Conference on Catholic Perspectives on Criminal Justice Reform at U. Wisconsin, Sponsored by Lumen Christi and the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy

I'm just back from an excellent conference organized by Professor Cecelia Klingele at the University of Wisconsin on Catholicism and Criminal Law and Justice. The conference was sponsored jointly by the Lumen Christi Institute and Wisconsin's Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy.

Together with fellow MOJ-er Patrick Brennan, we had a day of reflection and presentation of work concerning the theme. John Stinneford and I are having fun co-authoring a paper on "The Common Law, the Catholic Tradition, and the Criminal Law." We discuss the idea of tradition in Catholicism and the common law, the important concept of "culpa" or blameworthiness within both traditions, and its evolution across time. More soon on this paper.