In 2001 and 2002, two German computer scientists became acquainted with each other over the Internet. One man, Armin Meiwes, had long harbored a desire, ever since childhood, to eat someone. He had been raised in a lonely and troubled family and had always craved a brother who would never leave him. This led him to fixate on cannibalism as the one sure way of internalizing that brother who would never, ever depart. But he could not cannibalize just anyone. His victim had to meet certain standards, be talkative, interested in becoming lifelong friends, and willing to give repeated, voluntary consent to making himself a sacrificial offering.

As luck would have it, there was someone out there who satisfied these exacting criteria. Bernd Brandes was an executive at Siemens Corp., but despite considerable professional accomplishments, had long desired annihilation. Ever since childhood, ever since his mother committed suicide when Bernd was 6 or 7, he had desired his own immolation, preferably in a cannibal feast.

After discovering one another on the Internet, they tested each other, made sure their resolve was fixed and certain. Armin had Bernd satisfy a series of requests. He had to sign a “willingness agreement.” He had to videotape his consent. He made his will, naming third parties, not Armin, as beneficiaries. This, in other words, was the law professor’s dream hypothetical case. It tested, in pure form, the limits of autonomous consent.

I set about investigating the case. As a legal scholar, I am someone strongly committed to having the facts speak for themselves. I believe that exacting historical records need to be developed in order to analyze a case properly. So, I plunged into the case.

I had studied German for a couple of years in graduate school and found myself resuscitating my German-language skills to read accounts of the case available only in German. I even read some of the German legal periodicals, immersing myself in the details of German law on assisted suicide.

It seems, in fact, that Armin and Bernd very nearly committed the perfect crime. Had Bernd committed suicide without Armin’s direct assistance – but with the intent of being eaten – this would have been legal. German law criminalizes only active euthanasia, and did not, at least at that time, criminalize cannibalism. At most, Armin would have been convicted of the misdemeanor offense of desecrating a corpse.

The plan called for Bernd to take an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. But when Bernd did not die of what should have been a lethal combination, Armin finished the job by stabbing him through the throat. It was this act that allowed the German courts to prosecute and finally to convict him.

Armin defended himself at trial by arguing the morality of his actions. He could not have done wrong, he claimed, because every step he took was done at the explicit consent of his “victim,” Bernd. The two men had made sure to videotape all of their actions on the evening they met to carry out their plan, so Armin had proof for his claims. In the end, the German trial court imposed a light sentence (Armin could have been paroled in as little as four years). But the appeals court – in Germany, the prosecution can appeal the length of sentence – mandated a second trial at which a life sentence was imposed.

The final part of my research is an analysis the nature and limits of consent. I focus especially on libertarian commentary on this case, which is extensive. In the end, while I believe the libertarians succeed in advancing some reasonable claims, I find myself rejecting their position.

In purely Christian terms, of course, we find consensual cannibalism troubling for its violation of human dignity. But on secular terms, one could use several neglected aspects of John Stuart Mill’s work to argue against such all-encompassing autonomy. Mill, after all, grounded his theory of liberty in a set of background considerations about civilization.

Civilization, to Mill, entailed all of the kindnesses and gentilities of Victorian England. It was a concept Mill contrasted with the “barbarian” Europe of Charlemagne’s time. We could not just tuck into one another at meal time. Second, Mill developed a set of substantive norms from a complex of ideas he called the “religion of humanity.” Mill stressed altruism, decency and a respect for others as elements of this faith he believed all people of good will could share. Eating one another simply fell outside the boundaries of civilized and ethical conduct.

Under Mill’s construct, not only was Armin properly convicted of the crime, but in the end he received the sentence he deserved.

Patricia O’Hara will discuss “The Catholic University in the 21st Century” from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 18, in the Frey Moot Court Room, located in the School of Law building on St. Thomas’ downtown Minneapolis campus.

Patricia O’Hara.

The program, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by a coalition of eight St. Thomas centers and institutes. For more information and to register, visit this website or call (651) 962-4842.

O’Hara joined the Notre Dame Law School in 1981. When named vice president for student affairs for the university in 1990 she became the first woman to serve as an officer at Notre Dame. In 1999 she began a 10-year appointment as law dean and now teaches on the law faculty in the areas of corporations, securities regulation and higher education.

“While all institutions of higher learning are confronting economic and demographic challenges, Catholic colleges and universities face added pressures,” explained Elizabeth Schiltz, a professor at St. Thomas’ School of Law and co-director of one of the series’ sponsors, the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy.

“We have additional challenges, but also opportunities,” she said. “Catholic universities like St. Thomas welcome a diverse student body. Some students are Catholic, some are from other religions and some are not from any religion. We strive to respect all students and to nurture this diversity, and at the same time we strive to protect our religious identity.

“This is a delicate and sometimes tricky balance to achieve. At St. Thomas, we found that many faculty and staff have been discussing as well as dealing with this challenge. It led us to create this series and bring to campus noted leaders in Catholic higher education from around the country.”

The series opened in March 2012 and has featured lectures by Father Robert Spitzer, former president of Gonzaga University; Lee Shulman, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching;  John Garvey, president of Catholic University of America; and Father James Burns, interim dean of Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies of Boston College.

In addition to the Murphy Institute, the St. Thomas series is sponsored by the Center for Catholic Studies, John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, School of Law, Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, Koch Chair in Business Ethics, Center for Ethical Business Cultures and Veritas Institute.

Light refreshments will be served following the program.

By my senior year of college, I knew I was going to Columbia Law School to prepare myself for a life as an international diplomat, preferably working for some U.N. agency on refugee issues. After three years at Columbia Law School, though, I was just as certain that I was destined for a career at a corporate law firm in Washington, D.C. I was quickly drawn into the fascinating world of the regulation of banks – writing testimony for Visa and MasterCard in congressional hearings on the regulation of interest rates, helping banks figure out how to securitize credit-card loans and even helping Target Corp. set up its very own credit-card bank. Though my journey toward partnership in a corporate law firm was slowed by a couple of significant life events – moving from D.C. to Minneapolis when I fell in love with a guy from Duluth and having a couple of kids – the path itself never changed. Until, of course, it did.

Around the time I got pregnant with my third child, my husband decided to pursue a long-time dream of his, leaving his law firm job to teach at a law school. The most attractive offer he got was from Notre Dame Law School. Right around the time that he got that offer, we learned that the child I was carrying had Down syndrome. Though I had never seriously considered teaching as a career before then, knowing that my world was going to be turned topsy-turvy by my new child somehow opened me up to whatever else I might find in that upside-down world. What I found was a part-time, tenure-track offer to teach at one of the country’s greatest law schools. And that offer opened the door to the most satisfying and rewarding career I could possibly imagine – teaching law and doing scholarship in two extraordinary

Catholic law schools – first Notre Dame, and then St. Thomas. I entered the world of scholarship rather timidly, writing about the world I had left, the world of banking regulation. As an academic, I found that the more I was able to take an objective perspective, the more I was able to more fully appreciate the tensions between the very real pressures felt by lenders forced to compete in increasingly larger national and international markets, and the very real costs paid by vulnerable consumers when those markets fail. My ongoing work on consumer credit regulation explores these tensions. After three articles on consumer credit in America, my most recent article finds some global insights in the recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which I relate to the schemes of consumer-credit regulation in the United States and the European Union.

While I was developing this body of scholarship on consumer-credit regulation, my experiences in raising a son with Down syndrome and (we later discovered) autism, also was exposing me to the world of disability rights. When I mentioned to a colleague at Notre Dame that I would like to explore some of these issues in my scholarship, she recommended that I read the book Dependent, Rational Animals: Why Human Beings, by Alisdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre’s book explores the question of how moral philosophy would be affected “if we were to treat the facts of vulnerability and affliction and the related facts of dependence as central to the human condition.” In his introduction, MacIntyre acknowledges his debt to the work of a group of feminist scholars who have been critiquing the traditional liberal theory of justice, based on the ideal of autonomous, independent actors. Known as “care feminists,” “cultural feminists” or “relational feminists,” these scholars argue that what all humans share, most fundamentally, is not some elusive (and largely mythical) state of autonomy and independence but rather a state of dependency – at the beginning and often at the end of life, and at various stages in between.

Right around the time that MacIntyre’s book introduced me to this line of feminist thought, I received an invitation from another Catholic law school to speak at a conference on the identity and mission of Catholic law schools. Because it was fairly clear that I had been asked to participate, in part, because of concerns about the under-representation of women at the conference, I decided to provide an unabashedly female perspective. In preparing this talk, I read, for the first time, the writings of Pope John Paul II on women, such as his 1988 Apostolic Letter, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” and his 1995 “Letter to Women.” I was immediately struck by the dramatic convergence between the arguments of these Catholic teachings and the arguments of relational feminists. I have explored these convergences in a series of articles that focus primarily on the workplace restructuring necessary to support the effective witness of women in the public sphere that both the Church and most feminists advocate: Should Bearing the Child Mean Bearing All the Cost? A Catholic Perspective on the Sacrifice of Motherhood and the Common Good (2007), Motherhood and the Mission: What Catholic Law Schools Could Learn From Harvard About Women, and West, MacIntyre and Wojtyła: Pope John Paul II’s Contribution to the Development of a Dependency-Based Theory of Justice.

Engaging the work of secular feminist legal theory from any faith perspective, let alone the perspective of a Catholic woman, has been a challenge. But one of the most unexpected rewards of this engagement has been the professional and personal relationships I have forged with feminist scholars of all sorts. These friendships led to my current book project, co-editing a collection of essays by feminists of different faiths to be published in the next year by Ashgate Press, Feminism, Law, and Religion. My own contribution to this collection is an exploration of the contemporary Catholic feminist interpretation of the theory of gender identity known as complementarity, which posits that men and women are fundamentally different yet fundamentally equal. This theory has its roots in a Thomistic affirmation of the unity of body and soul; it was developed by a group of predominantly Catholic philosophers who rejected the Cartesian dualism underlying most post-Enlightenment philosophy – phenomenologists such as Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand and St. Edith Stein, and personalists such as Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and Gabriel Marcel.

As my work on feminist legal theory drew me more deeply into the Catholic intellectual tradition, I began to feel the need to learn more about that tradition. During a sabbatical, I began to take courses toward a master’s degree in Catholic studies, earning that degree in the spring of 2010. The interdisciplinary nature of that degree program exposed me to the breadth of the history, philosophy, theology and literature of the Catholic tradition. In almost every class I took, though, I found myself focusing on questions of dependency and vulnerability, particularly as manifested in the disabled. My master’s thesis, “Jesus Wept: A Theological Reflection on Disabilities,” explored the contributions of a series of theologians and philosophers to making sense

of the lives of our most vulnerable fellow-citizens, the mentally disabled. This led to an invitation this past fall to participate in a symposium at Duke Law School on “Theological Argument in Law: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas.” My contribution to that symposium was an argument that Hauerwas’ critique of modern humanism (which parallels in many ways the relational feminists’ critique of modern liberal theories of justice) was consistent with the non theologically-based arguments of a prominent disability rights scholar critiquing inconsistencies in the current state of disability rights theory. Such convergences in thought, I argue, may point the way to fruitful alliances in advocating for fairer inclusion of those with disabilities in our society. This article will be published this year in Duke Law School’s Journal of Law & Contemporary Problems as “Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law.”

My scholarship in three different areas seems to lead me again and again to the discovery of convergences between Catholic thought and secular legal theory. I found this in feminist legal theory, in disability rights theory and even in consumer-credit regulation. I consider this an encouraging discovery, particularly in our increasingly polarized political climate, characterized it seems by ever-escalating tensions between institutional witnesses of faith and increasing pressures toward secularization. It suggests to me that the challenge at the heart of the mission of the University of St. Thomas School of Law – our dedication to “integrating faith and reason in the search for truth” – is not, in fact, an unrealistic one.

