Seattle University Collaborative Projects - International Academy of ...

Jason Holmes, Phoenix School of LawA very special law review project: the writing and editing of an amendment to the United States’Constitution, and preparation of a series of articles addressing and weighing the arguments infavour and against a national Victims Rights amendment. This is part one of a two-partpresentation.The Law Review Project: A National (Federal) Victims’ Rights Amendment,Part TwoAndrew Hanna, Phoenix School of LawA very special law review project: the writing and editing of an amendment to the United States’Constitution, and preparation of a series of articles addressing and weighing the arguments infavour and against a national Victims Rights amendment. This is part two of a two-partpresentation.211. Understanding and Testing the Theoretical Underpinnings ofTJAn Analysis of Client Realism, Virtue Ethics & Therapeutic JurisprudenceDale Dewhurst, Athabasca University (daled@athabascau.ca)In this paper I assert that at the foundations of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the ComprehensiveJustice Movement (Comprehensive Law Movement / Non-Adversarial Justice) lies the interplaybetween client realism and the natural law virtue theory of justice. This paper seeks to examinethat relationship in more detail by expanding our understanding of what is involved in clientrealism and examining how it harmonizes with Aristotelian virtue ethics and more contemporaryconceptions of virtue ethics. This analysis follows upon my previous argument that TherapeuticJurisprudence (TJ) can be seen as a normative system on two of three important levels. At Level1 – Legal Practice, TJ asserts normative standards of practice. At Level 2 - Legal Theory, TJdelineates systemic developments that are required to achieve higher order goals of the justicesystem. However, at Level 3 – Legal Order, TJ does not mandate higher order normativestandards, dictate overall purposes of law or define the overarching norms of justice. This is dueto TJ’s respect for client realism: i.e. the idea that justice must be determined from clients’ needsand values, based upon clients’ choices regarding which rights to pursue or waive and whichvectors are best employed to achieve the desired ends.Through a better understanding of clientrealism and contemporary analyses of natural law virtue theories of justice, it is hoped that the507