2011 Conference Program (PDF) - Syracuse University College of Law

Dr. Karen Brennan
“Traditions of English Liberal Thought”: The Boundaries of Justice and Irish
Infanticide, 1922-1949
This paper will examine the criminal justice response to the crime of maternal infanticide
during the first decades of Irish independence. Through an analysis of archival records
the approach taken by the courts and the legislature to the typical infanticide offence, that
involving the murder of an “illegitimate” infant after a concealed birth, will be examined.
The question of what was considered to be a just response to this crime in the context of
newly independent Ireland will be considered, and, in this regard, the extent to which the
boundaries of the law were stretched to ensure the appropriate outcome will be assessed.
As the Irish legislature ultimately adopted the English infanticide legislation of 1922, the
question of whether the Irish approach to infanticide differed to that taken across the Irish
Sea will be addressed. In particular, the extent to which the particular social, economic
and religious context of the Free State produced unique features in the Irish response to
unmarried women who murdered their infants will be explored.
Dr. Sarah Ramshaw
To Serve and Protect The Boundaries of 'Justice' and the Irish Diaspora in New York
City, 1930-1932
The boundaries of justice and the Irish diaspora are explored here through the findings of
the Seabury Commission, headed by ex-Judge Samuel Seabury, which investigated
allegations of corruption in the New York City (NYC) court system and police
department in the early 1930s. Targets of this investigation included the city’s Irish-
American Mayor, James Jimmy Walker (1926-1933), the Irish-dominated New York
Police Department (NYPD) and the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall political machine,
which controlled law and politics in NYC at the time. This paper examines the
paradoxical approaches to law and justice by Walker, Tammany, and the NYPD and
queries whether a distinction can be made between corruption as scripted illegality and
justice as improvised legality. It explores the boundaries of justice through the history of
discrimination and colonial domination in both Ireland and abroad and unpacks the
relationship between law and the Irish diaspora in order to ascertain whether there is
actually a uniquely Irish approach to justice.
2.2 To Kill a Mockingbird: Reflections on the Film
Austin Sarat and Martha Umphrey
Temporal Horizons: On the Possibilities of Law and Fatherhood in To Kill a
Mockingbird
To Kill A Mockingbird is a classic of American cultural-legal studies, and it offers in
Atticus Finch an iconic hero who, as Stephen Lubet suggests, is popular culture’s most
important embodiment of lawyerly virtue.
As other scholars have noted, however, To Kill a Mockingbird is not just, or primarily, a
law story. Rather, Scout Finch’s portrait of Atticus as a father is regarded by many as the
key to the text’s cultural resonance. Told as a daughter’s memory of her father, her
brother, and the town in which she grew up, the text frames the era’s conflicts over race,
gender, and justice through the lens of Scout’s admiration for Atticus. From our
perspective, however, it is the conjunction of lawyer and father that fuels To Kill a
Mockingbird’s appeal and importance, and in this paper we argue that such a
conjunction, particularly in its filmic incarnation, provides an opportunity to explore the
role that fathers and fatherhood play in cultural imaginings of law and in exemplifying
the various faces of law’s power. We argue that Atticus Finch is a father/lawyer
committed to a particular vision of fatherhood and law, one in which both can transcend,
if not transform, the context in which they exist, one in which orienting oneself to the
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