Elizabeth Schiltz is professor at the School of Law, a Thomas J. Abood Research Scholar, and co-director, Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

Co-sponsored by the University of St. Thomas Law Journal and the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy, the 2013 UST Law Journal Symposium will take place Friday, April 5, in the Schulze Hall Grand Atrium, Minneapolis campus. The event will feature 11 scholars from around the country and the world who will share their research and opinions on a subject that event organizers hope will serve as a catalyst for a new approach to the study and practice of intellectual property law.

For more information and to register for this free event click here.

“As intellectual property right law tries to keep up with technology in order to continue to drive technological innovation and economic development, and as the economy globalizes, we are forced to question the fundamental assumptions about intellectual property,” said Phil Steger, Law Journal Symposium editor. “IP and technology present fundamental questions concerning the ownership of life and the origins of creativity. IP and economic development confronts us with questions concerning how to balance the rights of IP owners with the needs of the poor.

“Globalization means that traditional IP regimes, which developed in Christian societies, are entering societies shaped by equally ancient and sophisticated religious traditions that have different ways of understanding and ordering the world. Finally, the ubiquity of the Internet and its domination by social media and open source sharing suggest that traditional IP, with its emphasis on individual ownership rights, are being challenged by new emphases on social relationships and duties. We are bringing in some of the brightest minds in IP law, bioethics, and religious scholarship to help answer the question of ‘How can religious thought constructively inform the meaning and direction of intellectual property law?’”

The symposium will feature paper presenters and panel participants from several different religious backgrounds, including Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, as well as Protestant and Catholic Christianity. The goal of bringing in this religiously diverse group of scholars and advocates, Steger said, is to shed some light on how various religious traditions can contribute perspectives and answers to the latest intellectual property law questions and ethical dilemmas.

The lineup of speakers includes University of Virginia law professor and intellectual property law scholar Margo Bagley, who will present “The Wheat and the (GMO) Tares: Lessons from Plant Patent Litigation and the Parables of Christ,” which will feature discussion on the ongoing U.S. Supreme Court case Bowman v. Monsanto.

The symposium also will include DePaul University law professor Roberta Kwall, whose presentation, titled “Remember the Sabbath Day and Enhance Your Creativity,” will draw from themes found in her recent research that explores the intersection between intellectual property, cultural property and Jewish law.

Prominent theologian Paul Griffiths of Duke University also will present on some of the fundamental tensions between Christian scripture and theology and IP law concerning the ownership of creativity and ideas.

Steger said the Law Journal staff credits the idea for and development of the theme for the upcoming symposium to UST law professor Tom Berg who, in addition to his work as a religious liberties scholar, has a professional background in intellectual property law.

“Professor Berg is a first-rate IP scholar and a nationally recognized scholar on the First Amendment and religious liberty,” Steger said. “The idea for the symposium and the excellent responses by scholars to our invitations are the direct result of his expertise and reputation.”

Papers from the symposium will be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.

Academic training in three different disciplines in three different countries, combined with practical experience in law and finance, made comparative scholarship a natural fit for me. Accordingly, my scholarship focuses on the intersection of economics, finance and law with a particular emphasis on comparative and transnational finance and comparative corporate, securities, civil, and European law and Law and Economics. Because of the comparative and methodological character of comparative research, comparativists often have new and different perspectives on academic debates and real-world problems. As a comparativist, my scholarship is motivated in large part by the desire to make practically relevant contributions to relevant real-world problems from a comparative institutional perspective. I find that this approach enables scholarship that seeks truth independent of political or economic pressure. In my work on the extraterritorial application of securities law, hedge funds, and contingent capital, I strive to suggest socially optimal solutions to real-world problems and policy debates.

In the context of the extraterritorial application of securities laws, I show in several pieces that U.S. policy responses can have repercussions in other jurisdictions with suboptimal social welfare outcomes that merit changes in policy. My most recent article in this context, forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review, shows that European countries are increasingly changing their rules to capitalize on recent changes in U.S. policy pertaining to the extraterritorial application of securities laws. I suggest that many of these issues can be addressed through a bilateral treaty and parties’ choice of law in securities transactions.

In the context of contingent capital securities, a hybrid financial instrument that has the potential to optimize social welfare and already has been used in Europe, I suggest in several articles that using contingent capital securities can improve regulatory regimes that are based on “stable rules,” i.e. rules that do not adjust to ever changing market and economic environments. In several new pieces and a book, I will develop the theory that a combination of approaches and experimentation with different legal regimes may result in “dynamic regulation” of the financial services industry. In addition, I will show that dynamic regulation has great potential to address the shortcomings of current financial market regulation.

In the context of hedge fund regulation, several articles suggest an indirect regulatory approach that balances economic and political demands with social welfare optimizing solutions. Several new pieces examine the policy implications of recent hedge fund registration and disclosure requirements in the United States. In the last two decades, the SEC repeatedly has attempted to register private funds, i.e. funds that otherwise were not regulated if they complied with certain requirements. The Dodd-Frank Act now authorizes the SEC to bring private funds under its regulatory supervision by requiring registration and enhanced disclosure for private equity and hedge fund managers. I examine if the new registration and disclosure rules have an effect on private funds and the private-fund industry. Because new rules pertaining to private funds also have been implemented in Europe, several follow-up pieces will compare the impact of these rules in the respective countries and the United States.

Given the policy and social welfare implication of my scholarship and the large practical application, the concepts and theories used can be transferred easily to the classroom. By explaining the real-world policy implications of my research, I hope to enable and support my students in becoming morally responsible, wise, skillful and critical leaders who are capable of discerning the importance of their decisions for the common good and social policy. My classes in international finance, securities regulation, business associations, and European law present many opportunities to accomplish that objective. Although the subject areas can be very technical, and it is important for students to appreciate the technical details, I always emphasize the methodological and theoretical foundations of the material. I strive to expose my students to the full spectrum of perspectives and discourse pertaining to the methodological and theoretical foundations of their respective subject matters. By introducing my students to my own scholarship and research, I underscore that the concepts students learn can affect our perception of the common good and have enormous practical and policy applications.

My work in the context of hedge funds, contingent capital and the extraterritorial application of securities law may be followed by several theoretical projects that explore the long-term, theoretical and methodological implications of policy initiatives, regulatory developments, and the empirical findings of my research. As my scholarship in these areas evolves, I hope to explore with my students some of the common denominators of Catholic social thought and institutional economics as well as the implications for theoretical foundations of corporate and securities law.

Wulf Kaal is associate professor at the School of Law.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

The Opus College of Business ranks No. 110 out of the 494 schools that hold accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business. The school ranked No. 104 a year ago, the first year that Opus was eligible because of its December 2010 accreditation, and last fall Opus’ undergraduate program ranked No. 117 among 388 AACSB-accredited programs.

“While we would like to move upward each year, we are very pleased that our rankings in only our second year of AACSB accreditation continue to place us well inside the top 25 percent of all AACSB-accredited business schools,” said Dr. Christopher Puto, dean of the college. “We see this as demonstrable proof that our mission-driven approach to business education resonates in the business community.”

The School of Law ranks No. 124, an improvement from its highest ranking of No. 135 two years ago. The School of Law was ranked for the first time in 2007, when it appeared in the third tier.

The School of Social Work, a joint program sponsored by St. Thomas and St. Catherine University, continues to be ranked No. 52, as it was a year ago. U.S. News does not conduct a new social work survey every year; in a ranking three years ago, the St. Thomas-St. Catherine program placed No. 53.

The School of Education, part of the College of Education, Leadership and Counseling, is not ranked numerically by U.S. News but alphabetically among schools in the second tier.

The St. Thomas School of Engineering is not listed in the national graduate rankings because it does not offer doctoral programs. Last fall, U.S. News ranked St. Thomas No. 69 among 193 engineering schools that offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but not doctorates, and are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the process underway to select the next pope has captured the world’s attention. In addition to announcements by the church itself, reporters assigned to cover the story frequently turn to experts … including university and seminary professors … for help.

University of St. Thomas faculty members have a long tradition of helping the media with stories related to business, politics, science, psychology, health, law, sociology, social work, education, history, climate change and more.  The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity and St. Thomas … with its Department of Theology and the oldest and largest program in Catholic studies in the United States … provide reporters with a resource for stories related to theology, ethics and the Catholic Church.

Four university and seminary professors in particular have been helping reporters locally, nationally and even internationally with stories on the papacy:

• Dr. Don Briel, the Koch Chair in Catholic Studies and founding director of the university’s Center for Catholic Studies;
• Dr. Charles Reid Jr., a School of Law professor with a background in both church and civil law;
• Father Andrew Cozzens, assistant professor of sacramental theology at the School of Divinity;
• Dr. Massimo Faggioli, a member of St. Thomas’ Theology Department.
  

  Dr. Don Briel

Briel, who holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Strasbourg, has been at St. Thomas for 32 years.  He is former chair of the Theology Department, former director of the Catholic Studies program and helped launched the Center for Catholic Studies in 1996.

A frequent visitor to Rome and the Vatican, Briel was there during Benedict’s final week as pope. While he has a long history of assisting reporters, locally and nationally, Briel was interviewed less often than usual last week because he was overseas.

He was, however, interviewed for this March 4 story about what popes “do” that appeared in Christian Science Monitor and other publications.  And soon after returning to St. Thomas, he was interviewed by the Catholic Spirit newspaper and the Minnesota News Network, a service that provides news to radio stations around the state.

Dr. Charles Reid Jr.

Reid, a member of the St. Thomas law faculty since 2002, holds a law degree and license in canon law from the Catholic University of America as well as a Ph.D. in the history of medieval law from Cornell University. He writes on topics related to religion, law and politics; a featured blogger for the Huffington Post, his recent “The Last 20^th Century Pope” essay was circulated widely across the Internet.

Locally, Reid was interviewed about Benedict on the Fox 9, KARE 11, KSTP 5 and WCCO 4 television stations. He was interviewed by CNN Online and for half an hour on the nationally syndicated Jim Bohannon radio show. Other interviews were conducted by stations in Tennessee, New York, Connecticut, Los Angeles and even Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (they wanted to talk about chances for a Canadian pope).

Father Andrew Cozzens

Cozzens, on the School of Divinity faculty since 2006, received his doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He was a student there four years and was in St. Peter’s Square to witness the “white smoke” that announced the selection of Benedict as pope.

Cozzens appeared on the Fox 9 Sunday morning program March 3 to discuss Benedict’s resignation.

Faggioli, who is 42 but could almost pass for half that, is a native of Italy. He joined the St. Thomas Theology Department in 2009 after completing a research fellowship at the Jesuit Institute at Boston College.

Dr. Massimo Faggioli

Faggioli holds a doctorate from the University of Turin and specializes in contemporary Catholicism, religion and politics. He is the author of four books, including Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning and True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium, both published in 2012.

As a former staff member at the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, Faggioli was granted credentials to conduct research in the Vatican’s principal archive from 1998 to 2005 and still visits there regularly.

He writes frequently for journals, magazines and newspapers, including regular articles for the Rome-based newspapers Europa and L’Unita. On March 2, his article assessing “the impact of Pope Benedict’s departure on the mystique of the papacy” was the cover story on the widely read British Catholic journal, The Tablet.

While he has recently conducted interviews about the papacy with Huffington Post, the national Fox News network and Italian public radio, closer to home he was an in-studio guest or was interviewed by KARE 11, WCCO 4, KSTP 5 and Fox 9. At the time of Benedict’s resignation, he woke up early on two consecutive mornings to appear on KARE 11’s “Sunrise” program. “It is fortunate I do not need a lot of sleep,” he said.

