No need to worry about that.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1686737)

I don't know what's so surprising about that. The guy was a professor at Notre Dame and there are veiled references to religion in the article, if I recall. Anyway, he's a professor at some new Catholic law school, not Liberty.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687239)

I suspect most of his article is relevant to most law students, but I don't think any article which draws its conclusions from the author's experiences is immune from criticism that the author's experiences or his reactions to those experiences differ from those of the majority. A person's priorities and attitudes about how to live one's life do play some role in that.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1688849)

And I don't see why any of this should prevent someone who finds the author's values very dischordant with their own from rereading the article - if it is free of bias, it should stand up to a more skeptical read.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1688894)

I did reread the article and found it to be relevant and fairly applicable to a wide range of students, so I won't offer any criticisms of it. A hypothetical article of the same type might have put more emphasis on having parents who stay home with children than the average law student would, had views of the sorts of work that would be personally satisfying that conflicted with some readers', or professed views about the social utility of representing corporations as opposed to charity or political organizations that differed from those of the average student.

And yes, a liberal could have written an equally biased article. I suspect you would at least give a piece offering you career and personal advice a second look if you realized it had been written by your least favorite liberal politician, even if you ultimately concluded the piece was good.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689068)

And, I don't mean to say you're intolerant of other views. But, I don't think you're the average liberal either.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689091)

I also think that this differs slightly from the average law review article. It's an article on how to be happy. That's generally open to a very different sort of criticism than is the average law review article.

I've always wondered about the perpetual claim that conservatives are more tolerant of other people's views. They seem to be so in very large groups in which they are the minority. Experiences with groups in which conservatives are the most widely represented have been a different story - I don't think it counts if you're only tolerant of other people's views when you're the minority.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689123)

You're right that academic, urbanite conservatives are forced to be more tolerant. But, that doesn't change the fact that they are more tolerant. There are plenty of liberals at my law school who won't engage in any form of intelligent debate because their views have been reinforced by huge majorities around them. Maybe the same goes for rural conservatives. Can't say I actually know too many of them though.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689156)

If you read the article, he thinks lawyers should not hurt themselves and hurt their families by working themselves to death, and he thinks padding your billables is not just a bad idea, but immoral. Even if those convictions are religiously motivated, they seem pretty moderate to me.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1688834)

Holy shit. Classic.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687013)

"Extreme rationalism." Call me an extremist, I guess.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1686890)

I don't really have any problems with this school otherwise, but the idea of judges who preside under the Bible is damn scary.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1686901)

Wasn't that what Erie tried to fix?

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1686968)

3 REGENT PROFESSORS LOSE TENURE LAWSUIT JUDGE ALSO RULES THAT OFFICIALS MISLED ABA IN 1989

Three Regent University professors who claimed they had lifetime tenure learned Tuesday they were wrong.

A judge ruled that the school's old system of rolling employment contracts was not a tenure system, even though certain school officials touted it as such to outsiders.

That means the three professors, who sued Regent and refused to sign contracts under Regent's new tenure system, will be out of work in May, when the academic year ends.

``If you listen hard, you can hear the sound of resumes going out,'' said one of the professors, Clifford W. Kelly, in an interview after the ruling.

Circuit Judge Edward W. Hanson Jr. also ruled that Regent officials misled the American Bar Association about the school's tenure system in 1989, to win accreditation for Regent's law school.

Hanson ruled that the professors were not guaranteed lifetime employment under the old system. He said the professors had rolling three-year contracts that ensured they could not be ``put out in the cold'' for three years.

``This contract, however, was not tenure,'' Hanson said. ``Tenure was anathema to Regent University from its inception and until 1993.''

The ruling probably will not affect other professors, all of whom signed contracts last year under a new tenure system.

The three professors who sued Regent - Kelly, Jeffrey Tuomala and Elaine Waller - argued that the new system offers less security than the old one. They said the new system lets Regent fire them for almost any reason. The judge did not address that issue.

After the ruling, the three professors sat silently in the courtroom for a while, looking stunned. Two thumbed through a worn black Bible. Outside the courtroom, Kelly and Waller said they were shocked and disappointed but did not know whether they will appeal.

