Can
Professionals Remain Religious and Retain Professionalism? Martha L.
Minow, Professor at Harvard Law School, delivered “The Religious Professional:
What Role Should Religious Commitment Play in the Work of Lawyers and
Doctors” as the annual Owen J. Roberts Memorial Lecturer in February.
Stating that she was “humbled by this topic,” Minow shaped her talk around
two questions: when there is a conflict between religion and norms for
lawyers and doctors, which should prevail? And, in the absence of direct
conflict what are the benefits for society of professionals who rely on
their religion in their decisions? Professor Minow is a leading scholar
on the legal treatment of children, women, immigrants, persons with disabilities,
and members of ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. The Owen J. Roberts
Lecture is supported by an endowment from the law firm of Montgomery,
McCracken, Walker and Rhoads and is sponsored by the Order of the Coif
and the Penn Law Alumni Society. Judicial Independence at the Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Courts 
Stephen B. Burbank, David Berger Professor for the Administration
of Justice and Barry Friedman, a constitutional law professor from
NYU School of Law, were hosts for a conference examining judicial independence
March 31-April 1, 2001 at the Law School. Co-sponsored by Penn Law, the
American Judicature Society and the Brennan Center for Justice, “Judicial
Independence at the Crossroads: Developing an Interdisciplinary Research
Agenda” brought together some 40 leading scholars from different disciplines.
The conference posed an essential question to the scholars: “What do we
mean when we talk about ‘judicial independence?’” In addition participants
were asked to question common wisdom on the subject. In notes for a forthcoming
volume that will include papers from the conference, Burbank and Friedman
wrote: “Believing that the debate over judicial independence has produced
more heat than light, and that scholars in different disciplines have
been talking past one another, we convened a conference of prominent academics
with backgrounds spanning four disciplines to discuss what we know, and
ought to know, about judicial independence. A fundamental premise of the
meeting was that, despite the appearance that the ground of judicial independence
has been plowed and re-plowed, in fact we know far less about the subject
than we should. The working sessions confirmed our intuition, producing
a flood of good ideas and more rigorous thinking on the subject than one
encounters in existing literature on the subject.” Through six sessions
over two days, research papers were presented in an informal format that
inspired a rolling discussion and a lively atmosphere. Sessions were organized
around the subjects: Public Opinion and Judicial Independence; Truths
and Myths about Judicial Independence; The Respective Roles of Formal
and Informal Rules in Determining Judicial Independence; The Role of Courts,
Judges and Law in Judicial Independence; Judicial Independence for What?;
and The Promise and Problems of Comparative Perspectives.
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