Dwyer: A Former Student Comments

William Castle, a MOJ reader and former student of Jim Dwyer, responded to our recent discussion of Dwyer's work:

“I took Professor Dwyer for jurisprudence while a law student …  While our class covered more than jurisprudential issues related to his specialty, we did spend a good deal of time covering his ideas ...  And time was spent on the pre-political nature of man which revealed that the thing called “family” was, of course, a mere social construct.  This sort of thing was a real eye-opener at the time to a Catholic....  I realized how radically different a place many on the left were coming from, particularly jurisprudentially, whether they knew it or not, and how claims of “attacks on the family” were hardly overreactions by Bible-banging lunatics.  I owe Professor Dwyer a debt of gratitude as he was eminently fair-minded, engaging and decent as a professor and person, and his directness was refreshing in contrast to his like-minded colleagues and truly enlightening, even if that light shed revealed only how much I disagreed with him.”