When asked if he had any predictions on who will be selected the next pope, he said he tries to avoid that question but added, “there are no front-runners.” He did say, however, that based on how long cardinals have taken in the past to select a pope, the world likely will know who is selected on March 18 or 19.

The oldest of six siblings, Carlson grew up on a second-generation farm in southeastern North Dakota. Her family was involved in many community organizations, especially North Dakota Farmers Union. She majored in political science and in Honors (a liberal arts program) at the University of North Dakota. After graduation, she worked for Sen. Byron Dorgan in Washington, D.C., on agricultural policy; on Sen. Kent Conrad’s re-election campaign in North Dakota; and for National Farmers Union as a lobbyist back in Washington.

Law School, a Logical Next Step

Pursuing a law degree was a logical next step for Carlson. Working for senators and as a lobbyist, she had become intrigued by the legislative process. “I was interested in how bills become laws, and thought law school would help me understand that process more fully,” she said.

As Carlson was completing her law school applications, she wrote what she considered to be a “pretty standard essay.” But for St. Thomas, her essay became much more personal. She said she wrote about her relationship with her grandmother. “It just seemed appropriate for St. Thomas.”

It certainly was. Carlson received a phone call from Assistant Dean of Admissions Cari Haaland, who said she remembered reading the essay because it embodied the school’s mission so well. “I didn’t know about the mission as much then, but I felt drawn to it,” Carlson said.

She also liked the idea that the School of Law was both new and connected to an established university. “I was excited about being involved in something from the start – something that had big goals,” she said.

Carlson said she loved her time at St. Thomas, with its respectful conversations about a variety of issues. Many people contributed to her positive law school experience. Among them were Lisa Brabbit (“the best mentor you could find”), Neil Hamilton (“so thoughtful about developing himself and students into servant leaders”), former dean Tom Mengler (“a compassionate person who truly wanted to see all stakeholders get what they needed”) and Tom Berg (“he fosters such a great open dialogue; he is such a good teacher”).

While she always appreciated her experience at the School of Law, she said she didn’t realize how unusual it was until she was in practice. “I would be talking to colleagues and would say, ‘Remember when in law school you talked about the kind of lawyer you wanted to be and what kind of law community it should be?’ And they’d say that they didn’t have those kinds of conversations in law school.”

Her Professional Journey

Carlson’s professional journey has taken a few twists and turns. Following graduation, she clerked for a year for District Court Judge Steven Cahill in Moorhead, Minn. After working in-house at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, Carlson went back to her rural roots to work at Minnkota Power Cooperative. In April 2012 she became general counsel and director of government relations for the North Dakota Farmers Union, a 40,000-member advocacy organization for family farmers.

Her work is far-ranging. Carlson provides legal counsel to the organization itself, ranging from contract review to employment issues. She also offers legal counsel to the Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Co., which is owned by the members of the Farmers Union.

Much of Carlson’s work is focused on government relations. “It is an advocacy organization, after all,” she said. After the members determine the organization’s policies, she and other staff members advocate for those policies on both the state and national levels. These policies cover anything and everything connected to a rural way of life – infrastructure issues such as roads and energy development, family issues, including health care and day care, how to feed a growing world via the system of family farming, and much more. Carlson is involved in the entire process, from policy development to day-to-day advocacy to legislative and regulatory responses.

It’s a big job, but for Carlson, it feels like coming home. “I always thought I would end up working on rural issues,” she said. “I grew up on a farm and in this organization. It’s great to work for an organization you really believe in, one in which everyone else – from staff to members – believes in its mission as well. Nobody is just doing a job. Caring for the members drives their work every day. It feels good to know we’re doing really important work.”

All this good work leads to one inevitable challenge: time. “It’s tough to find enough hours in the day to do everything that’s on my plate,” Carlson said. Part of that challenge is professional. She tries to carve out time daily to work on both legal and advocacy issues. Part is personal, trying to balance her professional responsibilities with her family life.

Carlson and her husband, Ryan, who also is an attorney, have three sons: Quinn, 6, Will, 4, and Tommy, 2. “Evenings with our kids is sacred time. My family is my priority,” she said, noting that she often works after the children have gone to bed.

The School of Law prepared Carlson for that work. “First and foremost, it made me think about what is important in both a career and a workplace,” she said.

After her year as a judicial clerk, she went through the motions of applying and interviewing at many law firms. “Through that process, I realized that those jobs weren’t the ones I really wanted,” she said. “In school, I was really thoughtful about where I wanted to work. I stepped back and thought about it more, and went a different direction.”

Each step along the way brought new clarity for her on what is really important. At Blue Cross Blue Shield, Carlson learned a lot about how to serve clients with excellence, she said. Both Minnkota and the Farmers Union have a strong element of servant leadership, stewardship and ties to members.

“These are the kind of important things that we focused on in the culture at St. Thomas,” she said.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

My first job was stocking shelves at a Walgreens in suburban Chicago. As a 16-year-old, I was in it for the money, pure and simple. I did what I was told, but nothing more, keeping one eye on the clock and counting down the minutes until my shift ended. Not surprisingly, I was awful at my job. I remember the manager watching me for a while, shaking his head and asking, “Is it physically possible for you to move any more slowly?” I lasted for about three months.

Years later I realized why I failed: I was only in it for me. Any notion that I should perform more than the minimum required or devote myself to the customer’s well-being never crossed my mind. As long as I kept the shelves full and responded to the manager’s direct instructions, I was doing my job. Or so I thought.

Anyone who has had a successful career knows that my teenage self-absorption was not simply a moral shortcoming; it rendered me professionally ineffective. By not embracing the core service values that must animate even the stock boy’s role, I had set myself up for failure. Keeping track of the storage room got me nowhere unless I also kept track of the customer-service ethos that was at the heart of the enterprise.

When we talk about professional formation at St. Thomas, this is what we mean. Effective lawyers, even more than stock boys, must grow to internalize a robust set of professional values, not simply acquire a set of technical skills. At bottom, these values require placing service to others over self.

We must be vigilant not to let “professional formation” become a catch phrase on a brochure, rather than a defining element of what we do every day, both inside and outside the classroom. These are challenging times for legal education, but we are well-positioned to navigate a rapidly changing landscape because our mission commits us to educate the whole person. As a result, our graduates emerge with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed, but they also emerge with a sense of how their own moral compasses shape their professional identities, along with a commitment to keep developing the values and attitudes that are at the heart of the lawyer’s role and essential to thriving in a highly competitive marketplace.

By developing a strong service ethic and the relationship skills that go with it, law students aren’t just doing the right thing; they’re doing the smart thing. As Indiana University’s William Henderson – one of the nation’s leading authorities on the legal profession – remarked recently, “Sure, lawyers need to be smart,” but in a very competitive legal market, they “also need to be personable, collaborative, entrepreneurial, service oriented and interested in contributing to the collective welfare of the law firm.”

St. Thomas law Professor Neil Hamilton’s research shows that legal employers and clients want their attorneys to have strong relationship skills, with terms such as “responsiveness and commitment to the client,” “teamwork,” “working with others,” “mentoring” and “networking” cropping up repeatedly.

St. Thomas has always been ahead of the curve in this regard. A commitment to take relationships seriously – and to educate students in a way that equips them to take relationships seriously – has been central to our school’s success since we opened our doors 11 years ago. That may help explain why we have so frequently been at or near the top of The Princeton Review’s rankings for student quality of life. The commitment is not an add-on to our mission; it is at the core of our mission.

As a Catholic law school, we believe in the social nature and inherent dignity of the human person – a belief we share with all major religious traditions – and we have built the law school community accordingly. We want our students to work well with others, not just because doing so will advance their employment prospects, but because doing so reflects our more fundamental commitment to honor human dignity.

Whether it’s through our award-winning mentor externship, the Foundations of Justice course, our expanding array of experiential learning opportunities, our groundbreaking course offerings on ethical leadership, a faculty of world-class scholars who help students pursue legal reform that improves lives, or our rich sense of community and commitment to public service, St. Thomas continues to pioneer new paths of professional formation. The results thus far have been remarkable, but I’m confident that the best is yet to come. I welcome your support as we move forward into our second decade of keeping the whole person at the center of legal education.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

Dr. Susan Huber, executive vice president and chief academic officer of the university, said he was selected from among a strong group of finalist candidates.

Vischer is one of the nation’s leading scholars in relating lawyers’ moral formation, including faith-based formation, to their professional development and excellence – a central part of the school’s Catholic mission. Huber said Vischer’s experience on the St. Thomas faculty (since 2005) and as associate dean (since 2011) prepare him well to serve as the school’s third dean since it opened in 2001.

Among his scholarly publications are numerous articles and two Cambridge University Press books – Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice, scheduled for release next month, and Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State (2010). Vischer’s honors at the School of Law include Professor of the Year (elected by students) in 2008 and 2011, and Dean’s awards for Outstanding Scholarship in 2009 and Outstanding Teacher in 2007. At St. John’s University School of Law in New York, where he taught before coming to UST, he was named Professor of the Year in 2005 and received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003.

“I am confident that Rob will lead the school to a new educational destination during this critical period of time for legal education,” Huber said. “His belief in keeping the mission of the school authentic and vibrant balances well with his concern for openly addressing the challenges facing all law schools today.”

Those challenges include a soft hiring market for new attorneys and a decrease in applications to law schools, but Vischer believes St. Thomas is well positioned to deal with critical issues.

“We have built an innovative program of legal education on our distinctive mission, which is a big draw for students,” he said. “We take professional formation seriously, equipping our graduates to excel in teamwork and building relationships, and impressing upon them the importance of developing a foundational moral commitment to serve others.” These attributes, he added, are important to employers and clients.

Vischer noted that several items have recently highlighted success at the School of Law. St. Thomas law faculty ranked 30th among the nation’s approximately 200 law schools in the 2012 Scholarly Impact Study, and second in the Roger Williams study of scholarly productivity. In the Law School Survey on Student Engagement, St. Thomas students reported above-average satisfaction, compared with law students overall, on a host of factors including development of legal knowledge and lawyering skills; academic, job/career and personal support; and others. They reported especially high comparative satisfaction on developing professional ethics and values, developing self-understanding and contributing to the welfare of the community. The School of Law recently ranked in the Princeton Review’s list of the top 10 schools with “Best Professors” (2012 ed.) and best “Quality of Life” (2013 ed.), the latter a ranking that St. Thomas has appeared in six of the last seven years. The school also ranks first in number of externships according to the National Jurist.

Vischer served as an assistant professor at St. John’s School of Law from 2002 to 2005 before joining St. Thomas as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 2010.

“The mission drew me here,” he said. “It’s a powerful mission, encouraging us to focus on the integration of faith and reason in ways that improve the legal system and produce more effective lawyers. I have been passionate about that since I started teaching, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of a place where that is hard-wired into the institutional DNA.”

Vischer grew up near Chicago. He received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from the University of New Orleans in 1993 and a juris doctor degree in 1996 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation from law school, he served as a clerk for three federal judges and as a corporate litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago.

He and his wife, Maureen, live in Minneapolis with their daughters, Sophia, Lila and Ava.

He is currently a senior fellow in the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at St. Thomas and a contributor to Mirror of Justice, the leading blog devoted to Catholic perspectives on law. He also has been a regular contributor to Commonweal magazine and served three years on the Policy Implementation Committee for the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility.

Vischer succeeded Neil Hamilton, who served as interim dean since June, when dean Thomas Mengler left to become president of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.

