Let Justice Roll

Recent Posts from Let Justice Roll

• Mens Rea

  "Mens rea" is Latin for mental state. I learned the term from Professor Bruce Berner at Valparaiso University School of Law in my first-year criminal law class. In the law, he taught, punishment typically depends…

• Watch Out For That Pothole!

  It’s scarcely surprising for California’s correctional system to be hard-up for cash. Most voters are resistant to spending much money on offenders, and politicians know that. When I served as a legal counsel to the…

• He Stayed Not For An Answer

  Today is Christ the King Sunday, with the lectionary text taken from John 18: 28-38.The leaders of the Jewish Temple have arrested Jesus and brought him before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, for interrogation. The…

• Why Protect the "Worst of the Worst"?

  After 13 years on the bench, and two more before that as a court-appointed referee, Michael Fetsch, a district judge in Ramsey County (St. Paul), reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. He agreed to…

• Unrule-ly Behavior

  "Unrule-ly Behavior" is a subsection in a book called Dangerous Wonder by Michael Yaconelli, the pastor of a small church in northern California, published in 1998. Somewhere along the line, my wife, Diane, picked it…

• The Coldest of Cold Monsters

  Allan Megill, a historian with whom I almost studied, rightly called Friedrich Nietzsche a “prophet of extremity.” Within the torrent of over-the-top aphorisms that is Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche included a stunning denunciation of excessive…

• Reaction to Eric's Forgotten Fifth Entry

  The model of prison ministry set forth by Prison Congregations of America is among the healthiest out there. This is not about good hearted people coming in for a revival and then leaving, even though…

• Dangerous Mix: Meds, Alcohol, and Childcare

  There are no perfect caregivers for children. No perfect parents, no perfect grandparents, no perfect babysitters, nannies or others.Taking care of a child is an awesome and often challenging responsibility. Some of us don’t experience…

• The World Wide Web as a Forum for the Unfolding of Spirit

  Meeting in Seoul, South Korea, the board of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) voted to make it possible for Internet addresses to be written entirely in non-Latin alphabets. Though a few…

• The First Things Have Passed Away

  John’s soaring vision of the new Jerusalem coming down from Heaven in Revelation 21: 1-6 is packed with powerful imagery: Bride and bridegroom, Alpha and Omega − and God himself dwelling with his people, wiping…