A Report On The 1992-93 Survey, Dwight B. King, Rhea A-L Ballard, Helena Lai, Grace M. Mills

Journal Articles

The authors present a demographic and professional profile of AALL minority law librarian members based upon responses to a detailed survey that elicited information about work experience and skills, professional activities and participation, and career aspirations. The results lead the authors to suggest some recruitment strategies to increase diversity in law librarianship and the level of minority participation in AALL.

Why Does The Church Have Law Schools?, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Why does the church have law schools?

The title I was given for this talk during the Marquette Conference of March, 1994, was "the mission of the religiously affiliated law school." The title raises the possibility that the church has a law school in order to carry out a mission. The church does not get its mission from the state or the civil community. The only workable meaning of the title I was given is that each of our law schools has a mission from God.

If the assignment of mission comes from the civil community or the state, the …

Making Way For A New Standard: Women Redefine The "Ideal Professor", Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

Unfortunately for most women, the profile of an ideal law professor is a married man with a stay-at-home wife. A profile very like that of ideal workers in other legal settings.

It is common knowledge that women who teach law, including very able and committed women, do not achieve tenure and promotion at the same rate as their male counterparts. Although some institutions actually discriminate against women, in most, women lag behind because the committees and administrators deciding promotion and tenure view all applicants through the same lens. Their focus is driven by their law school's need to compete with …

Celebrating The 125th Anniversary Of The Notre Dame Law School, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

This year marks the Notre Dame Law School's 125th year of continuous operation. This issue of the Notre Dame Law Review is our contribution to the anniversary celebration.

We asked a few of the Law School's many distinguished graduates to contribute their reflections on legal education at Notre Dame. They are Robert Michael Greene, Class of 1969; Peter T. King, Class of 1968; Patrick McCartan, Class of 1959; and Hon. Martha Vazquez, Class of 1978. We are grateful as well to Hon. Paul V. Niemeyer, Class of 1966, who prepared an essay for the issue.

Erastian And Sectarian Arguments In Religiously Affiliated American Law Schools, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The legal education establishment in the United States some time ago gave up discouraging religiously affiliated law schools. Its support for them now, however, is conditioned on their approaching religious affiliation in a manner that is seen as consistent with the dominant American attitude toward religion—that religion is a private affair and that public moral issues, including issues of jurisprudence and professional ethics, are secular issues, to be talked about in secular language, pursuant to secular principles, and in a secular style.

I begin here by considering the requirement of the American Bar Association, in its Standards for the Approval …

Cataloging Reform: An Overview For Academic Law Librarians, Joseph W. Thomas

Journal Articles

Mr. Thomas explains the issues involved in cataloging reform and suggest methods for streamlining procedures without destroying quality, with particular reference to academic law libraries.

Wake The Nation: Law Student Insights Into The New Jerusalem, Thomas L. Shaffer, Anthony J. Fejfar

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Mike Nichols's 1988 movie Working Girl gave Melanie Griffith "a star-making showcase" for her talents; it gave Harrison Ford a chance to show that he could play light comedy; and its theme song, Let the River Run, won an Academy Award for Carly Simon. After watching and discussing the movie with groups of law students from our respective universities, we noticed that both the movie and the song make a religious claim, one that we take seriously.

Lawyers And Liberations, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

The Jesuit educational tradition stresses the importance of service to the community and especially to its underprivileged members. Much of the discussion at the Ignatian Year celebration held at St. Louis University centered on the role of the law school in the Jesuit educational tradition. However, I would like to propose that this discussion take on a much larger focus.

The ideas of community service, solidarity with the poor and professionalism within an ethical context, although integral to the Jesuit tradition, are relevant to society as a whole. Furthermore, integration of these concepts into law school education is merely a …

The Pervasive Method Of Teaching Ethics, David T. Link

Journal Articles

The law school curriculum at Notre Dame is based on a two-faceted mission statement that the faculty developed in 1974. Moral values are central to both facets: (1) to be an outstanding teaching school that prepares competent and compassionate attorneys whose decisions are guided by the values and morality that Notre Dame represents; (2) to promote leading contributions to the development of the law, the system of justice, the legal profession, and legal education, through faculty scholarship and institutional projects that embody important qualities of the Notre Dame value system. We intend to dedicate as much intensity to sensitizing our …