Huber thanked members of the dean’s search committee, co-chaired by Thomas Berg of the School of Law and Dr. Susan Alexander, executive adviser to Father Dennis Dease, president of the University of St. Thomas.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

Concerns about employment were not quite as common when the University of St. Thomas School of Law opened its doors in 2001. According to the National Association for Legal Placement (NALP), 2001 was the first year the profession reported declining employment rates for new law graduates since 1993. In the decade that followed, law firms saw continued erosion in their profits, culminating in 2008 when Lehman Brothers crumbled, the national economy collapsed, and layoffs spilled experienced lawyers back into the market.

Despite the layoffs and reduced hiring at major law firms, most pundits viewed the times as a transition period. Now in 2013, however, it is clear that permanent changes have occurred in the legal landscape. Employers are hiring fewer lawyers at lower starting-salaries. These changes, coupled with the increasing cost of legal education, complicate the value equation for a law degree. Law schools nationwide must rethink how they prepare their students for success while ensuring that those same students consider law school to have been a worthwhile investment.

The University of St. Thomas School of Law has chosen an innovative, comprehensive approach, inspired by its unique mission and grounded in the total student experience, including upgrades to the curriculum. The School of Law has focused its response to the new legal marketplace on the three key components of long-term professional success: professional formation, skill competency and excellence in relationship skills. Cutting-edge research at the School of Law unveils that these three components lead to professional success. By training students for long-term career success, the School of Law serves students in a deeper, more meaningful way and helps them be more attractive to employers as they search for their first jobs after law school.

Professional Formation

Rob Vischer, newly appointed dean of the School of Law, points out that students are supported in their career development in many ways during law school, but what happens in the classroom continues to be the most central piece. “Students have to be both technically competent and they have to learn how to think like a legal professional. I believe we do an excellent job of preparing them in both of those ways.”

Support provided to students does not stop at mere technical competency, however. Professional formation continues to be a central focus for the School of Law and an area in which Neil Hamilton has focused his efforts for more than a decade. Most recently, he and Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership Fellow Verna Monson have been working on research projects that compare the skills and attributes that legal employers tell the school they are seeking with specific, measurable outcomes that students are experiencing in their own professional formation.

“One of our major goals as a community is to help each student’s professional formation to internalize a deep responsibility for others and for self,” Hamilton observed. “A student who is internalizing a deep sense of responsibility for others and for self is going to have higher probabilities of securing employment.”

There is empirical evidence that the School of Law’s approach is working. As Professor Jerry Organ and Fellow Verna Monson analyzed the data from the Law School Survey on Student Engagement (LSSSE), which students took last spring, they saw that the overall experience at the School of Law is getting strong reviews from the students themselves. The LSSSE is an 89-question annual survey that seeks to reframe the discussion surrounding the quality of law schools. According to Organ, the data from the student survey indicates students are more than satisfied with the quality of academic, personal, social and career support available at the School of Law. Furthermore, students indicated a greater degree of self-understanding and a stronger professional ethical identity than their peers at other law schools. Students also demonstrated a stronger commitment to community service than peers at other schools.

Kendra Brodin, director of Career and Professional Development, hears about the outcomes of the professional formation coursework when she talks with employers and students. “Our students are uniquely prepared because of the work they are doing on professional formation,” she said. Brodin credits the faith and social justice aspects of the mission that encourage students to use their law school experience to engage in challenging, sensitive conversations and to tackle tough issues in professional ways: “The fact that these discussions are modeled in the classroom and then encouraged outside gives our students a great maturity when they go into a job and have to provide tough advice to a client or discuss conflicting ideas with a peer.”

Over the past two years, the Office of Career and Professional Development (CPD) has built upon the formation work being done throughout the School of Law. Beginning with new student orientation, and then continuing throughout the school year, Hamilton and other faculty have been reinforcing the need to begin planning professional development, and employment contacts, right from the start of law school. First-year students undergo mandatory CPD training in which they are introduced to a roadmap from the beginning of law school to the beginning of their careers.

The plan is customizable to reflect the students’ wide variety of professional aspirations. A key focus of the plan is helping students understand how the professional formation they experience during law school ties to the skills and attributes employers are seeking from their new hires, and ultimately clients are seeking from their attorneys. CPD offers a series of ongoing programs that help students connect their formative law school experience to their future professional success.

The Mentor Externship Program also plays a role in professional formation and contributes to and supports an individualized, differentiated employment story for each student. Not only does each student work with a mentor in the law field, each student also is assigned to a faculty mentor. The faculty mentor evaluates the professional development plan in concert with the identified experiences and skill development activities that the student and mentor participate in together. The faculty mentors contribute to the conversation, sharing insights, suggestions and contact tips on how to bridge to meaningful employment. The 20 faculty mentors who participate in the program are diverse in their backgrounds, work activities and experiences. Faculty mentors are quick to share individual networks to help advance the professional goals of the student and to broaden the scope of contacts and understanding of the hiring patterns in the profession. The new focus on an individualized approach helps each student attain personal and professional satisfaction by developing the qualities of excellence, social responsibility and ethical integrity.

The newly revised Mentor Externship curriculum allows students to strengthen technical skills through a field-placement and develop the habits necessary for professional growth through individual reflection, personal dialogue with faculty and other mentors, moral development and vocational discernment.

Additionally, Brodin and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Dave Bateson have spent a significant amount of time in the last two years meeting with a wide range of employers, including the state’s largest law firms, small firms, government employers, nonprofits, judges and corporations. During those meetings, Brodin and Bateson have had the opportunity to learn what each employer is seeking in its new attorneys while also sharing with employers the unique aspects of the School of Law curriculum. For Brodin, these meetings generate optimism about the future of the School of Law: “As employers hear about how we are approaching legal education, the classes we have, our Mentor Externship, our overall approach to producing well-rounded and solidly grounded graduates, they are excited. What we are doing here seems to match up so well with what employers are seeking. While we will continue to improve as a school, the feedback indicates that we are very much on the right track.”

Skill Competency

Great lawyers not only have strong professional formation, but they also bring a diverse portfolio of competencies to the table. Employers who used to help their new employees sharpen their technical skills now look for new hires already proficient in certain skills.

Brodin noted that firms are focused on finding “practice-ready” lawyers, and their hiring practices reflect that. “We are seeing more lateral hires or firms looking at associates with more professional experience,” she said. This change has increased the pressure on new graduates to hone their technical skills in law school. The positive side of this pressure has been that although it may have taken longer for a new attorney to get the job they wanted right out of law school, they are finding new and greater opportunities after three to five years of practice.

Because of the philosophies on which the School of Law was founded, Dean Vischer feels confident that St. Thomas is focused on the skills that will help students both get jobs and become valuable members of the legal community.

“For some time there has been a call for a greater connection between the classroom and the practice. This isn’t only happening in law; it really is affecting all of higher education,” Vischer explained. He further suggested that this nexus between the law school experience and the professional experience always has been important, but law schools that thrive in the future will be those that can demonstrate they have done the best job of preparing their students and alumni for the “real world” of legal practice and employment. The School of Law has been strengthening and growing opportunities for this kind of preparation since its inception. In some areas, the School of Law is already a national leader, and students, alumni and employers are noticing.

Particularly in the past three years as the job market has tightened, many schools have adopted a new focus on practical skills-based courses and clinical education, which are areas on which the School of Law has focused since it opened its doors.

“Just the other day I was on the phone with a faculty member at a school on the West Coast who wants to figure out how to build what we have,” Director of Clinical Education Virgil Wiebe commented. He explained that the Interprofessional Center (which includes students not only in law but also in psychology and social work) is a model of cross-disciplinary education that many law schools would like to follow.

The Interprofessional Center recently moved into a new facility remodeled to meet its particular needs and to accommodate a growing list of clinics, clients and students. In the past two years, clinical education offerings have expanded to include the Appellate Clinic, Bankruptcy Litigation Clinic, Consumer Bankruptcy Clinic, Federal Commutations Clinic, Nonprofit Organizations Clinic and Misdemeanor Clinic. These were added to the existing clinics, which include the Community Justice Project, Elder Law Clinic and Immigration Law Clinic.

In addition to its strong clinical program, every student benefits from an exceptional Lawyering Skills program.

“The goal of our lawyering skills program is to make students practice ready,” noted Associate Professor Julie Oseid. “Even before these tough economic times we knew that new lawyers are commonly judged by their writing, analytical and research skills. Our class combines all these critical skills to contribute to a practice-ready lawyer.”

Lawyering Skills faculty emphasize to students that they must add value through their work as a lawyer. Their writing must be clear and concise. They also emphasize the value of creativity, innovation and resilience as expressed through writing and in solid research. Oseid said, “We also take time to explain what real practice is like. All of us have substantial experience in practice. Even though some things may seem obvious, we make a point of giving students a very specific list of habits and traits that should be
developed to increase their chances of both finding and keeping a job.”

Relational Skills

“Relationships have always been central to the mission at the School of Law, and those relationships and the relationship-building skills our students continue to develop during law school are the key,” Vischer said. A concrete example, he said, can be found in the Mentor Externship Program, which is still the only program in the country providing one-to-one mentoring for every student every year of law school. This claim is supported by National Jurist magazine, which twice named the school the national leader in externship placements.

Lisa Montpetit Brabbit, senior assistant dean of External Relations, has been with the Mentor Externship Program for more than a decade. She explained, “The Mentor Program challenges each student to build his or her emotional intelligence (EQ) just as they build the more traditional intellectual skills in the classroom.

The delivery of legal services, the stewardship of intellectual skills, and the ability to maximize passion for a vocation in law are all tied to the ability to grow and engage professional relationships.”

Brodin agrees that relational skills are a key for employers: “The market is tight, and soft skills are critically important. As they hire, employers are thinking ‘How will this person fit into our team? How will they interact with and serve our clients at the highest possible level?’ If an applicant can demonstrate both intellectual and interpersonal skills, they are much more likely to be hired.”

Those same relationship skills are also a strong focus for CPD as it works with students to find employment. Just as lawyers need to network to build their professional reputations and to generate sources of work, law students need to build a network of connections before graduation.

“We strongly encourage our students to understand how important it is to build authentic relationships with the practicing bar even while they are in law school,” Bateson noted. “We are all part of a larger profession and a larger community. The relationships we build are the lifeblood that nourishes great lawyers throughout their careers.”

CPD has added training that not only teaches why networking is important but also gives students practical skills to make and build relationships.

Brodin noted, “Most students understand the importance of networking at this point. Some people just need a little help on how to get started, how to make the first outreach, or how to make a great first impression. Our students are amazing, interesting people, and our goal is to give them the networking skills to let that talent shine while building a genuine relationship with other amazing, interesting and talented people in the legal community.”

Successful Improvements

More than just hopeful theories, the improvements at the University of St. Thomas School of Law are making a difference. The positive impacts on professional formation seen in Hamilton and Monson’s research and the LSSSE data on student experience are backed up by external evidence, such as the School of Law appearing again in Princeton Review’s top 10 law schools for the “Best Quality of Life.” It is a ranking the school has achieved six of the past seven years. Sixty percent of UST Law students chose to participate in the LSSSE, which is well above the national average student participation rate of 44 percent. Jerry Organ and Verna Monson recently finished compiling UST’s data, noting that more than 40 percent of the survey questions garnered statistically significant positive results. “The University of St. Thomas has very encouraging results,” Organ said.

Bateson points out that students’ satisfaction with the law school is also tied in part to the one-to-one relationships that students build with each other, faculty and staff. Successfully helping students transition to employment flows from that same focus on relationships. CPD, faculty, staff and even other students all collaborate to help students as they move along the path to the job they seek. The focus remains on helping students discern what they personally want from their legal degree, while ensuring that the law school experience ultimately has a positive impact on their careers and their lives.

