Introduction to the Third National Conference of the Association of the Religiously Affiliated Law School

St. John's Law Review, Summer 2000 by Gregory, David L

The Third National Conference of the Association of the Religiously Affiliated Law Schools occurred on-site at the St. John's University School of Law on Monday, July 10, 2000. Marquette University Law School hosted the First National Conference in Milwaukee in the spring of 1994, and Regent University School of Law hosted the Second National Conference in Virginia Beach in September of 1998. On each occasion, the host school's law review published the National Conference proceedings in a dedicated Symposium issue. The St. John's University School of Law and the St. John's Law Review are privileged to continue this tradition. Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California has volunteered to host the Fourth National Conference in the fall of 2002.

In September 1999, the Editor-in-Chief of the St. John's Law Review sent a call for papers solicitation letter to the President, Provost, Dean, and to each individual faculty member at each of the religiously affiliated law schools. Upon the suggestion of the President of the Association of the Religiously Affiliated Law Schools, Dean Howard Eisenberg of the Marquette University Law School, and Dean John Makdisi of the St. Thomas University Law School in Miami, the coordinating theme for the papers for the Third National Conference became "Realizing Our Missions."

On June 30, 2000, I had the privilege of presenting the draft papers in person in Rome to His Excellency, Archbishop Joseph Pittau, S.J.,' the Secretary of the Holy Sees Congregation for Catholic Education at the Vatican. We are extraordinarily blessed to have the congratulatory letter from Archbishops Grocholewski2 and Pittau, S.J., on behalf of the Congregation for Catholic Education,3 to open this Symposium Conference.

On Monday, July 10, 2000, then-Senior Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the Honorable Joseph W. Bellacosa, offered formal welcoming remarks to open the on-site Third National Conference. His paper is a thoughtful and concise outline of his hopes and aspirations for all of legal education, and, more immediately, for his beloved alma mater, the St. John's University School of Law, for which he officially commenced the Deanship on August 1, 2000. Judge Bellacosa graciously and ecumenically welcomed everyone to the Conference within the spirit of Ex Corde Ecclesiae-From the Heart of the Church-Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution for all Catholic institutions of higher education. Judge Bellacosa's welcoming remarks are an invitation to meditation and to dialogue upon the fundamental meaning and purpose of religiously affiliated legal education.

His Excellency, the Most Reverend James T. McHugh, the Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island, encompassing all of Nassau and Suffolk counties and one of the largest Roman Catholic Dioceses in the United States, was the superb keynote speaker for the Conference. One of the leading pro-life voices among the Catholic Bishops of the United States, Bishop McHugh offered a strategic educational agenda for the consideration of the religiously affiliated law schools. Enhancing fundamental human rights and service to the poor, including protection and respect for life in all of its dimensions, are among the central points of Bishop McHugh's keynote address. By his address, and by his personal pastoral example, Bishop McHugh eloquently demonstrated how moral and social justice teachings must undergird the mission of the religiously affiliated law school.

Individual paper presentations followed, with each paper addressing some aspect of how the particular author's own religiously affiliated law school may better realize its mission. Reverend Robert Araujo, S.J., a professor at Gonzaga University School of Law and a visiting professor at the Stein Institute for Ethics at the Fordham Law School, focused on the imperative of understanding and teaching justice as rightly ordered relationships. His paper draws on a rich tableau of metaphors and Scriptural vignettes to demonstrate the truth of St. Ignatius of Loyola's insight that human and institutional relationships must be ordered in a moral and legal regime of respect, decency, and dignity. Reverend John J. Coughlin, O.F.M., a superb scholar and one of the very finest classroom teachers at St. John's University School of Law, continued the emphasis on the worth and dignity of the human, and of the humane, from his own perspective of the worthy contributions of Franciscan spirituality to religiously affiliated legal education. My paper, co-authored with Professor Charles Russo of the University of Dayton, urged that Catholic law schools employ the worthy, proven techniques of affirmative action faculty hiring in order to achieve and to enhance the necessary Catholic presence on Catholic law school faculties, as mandated by Ex Corde Ecclesiae. In addition to ensuring vibrant Catholic action among the faculty, implementation of our proposal will have the important and salutary additional benefits of enhancing the racial and ethnic diversity of the Catholic law school faculties, because the ethnic Hispanic, African, and Caribbean (e.g., Nigerian and Haitian), and Asian (e.g., Vietnamese and Philippine) communities are among the most vigorous and dynamic Catholic population centers. Professor Randy Lee of Widener offered the "outsider" perspective, as a Catholic at a secular, private law school, to challenge the religiously affiliated law schools to greater action, and to applaud them for their important contributions to legal education and to the broader culture.