Introduction: Symposium: Law, Religion, and Lautsi v. Italy

This symposium offers a rare opportunity to see three of the finest minds in Law and Religion scholarship from both sides of the North Atlantic at work. Held at the University of Maine on March 23, 2012, the symposium featured a keynote address by Professor Joseph Weiler of New York University Law School. Professor Weiler’s remarks were occasioned by a 2011 decision of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”) in Strasbourg, Lautsi v. Italy, upholding the constitutionality of the display of the crucifix in Italian public school classrooms under the European Convention of Human Rights (“the Convention”). The principal respondents were Pierre-Henri Prélot of the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France and William Marshall of the University of North Carolina School of Law. The dialogue between these three great students of European and American constitutional law taps into some of the most urgent and controversial issues on the church/state horizon

The Supreme Court, Civil Liberties, and Civil Rights

Subject considers constitutional rights, processes, civil rights and liberties, and criminal procedure. Focus on Supreme Court case law. Description from course home page: This course introduces students to the work of the Supreme Court and to the main outlines of American constitutional law, with an emphasis on the development of American ideas about civil rights. The goal of the course is to provide students with a framework for understanding the major constitutional controversies of the present day through a reading of landmark Supreme Court cases and the public debates they have generated. The principal topics are civil liberties in wartime, race relations, privacy rights, and the law of criminal procedure

A Comment on Christopher Johnson\u27s Post-Trial Judicial Review of Criminal Convictions: A Comparative Study of the United States and Finland

Christopher Johnson has dug deeply into a neglected corner of comparative law and emerged with some fascinating and important contrasts. Finland does not appear often on the radar screen of American legal scholars, even those who primarily focus is comparative law. And so we are indebted to Johnson for reminding us that critical comparative insights can arise out of studying the experiences of nations deemed “marginal” to the international system, and to mainstream comparative law scholarship (which itself occupies a position of uncertain import in American legal scholarship generally). Johnson’s findings are all the more significant because they come from one who, as the Chief Appellate Defender for the state of New Hampshire, bridges the gap between the legal academy and the practice of the law, and who is deeply versed in the workings of American appellate criminal procedure

Introduction: Symposium: Law, Religion, and Lautsi v. Italy

This symposium offers a rare opportunity to see three of the finest minds in Law and Religion scholarship from both sides of the North Atlantic at work. Held at the University of Maine on March 23, 2012, the symposium featured a keynote address by Professor Joseph Weiler of New York University Law School. Professor Weiler’s remarks were occasioned by a 2011 decision of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”) in Strasbourg, Lautsi v. Italy, upholding the constitutionality of the display of the crucifix in Italian public school classrooms under the European Convention of Human Rights (“the Convention”). The principal respondents were Pierre-Henri Prélot of the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France and William Marshall of the University of North Carolina School of Law. The dialogue between these three great students of European and American constitutional law taps into some of the most urgent and controversial issues on the church/state horizon