“As each student sits down with CPD, or any other mentor in the building, we are focused on finding out what that student wants in their career and helping them create their personal plan to get there. Students enter law school with a wide range of career aspirations. Many want to practice law, and we should ensure that those students are well prepared and able to find meaningful employment in the profession. At the same time, we also need to encourage and support those students who wish to use their J.D. in other ways. We support students whose goal is to start and lead a nonprofit. We support students who want to work as corporate executives and see a J.D. as a way to advance on that path. All of our students have their own unique aspirations. The best measure of our success is whether we helped them move closer to their professional goals.”

Bateson encourages students to take a “long view” not only of their careers but also the profession: “Very few people spend their whole career in one job. It is certainly a difficult time for new lawyers. Many of them end up in first jobs that may not be a perfect fit. One job is not, however, the final determination of your career. Each job is a step. If you are excellent in that job and thoughtfully assess the transferable skills you can learn, then that position is still another step closer to where you want to end up.”

Together, law students, alumni and the law school itself can and will navigate this challenging time in the legal profession and emerge stronger, better positioned, and true to their core identities and missions.

Erika Toftness Kelly ’07
Houk Kantke Toftness Kelly, P.L.L.C.

The true gift that UST Law gave me was not immediately apparent to me as a student. Following law school, I went to work for a large law firm that emphasized collaboration in the practice of law. I felt well-prepared to practice in a collaborative environment, because I felt that St. Thomas really fostered a noncompetitive and collegial environment.

Ultimately I found that I also needed fulfillment from the clients I served and their aims so I left “big law,” to start my own elder law and estate-planning practice. Very shortly thereafter, my UST trial advocacy partner, John Kantke, approached me about being his law partner. It was an immediate no-brainer. He had all of the qualities in law school that now make him a great lawyer. We collaborate daily, and pursue excellence together, while mostly serving an elderly population. We are having an exceptional time doing so.

John A. Kantke ’07
Houk Kantke Toftness Kelly, P.L.L.C.

St. Thomas emphasized to us as students that we are practicing law within a community of lawyers. That sounds like a simple concept, but I don’t think I realized how true it was until after practicing law for a few years. Lawyers work with other lawyers, work against other lawyers, cooperate, network, socialize and volunteer with other lawyers. Not surprisingly, one of the favorite topics of discussion among lawyers is other lawyers.

Starting out as a new lawyer you have the unique opportunity to begin defining yourself in the legal community. Choosing a specific practice area, being involved in the bar association, joining informal study groups, or volunteering with other lawyers are simple ways to meet other lawyers and begin defining yourself. The longer you practice law the more people you will meet and the more impressions (both good and bad) you will make. None of us are able to practice law in a vacuum.

Looking back, I appreciate the deliberate work done by St. Thomas to start connecting us as students with practicing attorneys and pushing us toward involvement in the legal community.

Chris Wheaton ’08
Barry, Slade, Wheaton & Helwig, L.L.C.

My professional formation at the School of Law was filled with opportunities for developing the soft skills of the legal profession. Through the Office of Career and Professional Development (CDP) I learned that, as a student, it was my responsibility to take charge of my career. CPD was there to help with resources, résumé workshops, etc., but engaging in my own career ownership was going to be paramount to becoming employed post-graduation. It was that personal responsibility and career ownership upon which I relied when forging relationships with other attorneys through the Mentor Externship program. Learning skills such as relationship development, expectation management, professionalism and civility in an adversarial practice through the Mentor Externship classes became the templates for interaction with my mentors as well as their colleagues and judges in the legal field. These skills are still at the cornerstone of my practice.

And finally, our student government programming supplemented both the CPD and Mentor Externship pieces through professionalism events where you would learn professional dress, and meal and conversation etiquette in casual, semicasual and professional situations.

Elizabeth Drotning Hartwell ’06
Geer Wissel & Levy, P.A.

My time at UST Law prepared me for the practice of law in countless ways. Beyond honing skills in analysis, research and writing, my clinic experience and other classes such as Client Interviewing and Counseling taught me how to view issues holistically. I practice primarily family law; my clients don’t have solely legal problems, but usually come with financial and emotional issues as well. UST’s emphasis on seeing the dignity in all people has been enormously helpful to me, especially with clients with significant mental health or substance-abuse issues. I try to remember that everyone is a child of God, and that my words have the power to help or heal. It’s vital to represent clients zealously, but I also remind myself not to do any harm. There is no point in kicking an opposing party when they’re down, and I think my reputation for being compassionate helps me win points with judges and settle cases more efficiently.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

John Inazu, a professor at Washington University Law School, will argue “yes.”

Nelson Tebbe, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, will argue “no.”

Free and open to the public, the forum is sponsored by the university’s Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy. A complimentary lunch will be served to those who register for the lunch program.

The Hot Topics: Cool Talk series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, focuses this year on the challenges of religious freedom in the United States and around the world.

John Inazu

In his book, The Four Freedoms and the Future of Religious Liberty, Inazu wrote that the First Amendment’s freedoms of speech, press, religion and assembly once reinforced each other: “They protected citizens from forced participation in state orthodoxy and created spaces for these citizens to generate and pursue ideas and ways of life apart from the watchful gaze of government. They protected, among other things, a pluralistic civil society that tolerated genuine disagreement and shielded private groups from the imposition of majoritarian norms.”

Nelson Tebbe

The Hot Topics: Cool talk debaters on March 8 will discuss whether these freedoms are crumbling under pressures of anti-discrimination measures and if religious groups are losing the constitutional protections they once enjoyed.

Tebbe teaches courses on constitutional law, religious freedom, legal theory and professional responsibility. He is immediate past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools and is co-organizer of the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, he also holds a Ph.D. in the academic study of religion from the University of Chicago.

Inazu’s scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His first book, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, seeks to recover the role of assembly in American political and constitutional thought. He is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina.

Rob Vischer, dean and professor at the St. Thomas School of law, will moderate the March 8 program. More information about the Hot Topics: Cool Talk series is available here.

The program has been approved by the Minnesota Board of Legal Education for an “elimination of bias” continuing-legal-education credit.

The industry’s opposition to regulatory oversight can be traced back to several factors. Since the inception of the hedge-fund industry, hedge-fund managers considered regulatory oversight an infringement on their ability to generate absolute returns. Hedge-funds evolved in a regulatory environment that allowed them through so-called safe harbors to stay exempt from regulatory oversight. Hedge-funds’ ability to operate without regulatory oversight facilitated successful hedge-fund launches, generated higher returns and attracted investors.

The Dodd-Frank Act appears to be the last chapter in the debate on hedge-fund adviser registration and disclosure. Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act authorized the SEC to register hedge-fund managers and demand enhanced disclosure. The SEC now requires the disclosure of financing information, risk metrics, strategies and products used by hedge-fund managers, performance and changes in performance, positions held by the investment adviser, percentage counterparties and credit exposure, assets traded using algorithms, and the percentage of equity and debt, among others.

The new rules are controversial and precipitated vehement industry complaints. Industry representatives allege the Dodd-Frank rules result in lower profits and undermine managers’ competitiveness. Given its limited resources, it is unclear how the SEC will evaluate the new information it collects.1 Industry representatives also voiced concern about the confidentiality of disclosure and the impact on the industry if information should be leaked to the market or to hedge-funds’ competitors. There is also a concern that the new Dodd-Frank Act requirements could push new market entrants out of the market because of higher startup costs.

Despite these concerns and industry grumbling, the hedge-fund industry is taking the new regulatory environment under the Dodd-Frank Act in stride.2 Hedge-fund investors’ rate of return was not affected by the registration and disclosure requirements. The new regulatory regime has not affected the asset size of hedge-funds. Hedge-fund managers are not planning changes in their portfolio structure or operations, nor are they planning any other strategic responses. Fund managers are also not changing the size of the assets they hold to avoid the application of Dodd-Frank Act regulations.

Although compliance with Dodd-Frank Act requirements has increased costs for the hedge-fund industry, the industry is adjusting well to the new cost structure. Costs have increased because of outsourced compliance work, hiring of additional counsel, new record-keeping policies, the hiring of additional staff, as well as new investor communications and marketing materials. For most hedge-fund managers the cost of compliance ranges from $50,000 to $200,000, and most hedge-fund managers have spent less than 500 hours per year to comply with the new registration and reporting requirements. These additional costs seem manageable for most hedge-funds. It is too early to tell if additional burdens stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act will slow down hedge-fund activity and reduce investor returns.

So far, the hedge-fund industry has no reason to fear the Dodd-Frank Act; however, there is one caveat: the SEC and the newly founded Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) have the authority to further increase the regulatory oversight to address systemic concerns posed by the private fund industry. Unless both regulators substantially increase the regulatory oversight, the hedge-fund industry should be well-prepared to adjust to the new regulatory environment under the Dodd-Frank Act.

About the Author: Wulf Kaal is an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Before entering the academy, he graduated with a Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A. and LL.M. and worked for Cravath, Swaine & Moore, L.L.P., in New York City and Goldman Sachs in London. Kaal specializes in hedge-fund regulation, international finance, European law and corporate law securities regulation. He has published in leading European law and finance journals and leading American law reviews.

NOTES

1 Wulf A. Kaal, Hedge-fund Regulation via Basel III, 44 Vand. J. Transnat’l L. 389 (2011).
2 Wulf A. Kaal, Hedge-fund Manager Registration under the Dodd-Frank Act – An Empirical Study, 50 San Diego L. Rev. (2013) (forthcoming).

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

When the presidential election was in full swing and political tempers were flaring, a new student organization at the University of St. Thomas School of Law was formed to resist the partisanship and vitriol. The Public Discourse group focuses on quite the opposite: open, nonpartisan debate about how public policy issues intersect with law.

“Public Discourse was created to give people from a variety of political and philosophical perspectives an opportunity to dialogue,” said David Best, 2L, president of the organization. The idea for Public Discourse began when several first-year students formed a study group. “[W]e often digressed into policy discussions, but we also managed to usually keep it civil,” Best remembered. Several group members wanted even more discussion; hence, the Public Discourse group was born.

“One of the things that makes us unique is that, while all the members of the group have political preferences, the group itself is committed to being nonpartisan,” Best said. Although most public policy discussions inevitably involve politics, the group does not advocate a certain stance on issues. Its sole purpose is to talk.

“Society in general is too singular and partisan in its fact finding. When we can’t even agree on the facts, it hinders the quality of the discussion, and in the political context, the quality of resulting legislation and public policy,” Best said.

He believes the group’s mission – to provide a healthy discussion forum – will blend well with the overall environment at UST Law. “I have been impressed with the bipartisan nature of the school’s atmosphere. Certain individuals certainly have opinions, but by and large it has been positive,” Best said.

But while the UST environment welcomes discussion, Best sees an opportunity to strengthen the quality of dialogue on campus. “There are a good variety of guest speakers on all imaginable topics. But there is often little time for questions during or following the events,” he explained. Therefore, the Public Discourse group will sponsor several events throughout the year that facilitate conversations between speakers and audiences and allow ample question time. In theory, active discussion and debate should curb purely partisan presentations.

The group’s first event on Oct. 30 focused on how to effectively conduct public discourse. It featured UST Law professors Mark Osler and Teresa Collett, two colleagues who have publicly advocated different sides of the marriage amendment. Nonetheless, they often seek each other’s opinion and exemplify the art of “doing public discourse well.”

Last fall was incredibly busy for Osler and Collett. Both taught classes as well as lent their time as independent advocates for some of the most talked-about public policy issues of the day – all at the height of the 2012 election cycle.

Osler traveled to California to bring his well-known “Trial of Jesus” seminar to two universities while the state’s residents prepared to vote on a ballot provision that would repeal California’s death-penalty law. The seminar, which Osler has performed at various universities around the country over the last several years, takes a closer look at whether Biblical principles on the sanctity of human life comport with federal and state capital punishment laws.

