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Show ffi(ID FOCUS: CONVOCATION THE UNIVERSITY JOURNAL• SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY• MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1996 THE UNIVERSITY JOURNAL• SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY • MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1996 FOCUS: CONVOCATION Il Il I Goals beyond the law to be addressed at Convo By JIM ROBINSON CAMPUS EDITOR Goals beyond the simple application of the law will be discussed by Edwin Brown Firmage Oct. 31 at a SUU Convocation presentation. Firmage currently teaches international law and constitutional law at the University of Utah. He is an author or co-author of numerous law-related books, ranging from the first written legal history of the 19th century Mormon experience to writings relating to United States and international legal systems. The free Convocation lecture is scheduled at 11 a.m. in the SUU Auditorium. The general public is invited to attend. The title of Firmage's address is "Law and Beyond Law: Peace and Justice." "Dr. Firmage has a wealth of both practical and research experience, particularly in the areas of civil rights and international relations," Lana Johnson, director of lectures/special projects at SUU, said. 11 As a White House Fellow on the staff of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, he had responsibilities for civil rights and worked with such national leaders as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP," she said. Firmage served as a United Nations Visiting Scholar, and in that capacity he attended sessions of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City and the arms control negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1970-71. His most recent publishing venture was as an editor of The International Legal System, Fourth Edition, published in the spring of 1995. His writings also include segments of Religion et) Law: Biblical, fewish and Islamic Perspectives and, with Francis Wormuth, To Chain the Dog of War: The War Power of Congress in History and Law. He and Collin Mangrum jointly wrote Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of fesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That book was awarded the 1989 first place prize of the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Awards for the best book of the year. The award was presented by the Honors Society of the National Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States. Recent speaking engagements include the Kellogg Lectures, "The Human Being: War, Peace and Faith," at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.; lectures to the Justice and Peace Representatives of the International Congregation of Men and Women Religious in Rome and the Lane Lecture at the .Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Neb. He spent four months in 1992 teaching constitutional law at the University of London. Firmage has received the 1991 Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence, the highest academic award given by the University of Utah; the 1991 Turner-Fairbourn Award for significant contributions to peace and justice and the 1989 Governor's Award in the Humanities. Firmage was a Hinckley Fellow at Brigham Young University where he received bachelor's and master's degrees. He was a national honors scholar and served on the editorial board of the Chicago Law Review at the University of Chicago Law School, where he received doctor of law, master of laws, and doctor of jurisprudence degrees. By THE LEADERS AND MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN ETHICAL UNION Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby in yourself.-Felix Adler • Ethics is central. The most central human issue in our lives involves creating a more humane environment. • Ethics begins with choice. Creating a more humane environment begins by affirming the need to make significant choices in our lives. • We choose to treat each other as ends, not means. To enable us to be whole in a fragmented world, we .choose to treat each other as unique individuals having intrinsic worth. • We seek to act with integrity. Treating one another as ends requires that we learn to act with integrity. This includes keeping commit ments, and being more open, honest, caring, and responsive. •We are comm itted to educate ourselves. Personal progress is possible, both in wisdom and in social life. Leaming how to build ethical relationships and cultivate a humane community is a life-long endeavor. • Self-reflection and our social nature require us to shape a more humane world. Growth of the human spirit is rooted in selfreflection, but can only come to full flower in community. This is because people are social, needing both primary relationships and larger supportive groups to become fully human. Our social nature requires that we reach beyond ourselves to decrease suffering and increase creativity in the world. • Democratic process is essential to our task. The democratic process is essential to a humane social order because respect for the worth of persons requires democratic process which elicits and allows a greater expression of human capacities. • Life itself inspires religious response. Although awareness of impending death inten sifies the human quest for meaning, the mystery of life itself, and the need to belong, are the primary factors motivating human religious response. I• Looking to the friture: laws, law enforcement and social morality By JOHN M. WALSER INSTRUCTOR OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE At SUU we are fortunate to have a criminal justice program with courses of study that look toward the future. Some of these courses, such as Ethics in Criminal Justice and General Policing in America, examine law enforcement functions and analyze ethical and moral considerations from a past, present and future perspective. An important part of these studies is the development of critical thinking regarding criminal justice practices from a moral and ethical standpoint. It has been my observation that generally as a society we properly tend to demand law enforcement and protection from our law enforcement agencies as our public servants. At the same time, there appears to be considerable ethical and moral paralysis and erosion within the very circles demanding these services which complicates effective _Provision of those services. I have observed that there is a tendency to blame the crim inal justice system and its agents for ills infecting society. In some isolated instances of deviant behavior in criminal justice, the blame is proper. However, in a general sense such blame becomes exculpatory for society. Some research indicates that historically, police have been blamed by the public and politicians alike for being too strict, assertive and inflexible or too soft and flexible. We traditionally want police to enforce the law unless we are on the receiving end of the law, in which case we want to become the exception to law. It appears that often society attempts to divert or ignore .... collective responsibility for moral and ethical illnesses from itself "'IWll!lilllJilllilJ ~ to a small contracted segment of society formed by police ::, agencies. g Even the casual observer may conclude that our society has ~ become very litigious. · • :i: We have become dependent upon laws and enforced codes to .