Oklahoma, O.K.!

Kudos to Michael Scaperlanda and Brian McCall at the University of Oklahoma's College of Law for hosting a superb three days of scholarship and fellowship.  The 6th Annual Conference of Catholic Legal Scholars, as Rick noted, began with an afternoon of thinking about Augustine with Duke theologian Paul Griffiths, and ended with a morning of thinking about the rhetorical smuggling of modern discourse with USD's Steve Smith, discussing his The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse.  Purely as models of elegance -- in their writing, the clarity of their thought, and the manner of their engagement -- it's hard to top those two.

As usual, these meetings are marked by the communion and engagement of the audience, as well as the quality of the 'formal' presentations.  Perhaps it has something to do with the opportunities for spiritual reflection (this year including a mass celebrated  by UST's  Reggie Whitt and Ignatian spiritual reflections led by Boston College's Greg Kalscheur), but the conversations after and between the panel presentations, both in the question and answer sessions and during the social times, are exceptionally rich and wide-ranging.

I was particularly intrigued by the conversation surrrounding the panel on "Forgiveness and Conversion:  What should be the law's attitude toward and treatment of post-conviction criminals."  Building naturally on Paul Griffith's remarks on Augustine's reflections about the role of mercy in intercessions of bishops on behalf of convicted persons in the Roman empire of the 400's, UST's Mark Osler talked about the shrinking sphere of mercy in our criminal system, including the decreasing invocation of pardon power by executives.  UST's Susan Stabile added a fascinating reflection about the extent to which the expanding tort of 'negligent hiring' hinders the application of 'mercy' for convicted felons trying to reenter the workforce.  And a relative newcomer to the legal academy, SMU's Meghan Ryan, offered some intriguing observations about developments in scientific 'management' of criminal behavior, and what those developments might mean for our concepts of culpability and rehabilitation.

Two other relative newcomers to the legal academy also offered excellent commentary on Steve Smith's book -- John Inazu (currently visiting at Duke, starting at Wash U this fall) suggested, among other things, that Steve should incorporate more Hauerwas, and Notre Dame's Jeff Pojanowski suggested Steve should incorporate more Scandinavian legal realists.....  It was quite a conference!