Collett worked throughout the summer and fall, speaking to several churches and organizations across Minnesota to advocate for passage of the state constitutional marriage amendment. A well-known expert on the subject of marriage law, Collett has penned several opinion articles on the issue for various local and national publications.

Osler joined in the public conversation about the marriage amendment, although he had decidedly come down on the other side of the debate. One year ago, the pair wrote corresponding opinion pieces on the marriage amendment, which were published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. From that point on they have discussed the topic with each other quite regularly.

Maybe it is pure coincidence that Collett and Osler, whose offices are next door to one another, each spent considerable time teaching at law schools in southern Texas before they landed at UST Law. And maybe it is also coincidence that both are well-regarded advocates for some of the highly publicized social and public policy issues of our day. But they agree it is no coincidence that their working relationship has established a mutual sense of respect for each other’s opinions – although sometimes diverging – on a range of hot-button issues, including the marriage amendment. Both believe they are better informed individuals for engaging each other in such conversations, even amid an ever-increasing sense of political polarization among the electorate during one of the more contentious election cycles in recent memory.

“It’s been great to discuss all of these issues with Teresa because even though we may agree on one issue and disagree on another, we can have the same principled, respectful discussion throughout,” Osler said.

Collett echoed those sentiments. “Even the conversations we have over coffee or in the hallway on these issues are valuable conversations,” Collett said. “Because when I talk with Mark about such issues as the death penalty or marriage, I know I am encountering a person who is very smart, but who has also dedicated a lot of his intellectual time to thinking about the proper application and principles of justice in that context.

“We may agree on some things and disagree on others, but I think we both share that same common principle – that there are systems of communal governance and structure that are more suitable to the human person and that will create more genuine happiness – what the philosophers call ‘flourishing.’”

Although they may not always agree on how precisely to apply such principles in the context of particular laws and public policy issues, their continued dialogue provides a solid example of the atmosphere a Catholic law school such as St. Thomas strives for, said Robert Vischer, School of Law dean. “Professors Collett and Osler are both passionate, effective advocates who are wonderful models of how to disagree without being disagreeable,” Vischer said. “Inside and outside the classroom, we count on our faculty to lead the way in showing how the mission of our school can broaden and deepen conversations about law, politics and culture.”

While Collett has been at UST Law since 2003 and Osler joined the faculty more recently in 2010, both previously taught a decade or more at law schools in southern Texas before making their way north. Their impetus in trading a relatively year-round warm climate for one that includes an honest and true version of winter was of a similar vein.

Collett was a professor for 12 years at South Texas College of Law, a private, secular school in Houston, before she felt the call to serve the Catholic Church more directly in her capacity as a professor at a Catholic-affiliated institution.

Osler taught for 10 years at Baylor University School of Law, the largest Baptist post-secondary institution in the country. Although Osler is not Catholic, he is a practicing Christian and said he was drawn to UST Law because of his appreciation for the intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church’s integration of “faith and reason” in its search for truth on issues of morality and social justice.

“First and foremost, intellectual and scholastic life survived because of Catholicism for a long time,” Osler said. “And a part of intellectual life has always been that give and take, of ‘what does this mean?’ It’s great to have those conversations while being able to lean on an institution that has reasoned through those questions for many centuries.”

Collett said she was drawn to St. Thomas because of her belief that the ideal model for a Catholic law school is one that provides a framework for discussion of the application of the Church’s well-reasoned doctrines as they relate to the intersection with cultural norms and law. She said she values the Catholic principle of room for debate, but not for the sake of debate itself.

“When everything is subject to debate simply for the sake of debate, I am troubled by that idea,” she said. “For example, I don’t think the principle that we should strive toward ‘goodness’ is really subject to debate. Now exactly how do we get from here to there, how to achieve ‘goodness,’ in the context of our laws and public policy, that’s where the interesting conversation lies.”

The School of Law is a place that welcomes conversations, even uncomfortable ones, as a matter of civil discourse. Discussions of issues do not have to be separated into red and blue, as in politics. It takes both colors to form purple and it takes collaboration and consideration to inform an equitable discussion.

“To me this is what the ideal Catholic university does,” Collett said. “We collect people, many of whom have common first principles, but, who because of their own gifts and talents and circumstances of their lives may have focused on differing aspects of how to create a just legal order. And from those unique and valued perspectives, we can have some amazing conversations.”

Dean Vischer said the Catholic law school’s focus on the value of human dignity helps to foster fruitful dialogue even during an election season when the stakes of engaging in such conversations seemed so high. “As a Catholic law school, we are founded on a commitment to honor and respect the dignity of every person,” he said. “This provides a strong foundation for healthy and civil dialogue, even when we grapple with the most controversial issues of our day.”

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

The other major feature in this magazine is on employment. In the article you will read more about how the School of Law is uniquely positioned to help our students navigate the changing legal employment market. I am chairing a new committee to coordinate our efforts to help each student to develop and implement a plan for employment from the first year of law school. The article also includes some notes from recent alumni who have carved their own paths.

The magazine also includes a focus on the work of Wulf Kaal, and his emerging work looking at how hedge funds are reacting to the requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act. It demonstrates how important the scholarly activity of our faculty is, as this is a good example of work that can be directly applied in the classroom, and has affected practice as Business Week magazine and other mass media outlets have commented on the research.

I look forward to moving back into my role as professor and Director of the Holloran Center, and to continue working with all of you and Dean Vischer to build this inspiring law school.

Neil Hamilton
Professor and Director of the Holloran Center
for Ethical Leadership in the Professions
University of St. Thomas School of Law

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

Mandatory contraception coverage is the latest iteration of a question that has appeared throughout history and has driven much of my research and writing: when a civil law enacted for secular reasons conflicts with religiously motivated codes of behavior, does religious freedom call for the law to give way, and if so when? This issue, which goes back as far in America as Quakers’ refusals to swear oaths or serve in the militia, took a new turn in the early 1990s, sparking my interest just at the start of my academic career. First the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a case involving Native Americans’ sacramental use of the illegal drug peyote, that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion does not require exceptions for religious adherents from secular laws “of general applicability.” In response, a nearly unanimous Congress – realizing that the Court’s rule could leave religious minorities subject to severe even if unintended burdens – passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), which required government to show a strong reason to justify imposing such burdens on sincere religious practices.

My first scholarly article was one of the first two major analyses of RFRA’s background and intended meaning. Since then, in a number of articles and appellate briefs, I’ve argued for a vigorous interpretation of the statute to protect the conscientious beliefs of all faiths. In litigation I’ve represented, among others, liberal and conservative Christians, orthodox Jews, Native Americans, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishnas and a tiny sect called the Uniao do Vegetal whose members ingest small amounts of a hallucinogenic tea at worship services.

My own beliefs about the foundation and importance of religious freedom for all faiths could not be better expressed than in the words of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom:

It is in accordance with their dignity as persons – that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility – that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth… However, men cannot discharge these obligations in a manner in keeping with their own nature unless they enjoy immunity from external coercion as well as psychological freedom; therefore the right to religious freedom has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person [or in the truth of his beliefs], but in his very nature.

Here as in many other areas, I as an Episcopalian take great inspiration from Catholic teaching on human dignity. Among my recurring scholarly themes have been (a) that religious freedom is a value that “progressives” and civil libertarians should vigorously support even for those whose religious views they oppose, and (b) that there are principled ways to strike sensible balances between religious freedom and the interests of others and of society. So, for example, in one article I argued that evangelicals and other religious conservatives are often among the minorities for whom civil libertarians should have sympathy. In another article, I argued that the very same values that support recognition of same-sex marriage – respect for fundamental aspects of persons’ identities – also call for strong protection of those who object to directly facilitating such marriages, such as Catholic adoption agencies or evangelical wedding photographers. Together with a half dozen other legal scholars, I’ve proposed model statutory provisions accommodating conscientious objections in states that are considering recognizing same-sex marriage. Several states recently have adopted parts of our proposal.

I hope that one legacy of my work will be provisions that preserve the ability of both sides in this contentious debate to live consistently with their deep values and identity. The efforts concerning same-sex marriage exemplify one of the most satisfying parts of being a law professor: the chance to link theory and practice, to translate scholarly research and theses into arguments that can affect courts and legislatures. To make forceful arguments while preserving the scholar’s respect for nuance is a challenge, but I believe it’s a worthwhile one.

Another satisfying part of my job is to work with intelligent and motivated law students. Research assistants have made many valuable contributions to my work, finding information, providing both substantive and editing comments, and in several cases co-writing articles. In offering a yearly paper-writing seminar on Religious Liberty during my 10 years at St. Thomas Law, I’ve also benefited again and again from student ideas on these issues.

Thomas Berg is James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy.

 From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

Free and open to the public, the forum is sponsored by the university’s Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy. A complimentary lunch will be served to those who register for the lunch program.

The Hot Topics: Cool Talk series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, focuses this year on the challenges of religious freedom in the United States and around the world. The Nov. 30 forum is titled “The Romeike Asylum Case: Does Germany’s Ban on Homeschooling Count as Religious Persecution?”

The forum will feature legal experts debating the case of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children, ages 4 to 14. Starting in the fall of 2006, the parents began keeping their three oldest children out of school, which is illegal in Germany where attendance at an officially recognized school – public, private or religious – is mandatory.

When the Romeike family did not comply, officers showed up at their home in the town of Bissingen and took the children to school in a police van. Facing steep fines and threats that they could lose custody of their children, the parents emigrated to Morristown, Tenn., in 2008, and applied for political asylum the following year.

Luke Goodrich

Early in 2010, U.S. Immigration Judge Lawrence Burman granted asylum to the family, saying that “home-schoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution … therefore, they are eligible for asylum.”

David Abraham

The case was appealed by U.S. Immigration and Customs to the federal Board of Immigration Appeals; a decision is pending.

Presenting the case in favor of the family at the St. Thomas forum will be Luke Goodrich, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has submitted an amicus brief supporting the Romeike’s asylum claim. Presenting the case against asylum will be David Abraham, a professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Miami School of Law.

Sarah Brenes, an attorney with Advocates for Human Rights and a former fellow with the St. Thomas School of Law Immigration Clinic, will moderate the discussion.

Information about the Hot Topics: Cool Talk series is available here.

The Minnesota Board of Legal Education has approved the program for a standard CLE credit.

The forum is being held in conjunction with the Journal of Law and Public Policy’s fall symposium, “Homeschooling: Rights and Tensions at Home and Abroad.” Symposium speakers include Dr. Dick Carpenter, director of strategic research for the Institute of Justice; Mary Rice Hasson, a fellow in the Ethics and Public Policy Center; and Michael Donnelly, the director of international affairs and staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Go to the UST Law event page for the complete symposium schedule.

The lecture is sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning and is free and open to the public.

Professor Susan Stabile

Drawing from her book, Growing in Love and Wisdom: Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation, published this month by Oxford University Press, Stabile will explore common values that underlie Christianity and Buddhism and how interreligious engagement can offer mutual enrichment for people of both traditions, giving special attention to how Buddhist meditation practices can enrich Christian spirituality.

After the program, Stabile’s new book will be available for purchase and signing.

Stabile holds the Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law at St. Thomas’ School of Law, where she also serves as a fellow of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership and offers retreats and other programs of spiritual formation for students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Raised as a Catholic, Stabile devoted 20 years of her life to practicing Buddhism and was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun before returning to Catholicism in 2001. She is a spiritual director, trained in the Ignatian tradition, and one of the leading scholars in the United States on the intersection of Catholic social thought and the law.