``We'll be serving out the final year of our contracts,'' Kelly said. ``We're going to pray and talk with our lawyers.''

Regent Provost George Selig said the three professors cannot return in fall 1996. ``They exercised the right to reject the (new) contract,'' Selig said. ``We hold no malice toward the plaintiffs at all. We wish them the best.''

Tuesday's ruling may hurt two former law professors, Roger Bern and Paul Morken, who are suing Regent, alleging breach of contract. They were fired last year. Hanson is scheduled to preside over their trials in February.

Regent's attorney, Thomas Lucas, said he will ask Hanson to dismiss their cases based on Tuesday's ruling.

The Regent controversy began in 1993 when trustees fired law dean Herbert Titus. That provoked widespread revolt among faculty and students. Titus claimed he had tenure, and professors feared that if Titus could be fired, so could they.

In response, school officials said Regent never had tenure.

But if that were true, the faculty asked, why did Regent tell the American Bar Association in 1989 - and continue to tell the ABA - that professors were protected by a tenure system, which is required for ABA accreditation of any law school?

Eventually, Regent changed its tenure system and fired three law professors who had supported Titus. That was in 1994.

In June, during the tenure trial, Regent officials blamed Titus and then-president Bob Slosser for intentionally misleading the ABA about tenure.

On Tuesday, the judge agreed.

``Mr. Titus and Mr. Slosser made representations to the ABA at variance with what the court found to be the policy of the university as represented by the board, and unbeknownst to the board,'' Hanson said.

The judge said this was mainly Titus' doing, for while Slosser was nominally Titus' boss, the law dean really ran things. ``The real power there was not Mr. Slosser,'' Hanson said.

The judge said he believed Regent founder Pat Robertson's testimony that school officials would rather close the university than grant professors lifetime tenure. Other trustees gave similar testimony.

The entire controversy stemmed from disagreements over Regent's unique Christian mission, the judge said.

``To the court, this was an ever-evolving and changing university,'' Hanson said. ``Its mission was clear in the beginning,'' but as the school struggled to survive in a secular world, its mission changed.

Earlier this year, the ABA found that Titus and the three law professors were fired because of their extreme religious views. The ABA still has not fully accredited the law school, citing religious freedom as one issue.

Despite Tuesday's ruling, Selig said the ABA is no longer concerned about being misled. ``I think,'' Selig said, ``the ABA is pleased we've resolved this in an appropriate way.''

The ABA does not publicly comment on individual accreditations.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687020)

priceless.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687085)

"Demers and his lawyers argued that the scientific evidence proved that children before birth are human beings. As such, like any other human, they should be granted the same respect accorded others. Speaking for Demers, American Professor of International Law at the Jones School of Law, Jeffrey Tuomala pointed to six international human rights treaties to demonstrate that the separation of legal personhood from living human beings violates international law. Addressing the Charter's preamble which states that "Canada is a nation founded on principles which recognize the supremacy of God, and the rule of law." Tuomala said that at the very least this means that the fundamental rights of Canadians are not "gifts from government" but rather granted by God. As such, he argued, every human being in Canada is entitled to respect for their inherent rights."

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687030)

Tuomala belongs to that breed of natural law theorists who, imho, pay insufficient attention to the dangers of that approach. They can derive God's position on a particular agricultural tarriff. They can pronounce the only natural and just view of what many of us view as a difficult moral dilemma.

Take homosexuality, for example. A natural law theorist could say, "we see homoerotic tendencies across all cultures and across all times. Some of those tendencies appear to be firmly fixed and deeply held. Those tendencies appear to be in the nature of human beings, even if the majority do not exhibit them. Any natural legal position must grapple with that natural aspect of humanity."

Another natural law theorist might say, "we know, because we are told by God, that the nature of a human being is to be heterosexual and that homosexuality is a grave sin and moral failure. Therefore any law not condeming homosexuality is an unjust law."

It's that brand of natural law that is scary, and when I read Tuomala's stuff on the web, he exemplifies more of that unvarnished kind of natural law.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689176)

Now, there are some extreme situations where I'd agree with that notion. I reach for natural law myself whenever I say or think "that may be the law, but that law is unjust ...." But, for my money, Tuomala's brand of natural law is way too strong, too self-confident, and too firmly rooted in what is really the positivist approach of reading ancient scriptures. For example, imho, it is not a violation of natural law to rule that Judge Moore's statue come down.