Cultivating Democracy: Community Organizing In Haiti, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

Upon reflection, I gained a new realization of the role of human rights activism in Haiti, a more complete understanding of what needs to be done. I came to Haiti thinking that human rights work meant counting violations and reporting them internationally. Monitoring human rights abuses does serve a purpose; it helps bring attention and support to the work of indigenous activists and can help expose the illegitimacy of an abusive regime. But as I realized in the weeks following the rally at St. Jean Bosco, these activities are only instrumental to a larger end, that of remaking political life. …

Dedication: Dean John O. Mudd, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Professor Shaffer writes this dedication to honor our former Dean Mudd. He highlights Dean Mudd’s contribution to the legal profession and public interest, as well as his ability to look around at what was going on around him and create change.

The Catholic Tradition, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

If you stand in the road near one of the on-campus Roman Catholic university law schools in the United States, you can probably see a church spire. You can squint past whatever fire wall or battlement or gothic tower there is on the law building and see the campus church. You can do this at Notre Dame, St. Louis, Creighton, San Francisco, Boston College, and San Diego. If you go inside one of these law buildings, you may find crucifixes, chapels, holy-water fonts, or a statute of Thomas More. But none of these things will tell you what those law …

Christian Theology For Roman Catholic Law Schools, Thomas L. Shaffer, Robert E. Rodes Jr.

Journal Articles

Roman Catholic universities maintain law schools for theological purposes. This Article discusses the five steps to explaining the theological answer to why there are Catholic law schools—first, the presence of the law school is the presence of the church; second, the presence of the law school is the presence of service; third, the presence of the law school is a presence in the world; fourth, the presence of the law school in the world is enacted vicariously; and fifth, the presence of the law school in the world is a searching presence that reaches into the world to find out …

On Being A Professional Elder, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The Professional Elder gives their wisdom to the young in the hopes that the wisdom will enable them to do better than the elders had done. This concept is exemplified through literature and films. However, the Professional Elder—elders in the profession who serve as moral teachers to the young—has diminished over time. This Article seeks to explain how the role of the professional elder has changed over time and the problems with the modern gentlemen’s ethic. He proposes that professional elders can return to serving as authoritative moral teachers through liberal learning and moral craftmanship.

Reverend Michael D. Mccafferty, C.S.C., David T. Link

Journal Articles

This comment pays tribute to our beloved Father Mike who served as both a priest and a professor. Father Mike excelled at his profession of teaching law, not only by his ability to read a class to determine how to best ensure that students acquire a solid understanding of the substantive law as well as a mastery of the analytical skills, but also by his ability to counsel students. He was a source of faith and strength to our community. He will be greatly missed and remembered.

Moral Implications And Effects Of Legal Education Or: Brother Justinian Goes To Law School, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

This Article explores the moral implications of a legal education. Specifically, the author addresses three moral points of view—teleologically, interpersonally, and responsibility—and explains how a legal education advances or is in opposition to a moral community.

Dean Joseph O'Meara--A Personal Reflection, David T. Link

Journal Articles

In this article, Dean David Link responds to the Notre Dame Law School Law Review’s inquiry about Dean Joseph O’Meara’s effect on individuals. Dean Link states that Dean O’Meara’s philosophy of the law was simple: he expected everyone in the legal profession to be a fierce partisan for justice. A lawyer’s responsibility to justice transcends his or her responsibilities toward any particular client or case or system. Dean Link states that Notre Dame’s movement from a great teaching law school to a great teaching and research institution is owed primarily to Dean O’Meara, the man who would settle for nothing …

Four Issues In The Accreditation Of Law Schools, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Four issues that have become prominent in law school accreditation as the profession adjusts to changes in itself, education, and the flow of consumers of legal education are discussed: the demand for new buildings, student faculty ratios, restricting law school admission to "A" and "B" level students, and faculty tenure.