The Jay Phillips Center is a joint enterprise of St. Thomas and St. John’s University, Collegeville.

Vischer will succeed Neil Hamilton on Jan. 1, said Dr. Susan Huber, executive vice president and chief academic officer. Hamilton has served as interim dean since May, when dean Thomas Mengler left to become president of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.

Huber said Vischer’s experience on the St. Thomas faculty (since 2005) and as associate dean (since 2011) prepares him well to serve as the school’s third dean since it opened in 2001. He also is one of the nation’s leading scholars on relating lawyers’ moral formation, including faith-based formation, to their professional development and excellence – a central part of the school’s Catholic mission.

“I am confident that Rob will lead the school to a new educational destination during this critical period of time for legal education,” Huber said. “His belief in keeping the mission of the school authentic and vibrant balances well with his concern for openly addressing the challenges facing all law schools today.”

Those challenges include a soft hiring market for new attorneys and a decrease in applications to law schools, but Vischer believes St. Thomas is well positioned to deal with critical issues.

“We have built an innovative program of legal education on our distinctive mission, which is a big draw for students,” he said. “We take professional formation seriously, equipping our graduates to excel in teamwork and building relationships, and impressing upon them the importance of developing a foundational moral commitment to serve others.” These attributes, he added, are important to employers and clients.

Vischer grew up near Chicago. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of New Orleans in 1993 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1996 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation from law school, he served as a clerk for three federal judges and as a corporate litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago.

He became an assistant professor at St. John’s University School of Law in New York in 2002, teaching there for three years until joining St. Thomas as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 2010.

“The mission drew me here,” he said. “It’s a powerful mission, encouraging us to focus on the integration of faith and reason in ways that improve the legal system and produce more effective lawyers. I have been passionate about that since I started teaching, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of a place where that is hard-wired into the institutional DNA.”

Vischer’s honors at the School of Law include Professor of the Year in 2008 and 2011, the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship in 2009 and the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teacher in 2007. At St. John’s, he was named Professor of the Year in 2005 and received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003.

He is a senior fellow in the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at St. Thomas and a contributor to Mirror of Justice, the leading blog devoted to Catholic perspectives on law. He also has been a regular contributor to Commonweal magazine and served three years on the Policy Implementation Committee for the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility.

Among his scholarly publications are two Cambridge University Press books – Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice, scheduled for release next month, and Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State (2010).

He and his wife, Maureen, live in Minneapolis with their daughters Sophia, Lila and Ava.

Huber praised Hamilton for his work as interim dean. He joined the law faculty when the school opened and is founding director of its Thomas Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions.

“When it was time to appoint an interim dean, I found unanimous support for Neil,” she said. “He has been an excellent interim dean, and I know how much he looks forward to spending more time in the classroom and with activities in the Holloran Center.”

Huber thanked members of the dean’s search committee, co-chaired by Thomas Berg of the School of Law and Dr. Susan Alexander, executive adviser to Father Dennis Dease, president. Other committee members were Ann Bateson, Nora Fitzpatrick, Mitchell Gordon, Nekima Levy-Pounds and Joel Nichols from the law school faculty and administration, Larry LeJeune of the school’s Board of Governors and Dr. Christopher Puto, dean of the Opus College of Business.

Independent advocates

There may be no busier time than the present for professors Mark Osler and Teresa Collett. Both UST Law faculty members are teaching class this fall as well as lending their time as independent advocates for some of the most talked about public policy issues of the day – all at the height of the 2012 election cycle.

Next week, Osler will travel to California to bring his well-known “Trial of Christ” seminar to two universities while the state’s residents prepare to vote on a ballot provision that would repeal California’s death penalty law. The seminar, which Osler has performed at various universities around the country over the last several years, takes a closer look at whether biblical principles on the sanctity of human life comport with federal and state capital punishment laws.

Collett has been busy in her own right throughout the summer and fall, speaking to several churches and organizations across Minnesota to advocate for passage of the state constitutional marriage amendment. A well-known expert on the subject of marriage law, Collett has penned several opinion articles on the issue for various local and national publications.

Osler recently joined in the public conversation about the marriage amendment, although he had decidedly come down on the other side of the debate. One year ago, the pair wrote corresponding opinion pieces on the marriage amendment, which were published in the Minneapolis-based “Star Tribune.” From that point on they have discussed the topic with each other quite regularly.

Maybe it is pure coincidence that Collett and Osler, whose offices are next door to one another, each spent considerable time teaching at law schools in southern Texas before they landed at UST Law. And maybe it is also coincidence that both are well-regarded advocates for some of the highly publicized social and public policy issues of our day. But they agree it is no coincidence that their working relationship has established a mutual sense of respect for each other’s opinions – although sometimes diverging – on a range of hot button issues, including the marriage amendment. Both believe they are better informed individuals for engaging each other in such conversations, even amidst an ever-increasing sense of political polarization among the electorate during one of the more contentious election cycles in recent memory.

“It’s been great to discuss all of these issues with Teresa because even though we may agree on one issue and disagree on another, we can have the same principled, respectful discussion throughout,” Osler said.

Collett echoed those sentiments. “Even the conversations we have over coffee or in the hallway on these issues are valuable conversations,” Collett said. “Because when I talk with Mark about such issues as the death penalty or marriage, I know I am encountering a person who is very smart, but who has also dedicated a lot of his intellectual time to thinking about the proper application and principles of justice in that context.”

“We may agree on some things, and disagree on others, but I think we both share that same common principle – that there are systems of communal governance and structure that are more suitable to the human person and that will create more genuine happiness, what the philosophers call flourishing,” Collett said.

Although they may not always agree on how to precisely apply such principles in the context of particular laws and public policy issues, their continued dialogue provides a solid example of the atmosphere a Catholic law school like St. Thomas strives for, said Professor Robert Vischer, associate dean for academic affairs. “Professors Collett and Osler are both passionate, effective advocates who are wonderful models of how to disagree without being disagreeable,” Vischer said. “Inside and outside the classroom, we count on our faculty to lead the way in showing how the mission of our school can broaden and deepen conversations about law, politics and culture.”

Different backgrounds, but similar paths to UST Law

While Collett has been at UST since 2003 and Osler joined the faculty more recently in 2010, both previously taught a decade or more at law schools in southern Texas before making their way north. Their impetus in trading a relatively year-round warm climate for one that includes an honest and true version of winter was of a similar vein.

Collett was a professor for 12 years at South Texas College of Law, a private, secular school in Houston, before she felt the call to serve the Catholic Church more directly in her capacity as a professor at a Catholic-affiliated institution. Osler taught for 10 years at Baylor University School of Law, the largest Baptist post-secondary institution in the country. Although Osler is not Catholic, he is a practicing Christian and said he was drawn to UST Law because of his appreciation for the intellectual tradition of the Church’s integration of “faith and reason” in its search for truth on issues of morality and social justice.

“First and foremost, intellectual and scholastic life survived because of Catholicism for a long time,” Osler said. “And a part of intellectual life has always been that give and take, of ‘what does this mean?’ It’s great to have those conversations while being able to lean on an institution that has reasoned through those questions for many centuries.”

Collett said she was drawn to St. Thomas because of her belief that the ideal model for a Catholic law school is one that provides a framework for discussion of the application of the Church’s well-reasoned doctrines as they relate to the intersection with cultural norms and law. She said she values the Catholic principle of room for debate, but not for the sake of debate itself.

“When everything is subject to debate simply for the sake of debate, I am troubled by that idea,” she said. “For example, I don’t think the principle that we should strive toward ‘goodness’ is really subject to debate. Now exactly how do we get from here to there, how do we achieve ‘goodness,’ in the context of our laws and public policy, that’s where the interesting conversation lies.”

And that is the place Osler and Collett say they continue to discuss, even during an election cycle where political sensitivities are often heightened. “To me that is what the ideal Catholic university does,” Collett said. “We collect people, many of whom have common first principles, but, who because of their own gifts and talents and circumstances of their lives may have focused on differing aspects of how to create a just legal order. And from those unique and valued perspectives, we can have some amazing conversations.”

Vischer said the Catholic law school’s focus on the value of human dignity helps to foster fruitful dialogue even during an election season when the stakes engaging in such conversations seem so high. “As a Catholic law school, we are founded on a commitment to honor and respect the dignity of every person,” he said. “This provides a strong foundation for healthy and civil dialogue, even when we grapple with the most controversial issues of our day.”

Hank Long is a second-year student at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

Father James Burns
(Photo courtesy of Boston College)

Free and open to the public, the lecture is sponsored by several St. Thomas departments and centers: Center for Catholic Studies, John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy, School of Law, Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, Koch Chair in Business Ethics, Center for Ethical Business Cultures, and Veritas.

Prior to joining Boston College in 2010, Burns served as co-chair and associate professor of St. Thomas’ Graduate School of Professional Psychology. He earlier had taught counseling psychology and religion at Boston University, and psychology at Harvard Medical School.

Burns has worked with Boston College’s faculty to incorporate the school’s Jesuit, Catholic mission and identity into coursework and research.

His lecture is one in a series on Catholic mission and identity that are being held at St. Thomas as it conducts a search for its next president. Father Dennis Dease is retiring next June after leading St. Thomas for 22 years.

Burns believes that formation of character is an essential task of the Catholic university, not to be pushed aside for, or replaced by, academic instruction.

He said that in studies on the perceived value of higher education, “a critical and common finding is that recent graduates lack a certain dimension of personal character, especially qualities that allow people to work well with others and contribute to the good on multiple levels.

“Interestingly, Catholic colleges and universities stand in a unique place to address this concern. Through their religious heritage and spiritual traditions, these institutions are called to cultivate such important qualities through a focus on character development in their students.”

Without missing a beat, he responded, “First, you focus on the Iowa caucuses.”

Everyone is a comedian, even in Washington. I was there on serious business, though: Trying to convince the Obama administration to consider a more vigorous use of the pardon power. It’s an idea I have pursued at the wholesale level, through scholarship and meetings like that one, and at retail, through the sentence commutation clinic we began in August 2011 at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. It’s a project that, in just one year, has taken my students and me on a fascinating tour, from the dusty federal prison in Victorville, Calif., to the power corridors of the nation’s Capitol.

When we think about the pardon power, we tend to remember its troubling use in the recent past – President Ford’s pre-emptive pardon of President Nixon, the disastrous clemency President Clinton gave to Marc Rich, or (at the state level) the somewhat bizarre use of the pardon power by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour as he left office. What these examples obscure is the rich and deep history of the pardon power in American life. George Washington was the first president to use it, when he showed mercy to the leaders of the Whisky Rebellion. President Harding pardoned his political opponent, Eugene Debs, and President Truman granted clemency to Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to kill him. The pardon power, promoted by Alexander Hamilton and beloved by Abraham Lincoln, should be much more than a footnote to the constitution.

Moreover, and importantly to Christian scholars such as myself, the pardon power is one of the few clear embodiments of Christian virtue in the Constitution. Christ, after all, effectively pardoned the adulteress described in John 8, and was himself denied clemency by Pontius Pilate. As Hamilton recognized in the Federalist Papers (No. 74), the core value of the pardon power is nothing less than mercy. That constitutional power of the president includes two primary methods to dispense such mercy: the ability to remove a conviction entirely (a pardon) or to simply shorten a sentence (a commutation). It is unchecked, unreviewable and absolute.

It’s a broad and bold project, then, to resuscitate this desecrated clause. My students at St. Thomas are working to do exactly that.

One of the real strengths of St. Thomas’ law school is our clinical program, which gives our students not only real-life experience but also a skill set they will use in practice. One crucial skill for attorneys, for example, is developing the narrative of a client’s experience, and it is that ability which lies at the heart of our new clinic on federal commutation. In the clinic, we appeal to the president to shorten the sentences of our clients by telling their stories through a formal petition.