I'm not too sure you and I are far off on the deeper question, and I could be wrong about Tuomala on the specific question of his approach, but that's where I see the guy.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689370)

The Jews really fucked up, didn't they?

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687024)

You think God with sign off on efficient breaches? Mutually beneficial ones?

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687077)

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687155)

Sticking feathers up your butt will not make you a chicken, and putting on a tie and jacket and going to class in an abandoned factory will not make you a lawyer.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687641)

And, I'm not sure what calling their views scary does, other than show you have the proper emotional reaction to dissent. They merely believe in natural law.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1688955)

And, although some ideologies are legitimately scary, natural law isn't one of them. I have a great distaste for those who go around telling others what ideas they fear. It's just a way of telling the world that you recoil at the right things.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689659)

Nobody is overturning the Cons't here and you're hyperventilating over one comment in article that suggested the law school was pretty normal.

But, I know you think it's scary, so that's enough to condemn it.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689712)

Would you go so far as to say that natural law approaches have no intellectual, political, or moral downsides? If not, how would you describe the downsides?

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689701)

I was merely expressing my distaste for those who go around proclaiming how much a particular idea scares them. Such statements only serve to inform those around you of your emotional reaction to an idea, which I think is pretty useless, unless of course you're the type of person who likes to huddle together with those who are similarly scared.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689722)

I am particularly wary of evangelical Christian approaches to natural law, I admit it. I thing that, by and large, their view of human nature (the first step in any natural law theory) is very thin, and that their confidence in their natural law theories is very thick. I think that breaking the back of Christian views of natural law was the major advance that permitted our modern world.

I have great respect for Christians, by the way. It's just that a Christian natural law would be a huge step backward, imho.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689761)

And, I'd agree that the rigidity with which some approach natural law is a serious problem. I don't like Falwell much, but if his law school ends up producing more decent conservative legal scholars, I think that would be a net good for the legal community.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1689808)

"It isn’t difficult to understand why those persons who believe that a public display of the Ten Commandments is the greatest threat to liberty since “In God We Trust” was placed on our money would attack the Chief Justice for failure to remove the monument. To their way of thinking, the federal judge has issued a lawful order. If a display of the Ten Commandments violates a provision of the Constitution, albeit one that the federal trial judge can’t define, then it must be a lawful order to have it removed. What is difficult, especially for the layman, to understand is why those who supported the Chief Justice’s decision to display the monument as a lawful exercise of his authority would now turn on him.

The reason for this is that most American lawyers and judges, be they “liberal” or “conservative,” hold false views concerning certain fundamentals of our legal system. While liberals and conservatives may hold differing opinions as to particular rules, such as whether a display of the Ten Commandments is lawful, they share the belief that the opinion of judges about the meaning of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself, is the law of the land. For them Judge Thompson’s order, not the First Amendment, is the applicable rule of law. As a result, these officers believe that their oath of office is, in effect, one of allegiance to the judiciary rather than to the Constitution and the laws enacted pursuant to it.

There is a fundamental principle of constitutional law that nearly every American lawyer seems to forget somewhere between his high school civics class and his graduation from law school – Congress has the power to make law while federal courts have the power only to apply law in particular cases and controversies. The Constitution vests all legislative powers therein granted in Congress. Judicial powers are vested in the courts. Despite the clear language of the Constitution, nearly all lawyers now days mouth the platitude that courts make law.

An error that necessarily follows from the false view that courts have the power to make law is the assumption that the law is not what the Constitution says but rather what judges say about the Constitution. Through a distortion of the common law principles of precedent and stare decisis, a court’s holding in a particular case is converted into a law binding on all persons within the court’s jurisdiction and all inferior courts. The proper use of the principles of precedent and stare decisis is that holdings in past court decisions serve as a compelling guide in subsequent proceedings, but they do not bind unless they are themselves consistent with the law."

http://www.morallaw.org/Text/jtuomala_article.htm

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687144)

he is lacking in prestige.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1687178)

Common law works that way.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1691955)

What a quote on diversity!!!

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=109417&forum_id=2#1692094)