David Hoffman's Law School Lectures, 1822-1833, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The Baltimore lawyer and teacher David Hoffman (1784-1854), the father of American legal ethics, was also the first of the systematic American legal educators. He held one of the first appointments in this country as a university law professor (at the University of Maryland, 1814-43) and wrote the first American outline of the study of law. Joseph Story, in a contemporary review of the 1817 Course, called Hoffman's work "an honour to our country[,] . . . by far the most perfect system for the study of the law that has ever been offered to the public. " Chancellor James …

Four Issues In The Accreditation Of Law Schools, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Most of the people who want to become lawyers in the United States have to come to terms with the American Bar Association. The ABA, in form and in tradition a voluntary association of lawyers, is a virtual governmental regulator of legal education.

People who want to become lawyers do not have to join the ABA—any more than people who are already lawyers have to join—but, in most states, a potential lawyer cannot sit for the bar examination unless he has first obtained a law degree from a school approved by the ABA. And, although in form and tradition the …

Civil Rights And Legal Order: The Work Of A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Donald P. Kommers, Eugenia S. Schwartz

Journal Articles

On October 11-12, 1978, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.' delivered the Notre Dame Law School's Seventh Annual Civil Rights Lecture under the general title, "From Thomas Jefferson to Bakke: Race and the American Legal Process." It seems to us appropriate, therefore, on the occasion of the Higginbotham lecture, to consider his work as both historian and judge. Specifically, this article will serve the threefold purpose of (1) reviewing Matter of Color, (2) illustrating the author's use of history in two judicial opinions dealing with the rights of black Americans, and (3) reflecting upon the implications of Higginbotham's work in legal …

Reassessing Law Schooling: The Sterling Forest Group, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

This Article is the result of a weekend in December 1976 at the Sterling Forest Conference Center. Several legal educators came together there to explore the possible relevance of humanistic educational psychology to legal education, and the pieces that follow flow from the experiences in learning we shared there. The concerns that brought the ten of us together were not new; rather, they emanated from a longstanding challenge within the profession.

Although we taught at different institutions and in different fields, our experiences had led us to a common dissatisfaction with legal education and a hope that more was possible. …

Studies Of Legal Education: A Review Of Recent Reports, Thomas L. Shaffer, Robert S. Redmount

Journal Articles

Early in 1972, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education published its report on legal education. It is the most prominent study of legal education in the last decade, and typical of discourse in and about law schools—urbane, speculative, unempirical, conceptual, rarely student-centered. The authors of the Carnegie report were articulate law teachers. They wrote with their feet up and their pipes lit, without attention to facts which did not come from their considerable experience. The value of such reports is the thoughtfulness of the people who write them, and their predictive accuracy is due to the fact that people who …

Legal Education: The Classroom Experience, Thomas L. Shaffer, Robert S. Redmount

Journal Articles

Law students learn from what is in them, from what is directed at them, and from what is around them. The following is a study of an external dimension of the law-school learning experience-the classroom. Research strategy consisted of approaching the classroom phenomenon from two perspectives; what is presented and how students perceive it.

Learning The Law-Thoughts Toward A Human Perspective, Thomas L. Shaffer, Robert S. Redmount

Journal Articles

The history of American legal education is notable for a sparsity of ideas on how to convey learning about law. There has been even less focal understanding of what learning is and what it takes to establish a process which will prepare lawyers for their profession. A window on this history was provided in historical survey by Alfred Z. Reed in 1921 and, more recently, by Professors Preble Stolz and Calvin Woodward. It is principally their accounts of eighteenth and nineteenth century developments that we here briefly integrate and summarize. The perspective-a consideration of legal education in terms of social …

Report Of The Dean 1973-1974, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

My assessments of the Law School have tended more to describe developments than to state aspirations. I continue to assess things in that vein; my preference for leadership in the Dean's Office is to build on the goals which are implicit in the work of the tireless, dedicated people who teach and learn law at Notre Dame. My hope in approaching our enterprise in this way is to discover myself, and to help my colleagues discover, the power with which they serve God, the University, the community, our embattled profession, and one another. "This power in us," St. Paul said, …

Report Of The Dean 1972-1973, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

These are curious times for American legal education, especially curious perhaps at this university law school, because we claim adherence to the traditions of Thomas More. Our profession has for more than two centuries provided rulers for America, as it provided leaders, including More himself, for More's England—presidents and speakers, senators and administrators, benign manipulators in American corridors of power. More than a few of America's lawyer leaders have been educated at Christian, university law schools, and, as I think about Notre Dame law students this summer, I hope we are educating more than a few replacements for the lawyer-leaders …