Getting to that story often is difficult. By definition, our clients are incarcerated, often in far-off corners of the nation. That’s also how two St. Thomas students, Nancy Ly ’12 J.D. and Vicky Wanta ’12 J.D., ended up in Victorville, Calif., trying to get into prison to visit their client.

Nancy Ly (Photo by Mike Ekern ’02)

Breaking out of prison is supposed to be difficult, but getting in can be pretty tough, too. One of the things I want my students to experience is the often petty bureaucracy that is involved in the world of criminal law. Ly and Wanta arrived in Victorville and first had to find the right prison – there is a complex of facilities there, for different types of offenders, and for men and women. After one miss, they found the right facility (for low-risk women) and struggled to finesse the process of getting in to see their client. After several hours they succeeded and met Jacquelynne Sutton, whose story they would tell.

That story started with Sutton’s life in the prison, which was a combination of depressing details and surprising opportunities. There was the awful distance from her family, many of whom remain in Minnesota. On the other hand, the prison allowed Sutton to become a skilled beautician and even to work on and drive vehicles being prepared for the Border Patrol. As they reported back from Victorville on what they were learning, I noticed that my two students were experiencing surprise after surprise as they entered this new world.

During their two days visiting with Sutton, her story became real and whole. She had received a 10-year sentence for involvement in a narcotics case involving more than 100 grams of crack cocaine. That, of course, is never the whole story, though. Ly and Wanta learned about Sutton’s family, about her work, and about the complexity of her involvement with the crime. Simple things became complex, and some things that at first appeared complex were revealed as simple.

When Ly and Wanta returned, they debriefed the other members of the sentence commutation clinic on what they had learned. The story was fascinating, and the conclusion was clear: there was no problem being solved, no societal advantage gained, by the lengthy incarceration imposed on their client. Having made their report and discussed the options going forward with their colleagues, they then turned to the task at hand: petitioning Barack Obama to commute the sentence. Whether they will succeed is an open question – petitions take months to process – but the petition was masterful, particularly in the way that it wove the strands of Sutton’s life together in a way that was sympathetic, compelling and true.

Jacquelynne Sutton

The last few sentences of the petition reflect not only their emphasis as advocates on rehabilitation, but their own perspective on their client: “She knows what she did wrong in the past and has learned how to do better in the future. [She] asks for this commutation so she can be with her children, restart her life, and prove to society that she is not only deserving of this second chance but that she is more than the worst thing she has ever done.”

Their client may not get the benefit of commutation; few do. But Sutton will always be assured that her story is known. Sutton herself described the importance of this better than I can in an entry she wrote for a contest at Yale Law School:

“I laid in bed every night praying that Professor Osler would choose my case. Three months passed and I received a letter from Vicky Wanta and Nancy Ly, informing me my case had been chosen. I almost passed out at mail call. I was flabbergasted.

“I carefully read over the letter five times, making sure I didn’t miss anything. Nancy and Vicky were law students from the University of St. Thomas, a college I was familiar with. As a child, I always wanted to go there after participating in the National Youth Sports Program. I filled out my retainer information, which asked for absolutely nothing but my signature. I realize anyone can fill out a petition, but for me the feeling was much deeper. It meant something to be picked out of the other individuals; it meant something to me that someone actually wanted to help me, that somebody I didn’t know cared.”

Sutton was right; Ly and Wanta did care.

Vicky Wanta (Photo by Mike Ekern ’02)

The work of St. Thomas students in the clinic has led to other important opportunities. In April, the St. Thomas Law Journal hosted a symposium on the topic of commutations, which was the first U.S. academic conference on the issue in 10 years. It gathered virtually all of the people who study the issue, along with judges, a commutation recipient and an award-winning journalist, Dafna Linzer (who had previously written about our clinic in the Washington Post). The conference spurred further activity to push for change in the field of clemency. Specifically, a month later the American Constitution Society and the Open Society Foundation, along with U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, hosted expert testimony in the halls of Congress. I was one of the speakers and brought along St. Thomas student Clay Harris to help out with my work in the Capitol. Like Ly and Wanta, Harris did a superb job of addressing issues at a national level in a way that lives out the mission of the law school.

Part of the discussion at that hearing was an article I had written a year earlier, suggesting that a troubling sentencing issue be addressed through commutation in the same way that President Ford dealt with draft evaders; specifically, Congress had (in 2010) drastically lowered sentences for certain crack offenses, but had not made them retroactive – meaning that people such as Sutton would not get the benefit of the change. I was suggesting that the Ford model be used to equalize those sentences to the levels described in the new law.

That idea caught the imagination of people in Washington, and soon I returned twice to meet with President Obama’s domestic policy advisers about the idea. What started with our little clinic was now being presented, in purple St. Thomas folders, to those who could change the world for people such as Jacquelynne Sutton.

The second meeting in Washington was held in the vice president’s ceremonial office, a grand space that resembles nothing so much as a small gallery in an art museum. A portrait of Teddy Roosevelt looks down from one end, and a grand fireplace dominates the other. The long, oval table was topped with discreet notes describing its age and fragility. It is a space that creates an air of proper solemnity.

With her commutation petition safely delivered to Washington, Sutton continued to compose her essay for the Yale Law School contest. Sutton describes what our students are capable of and reflects on the moment when her case was chosen:

“When I received a copy of the completed petition, where there was an overview from Nancy and Vicky, tears came from my eyes. After coming to prison and accepting a 10-year sentence, it’s hard to think that there was any good left within myself. I had completely forgotten about all my goals and the person I wanted to be, because of the negative lifestyle I had enrolled myself in.

“I remain in contact with Nancy Ly and Vicky Wanta. Not only did they do a wonderful job putting together my petition, they’ve also helped me realize just how far I’ve actually come from the person I used to be. … I feel I’ve been granted a second chance at life, a new beginning, regardless if I win or lose my petition.”

As a teacher, that is just about as good as it gets. The harsh law under which Sutton was sentenced may not be solving a problem, but Ly and Wanta, through hard work and good hearts, just might.

About the Author: Mark Osler is a professor at the School of Law. Osler is a former federal prosecutor whose work often addresses the problems of inflexibility in sentencing and corrections.

Read more from St. Thomas Magazine.

Free and open to the public, the forum is co-sponsored by the St. Thomas Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center and the Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.

The Hot Topics: Cool Talk series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, focuses this year on the challenges of religious freedom in the United States and around the world.

Abdulwahid Qalinle

Speaking at this fall’s second forum, titled “The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws: Muslim and Catholic Perspectives,” will be Abdulwahid Qalinle, a native of Somalia and adjunct associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Robert Vischer, professor and associate dean for academic affairs at St. Thomas’ School of Law.

Qalinle holds a master’s degree in Islamic, or Shariah, law, and law degrees from both the International Islamic University in Pakistan and the University of Minnesota Law School, where he directs the Islamic Law and Human Rights Program. Vischer graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is the author of two books and many journal articles that explore the intersection of law, religion and public policy.

Robert Vischer

The title for the Oct. 23 forum comes from Vischer’s article, “The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws,” published in First Things, the journal of The Institute on Religion and Public Life.

In the article, Vischer explains that Shariah means “the way to the watering place.” It refers to the correct way of practicing religion and rules that govern the lives of Muslims, including conduct between spouses, behavior at funerals and even etiquette.

“Though popular with secularists and religious conservatives, anti-Sharia legislation does not defend against theocracy but calls into question our society’s fundamental commitments to meaningful religious liberty and meaningful access to the courts,” Vischer wrote. “These commitments have been relied on by generations of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Jews, and to try to remove them for Muslims both is unjust to Muslims and sets a dangerous precedent for other religious groups.”

Later in the article, Vischer writes: “Anti-Sharia legislation proposes an unconstitutional double standard. Canon law and biblical principles are not dirty words in the American court system, and Sharia should not be either.”

In an August 2011 Star Tribune article on “The Muslim Experience in Minnesota,” Qalinle said that bills submitted in some state legislatures to prohibit the use of Sharia “are quite pointless because there is no such thing as Shariah creeping into the legal system. … I think it is being motivated by a sheer confusion and misunderstanding of Muslims and Islam and Shariah.”

Qalinle, who immigrated to the United States 12 years ago, said the U.S. Constitution “is the law that I chose to live under, and so are all the Muslims who are here.”

Information about the Hot Topics: Cool Talk series is available at this website.

The Minnesota Board of Legal Education has approved the Oct. 23 program for one “elimination of bias” continuing-legal-education credit.

The Cool Talk series is sponsored by the university’s Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.

The series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, will focus this year on the challenges of religious freedom around the world and address topics such as anti-Sharia laws in the United States, religious freedom and progressive politics, and public education, vouchers and charter schools.

“There is much to be discussed about religious freedom at this point in our history – beyond the current U.S. flash points emerging from the controversy surrounding the health-care mandate,” said Dr. Don Briel, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Thomas.

Bishop Charles Morerod

“It’s important to examine the many threats to religious liberty around the world so we can better understand what freedoms are at stake both here and abroad. It is timely, too, as we approach the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant documents of the Second Vatican Council – Dignitatus Humanae – the Declaration on Religious Freedom. The preparatory discussions for the document, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965, began in 1962,” he said.

Speaking at the first lecture in this year’s series will be the Most Rev. Charles Morerod, 50, who since November has been bishop of the diocese of Fribourg, Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland. He will speak on “Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom: The View from Europe.”

Prior to his appointment as a bishop in Switzerland, Morerod spent 15 years in Rome, most recently as rector of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also called the Angelicum. He also has served as secretary general of the International Theological Commission and as a consultant to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In June he was named to the Congregation for Catholic Education.

A member of the Dominican order and a native of Switzerland, Morerod was ordained a priest in 1988. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Toulouse and a doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg. An editor of the journal “Nova et Vetera,” he has written on the doctrinal and philosophical aspects of ecumenism.

While serving at the Angelicum, Morerod was academic director of the Rome program for University of St. Thomas’ Catholic studies students.

For information about future programs in the series, including an Oct. 23 program on the dangers of anti-Sharia laws, visit the Terrence J. Murphy Institute website.

Application has been made for an “elimination of bias” continuing-legal-education credit.

Related “Hot Topics: Cool Talk” program: Sept. 25 lunch and forum

Bishop Charles Morerod, along with Father Reginald Whitt, O.P., a professor of law at St. Thomas, will discuss “Vatican II on Religious Freedom: European and American Perspectives” at a 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. luncheon program on Tuesday, Sept. 25, in Room 235 of the School of Law on St. Thomas’ Minneapolis campus.

The lunch and program are free and open to the public but registration is required. To register and for more information, visit the Terrence J. Murphy Institute website.

Co-sponsored by the university’s Holloran Center on Ethical Leadership in the Professions and the St. Thomas Law Journal, the symposium will feature 10 papers that will be published in the journal.

The visiting scholars will discuss their empirical research on professionalism, ethical professional identity, law firm ethical culture, rules compliance, risk management, and the nature of competition and cooperation in legal education.

In addition to St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota, participants are coming from Georgetown, Mercer, Hofstra, George Mason and Florida State universities.

Jerry Organ, a St. Thomas law professor and fellow of the Holloran Center, noted that this will be the first time many of the scholars will have the opportunity to visit the St. Thomas School of Law. “It is always wonderful to gather together some of the most creative thinkers on a given topic and get them in the same building so that they can bounce ideas off each other and explore topics in great depth,” he said.

The event, open to the public, runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a dinner at 6 p.m. Six continuing legal education credits have been applied for. While the symposium is free, registration is required. To register, and for a list of speakers and topics, visit the “featured events” section of the School of Law website.