-'-i..LJ ' ~ rule over actions rather than have actions governed by simple z ethical and moral decency. ~ Ethical and moral behavior have been espoused by most major m=i...,_;;....._ __, .... eastern and western traditional theological thoughts and form Walser, instructor of criminal justice, teaches students h ow ethics teachings through the ages. There is a noted tendency to call for a are a part of criminal justice. law to cure every ill or cover every possible conflictive situation . I As conflicts are encountered, a common solution is often Appropriately, as we approach the national observance of a "there oughta be a law." time honored tradition of spooks, goblins, ghosts and witches, Libraries are full of legislated regulation s covering nearl y we should consider the frightening predictions by renowned everything imaginable regarding our interaction with one behavioral scientist William Tafoya Ph.D., a retired FBI Agent. another in our daily dealings. In 1984 Tafoya wrote an article entitled Police, the Future Courts have dictated case law and cont;.nue to add to the and Social Change. In his article, Tafoya describes a 'witch's volume in interpretation of enacted legisi.'a tion . The sheer brew' in a boiling caldron. volume of such laws and interpretations of law is becoming Ingredients in the brew are hate (bias, bigotry, racism, antioverwhelming. semitism), discrimination, sexual harassment, intolerance, New laws and modifications of old laws are enacted by every indifference, joblessness, homelessness, hunger, illiteracy, legislature. Enough already! illegitimacy, the abortion issue, AIDS, crack cocaine and Where will it stop? violence. How much individual freedom must we cede to multiplied The ladle stirring the witch's brew is our shifting national laws before we awa ken to the need to reinstate basic moral and demographics. ethical values in our in teractions He states tha t the pot is on the verge of boiling over into the as connected human beings? fabric of our American society. Can we solve society's problems The social, economic, cultural by hav ing our elected representatives con tinue to and political ills in society have been ignored for too long and legislate our behavio r? It has been said that violence according to Tafoya, if left unattended any longer, the begets violence. Similarly, I would offer the opinion that laws beget elements will fuse ~nd cause an J• explosion which will affect the more unlawful act ivity because there are more laws to break. A entire nation. /J ' In another article entitled spiral is created. More laws lead to m ore fflUSt Peacemaking, fusfice, and Ethics, unlawful conduct with more· need Michael C. Braswell and Jeffrey for law enforcement and less Gold offer suggestions for solving our ethical and moral apathy. individual freedom. More laws or law enforcement is not always the 1 They draw ideas from time best solution. honored traditions of Christianity, Ultimately, individual and Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and collective ethical and moral '---- - - -- - -- - -- - - ~- - - - - - - --' Hinduism. responsibility must come to the foreground in attacking ills They point out that legal and social justice in America has found itself pulled by a conflict between the retribution and contributing to the crime problem in Amuica. punishment as found in the Law of Moses and in the Koran and Some research has been conducted in ari attempt to predict what the future holds for society in relation to laws and law the rehabilitation and redemption traditions of New Testament enforcement as we move into a new cen!ury. Some predictions Christianity. Their concept of peacemaking in regard to justice has come are encouraging and some contain alarm ing warnings. Much research centers on laws and law enforcement from ancient spiritual and wisdom traditions of m ercy and implications but disregards gen eral society responsibility for compassion applied within a justice system.· Braswell and Gold in my opinion are on the right track. Laws morality or ethics in the formulas for law e.r1forcement or criminal justice practices of the future. and violence to enforce laws or to exact retribution and revenge 'If we are to avoid the explosion of the 'witch's brew' W]•th l•t'S result1·ng d1·saster "or our CODStl•tUtl•Onal 'reedOfflS there be a return tO morall•ty and ethl.CS beyond the law. are not always the best solution. They must be tempered with basic theological moral concepts that transcend decades and centuries. Our society in general would do well to awaken from the moral paralysis and ethical erosion in which it appears to be quagmired. Sam Souryal, in a textual treatise of Ethics in Criminal fustice, In Search of the Truth, draws some interesting conclusions about laws and ethics. He states that laws can only apply to behaviors. Ethics (and I would add morality) addresses all human behavior. Laws attempt to change people from the outside inward. Ethics (morality) seeks to change them from t he inside outward. Laws are frequently changing and m odified. Ethics (morals) are · constant, universal, and everlasting. , As we move toward a new century, as a society I believe we m ust return to basic natural ethical and moral considerations and temper our laws with them. Laws are not the ultimate solution. If we arc to be at peace with ourselves, each other, our society and the world, a return to basic moral values espoused in Christianity and other traditional theologies must be reengrained. The time honored theological norm of loving one another as we would be loved must yet be given due regard. Such matters cannot be legislated. These concepts traditionally came from values taught in the home and spread interactively to the community and to the nation. My perception is that over the last three decades this chain of moral respo:isibility has weakened significantly. If we are to enter a new century and avoid the explosion of the 'witch's brew' mentioned by Tafoya with its resulting disaster for our constitutional freedoms, there must be a return to morality and ethics beyond t he law. The chain of education and practice of traditional moral values in the home, the communities, social and religious institutions and state and national systems must be restored . Society must accept responsibility for the moral values it lives, tolerates and passes on. It must not attempt to fix blame, but to correct wrongs and move ahead to the next century with firm resolve to avert the disastrous consequences of ignoring moral and ethical values and practices. |