Recently two Widener Law Commonwealth professors presented at the annual Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) conference.
Both Professor Juliet Moringiello and Professor Michael Dimino presented and served on panels at the conference which offers legal educators the opportunity to participate in panels about legal teaching, learn about emerging issues in scholarly work, and receive feedback from mentors and peers at the New Scholars Workshop.
Professor Juliet Moringiello participated in the panel, “Teaching Secured Transactions: Integrating Ethical/Professionalism Issues, Drafting Assignments, and Learning Outcomes/Assessments.” Professor Moringiello discussed the research assignments given to her students that help to reinforce the point that the Uniform Commercial Code is not in fact “uniform” because it has to go through the legislative enactment process in every state.
“Because I am a Uniform Law Commissioner for Pennsylvania, I have a lot of experience in the enactment process, and sharing this knowledge with the students is important for two reasons,” she said. “First, to be a competent lawyer, a lawyer needs to know what law applies to the issues at hand – all too often, students come out of law school not appreciating the differences among the enacted versions of the Uniform Commercial Code. Second, law students need to know about the various things that lawyers do, and here in a state capital, lawyers are often asked to weigh in on the merits of proposed legislation.”
Professor Michael Dimino presented on Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy and the first twenty-five years of Justice Clarence Thomas’s tenure on the Supreme Court. Professor Dimino’s presentation about Justice Scalia focused on Justice Scalia's frequent claims that his colleagues decided cases based on their own preferences, rather than on the law.
“As a result of Justice Scalia's memorable and colorful way of showing that the emperor has no clothes, people -- both on the left and on the right -- now recognize the Supreme Court's decisions as political, to a much greater degree than they did when Justice Scalia joined the Court,” Dimino said.
In his second presentation Professor Dimino argued that Justice Thomas’s influence, especially outside the legal profession, will be much less than Justice Scalia’s because of the difference in their writing style.
“Justice Thomas's writing is methodical and often relies on history. He does not tend to use memorable phrases and is not as biting in his criticism of his colleagues, so his opinions get much less popular attention. As a result, he will be much less effective than Justice Scalia in convincing the public that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was originally understood.”
