Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Catholic Judges In Capital Cases, Amy Coney Barrett, John H. Garvey

Journal Articles

The Catholic Church's opposition to the death penalty places Catholic judges in a moral and legal bind. While these judges are obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty, they are also obliged to adhere to their church's teaching on moral matters. Although the legal system has a solution for this dilemma by allowing the recusal of judges whose convictions keep them from doing their job, Catholic judges will want to sit whenever possible without acting immorally. However, litigants and the general public are entitled to impartial justice, which may be something a …

Is This Appropriate?, Thomas L. Shaffer, Julia B. Meister

Journal Articles

The word "appropriate" is so wildly overused in American culture that, as with other vacuous words and phrases, a person learns to read right through it. "Appropriate" is verbal tofu. This Essay pauses instead of reading through, particularly to notice the instances in which "appropriate" and its negative counterpart are used to give the appearance of a moral or legal judgment.

"Appropriate," chosen to express a legal judgment, is not only vacuous; it is also irresponsible. It catches the legislator, judge, or administrator in the act of passing the buck, as the President did when he ordered the Justice Department …

Natural Law And Everyday Law, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

Like most terms "natural law" has had, and has, a variety of meanings. In most of its meanings it touches scarcely at all the professional concerns of the lawyer but moves, rather, on a plane widely separated from his daily cares and duties. Thus, for the most part, natural law stands aloof from the urgent here-and-now with which lawyer and judge necessarily are preoccupied; it inhabits a world apart.

In these remarks I hope to suggest an approach to natural law which will make it useful on a day-to-day basis in the perplexities by which practitioners and judges constantly are …