August 2005 @ 6:06 pm

LDS lady selling a first edition Book 0f Mormon one framed page at a time.
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Jeff Lindsay looks at ancient evidence of baptisms practiced in Mexico.
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An economist studies scriptural citations in General Conference.
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SLC Mayor Anderson caught trying to gin up a protest for President Bush’s visit next week. next week.
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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had a mild stroke earlier this week:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., saw a doctor after feeling light-headed Tuesday and learned he’d suffered a mild stroke, aides said Friday.

“Senator Reid feels fine. There are no complications or any restrictions on his activities. He has undergone evaluations this week, and his doctors have recommended that he take advantage of the summer congressional recess for some down time,” said a statement issued by Reid’s press secretary, Tessa Hafen.

The statement said Reid sought medical attention at the urging of his wife, Landra. He was told he had experienced a transient ischemic attack.

My brother passed on to me a touching courtroom story of mercy and forgiveness, from a New York Times editorial no less [link and free access may self-destruct in a few days; registration required]. The editors even title it, “A Moment of Grace.” But was the following really necessary?

Many have assumed that Ms. Ruvolo’s motivation is religious. But while we can estimate the size of her heart, we can’t peer into it. Her impulse may have been entirely secular.

I suppose the editors were afraid to be confused with the Ensign or Christianity Today.

UPDATE: My brother also caught this excellent letter to the editor on this same point:

To the Editor:

Re “A Moment of Grace” (editorial, Aug. 17), about Victoria Ruvolo’s expression of forgiveness and wish for leniency for 19-year-old Ryan Cushing, whose reckless act of turkey-tossing nearly killed her last fall, and about Mr. Cushing’s contrition:

I appreciate your featuring this gem of a human-interest story on your editorial page.

But I was both amused and intrigued by one comment in the editorial. “Many have assumed that Ms. Ruvolo’s motivation is religious,” you say, but “her impulse may have been entirely secular.”

Has the concept that a civic act could possibly spring from a “religious motivation” become so déclassé or so politically incorrect that your readers need to be protected from drawing their own conclusions about it?

Jay Feld
Flushing, Queens, Aug. 17, 2005

Credit to the Times for publishing the letter.

Does the Church need to address youth gangs, and specifically Polynesian LDS gang members in Utah?
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According to a new memo that was released with the Roberts nomination papers, President Reagan considered Elder Oaks along with Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy for a Supreme Court seat in 1981 which ultimately went to Sandra Day O’Connor. However, because Reagan made a campaign promise to nominate a woman to the bench the men were all second-tier candidates. Rex Lee was also briefly considered.

Conservatives can dream how things could have been different:

 Fein said the impact of nominating someone like Oaks rather than O’Connor would have been immense.
   

O’Connor cast key votes in decisions on affirmative action, abortion, homosexual rights, and religious displays that infuriated conservatives.

   ”All this prognostication that this would make Reagan a hero in the female community was absurd, and we ended up with a moderate, then a liberal” in O’Connor, said the conservative Fein. “All those kind of wobbly, non-constitutional or extra-constitutional standards never would have seen the light of day, because she was a vital vote in those cases.”

Since Bork, Scalia, and Kennedy were all later nominated, I imagine becoming an Apostle took Oaks out of the running. I guess that’s a little different than being an Apostle and the Secretary of Agriculture.

UPDATE: Nate Oman adds his scholarly take (with a little help from Playboy) on the circumstances behind the memo, including a copy of the memo itself.

Having been on hiatus far longer than was intended, I have a huge backlog of blog submissions and others of my own discovery to add. I’ll add several each day until I am caught up. I probably added too many last night as I would like to give those who actually check out new blog additions the chance to do so without being overwhelmed. For those who read the “A Soft Answer” RSS feed, you may have missed that a post from yesterday from the mormon-blogs.com site listed the new feeds.

There are three RSS feeds available:

• A Soft Answer posts-only RSS feed
• new additions to the LDS and Mormon Blogs list RSS feed,
• combination RSS feed that includes both blogs

Pretty cool new feature from Flickr. Cluster of shared photos tagged with “temple,” “lds,” or “mormon.” Some very nice temple photos. And I did not know that there was a butterfly named Mormon.
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“A very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention.” The expected explanation from a Harvard scientist setting out to prove evolution. As Matt Astle asks, how can they prove there was no divine intervention?
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I think it’s great that the Salt Lake Tribune has a bunch of RSS feeds for all kinds of news and features, but of the six RSS feeds for news, does one of them have to be just for “Polygamy”?
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Jeff Lindsay shares his testimony of the Book of Mormon.
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Refusing to take heed from the results of Rusty’s Bloggernacle survey, I am determined to mark this blog’s return with a post that deals with Mormons and the Law.

This past February, Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke before the J. Reuben Clark Law Society reminiscing over his legal career in “The Beginning and the End of a Lawyer” (PDF file). This may be a cheap post to dryly summarize this talk, but I hope others will benefit from some of the highlights I list here as I did. Plus, it is a little hard to read the heavily formatted PDF file. Elder Oaks provides some very interesting commentary on the limitations of the law, focus in the Gospel, and his personal judicial philosophy. Among his varied experiences, Elder Oaks was a Supreme Court clerk, dealt with the campus disruptions during the late 1960’s, and was even chairman of the board at PBS, all before becoming an Apostle. But, as they say, read the whole thing.

Elder Oaks mostly speaks on his “beginning” in the law or rather four fascinating “fathers in the law” – mentors who shaped his legal career.

1. Dean Edward H. Levi

Dean Levi is probably best known as the U.S. Attorney General appointed by President Ford to reform the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal. Elder Oaks knew Dean Levi at the University of Chicago.


Levi also taught me the meaning of a university and the respective roles of faculty, students, administration, and board. These teachings were tested in 1969 in the crucible of a massive student demonstration that seized the University of Chicago’s administration building and held it for 15 days. As president of the university, Levi received enormous pressure to call in the police to forcibly evict and prosecute the trespassers. Instead, he announced that the university would govern itself. He appointed a disciplinary committee of nine faculty members from different fields. I was the chairman and the only lawyer on the committee.

Levi said later:


The University has sought throughout this period . . . to exemplify the values for which it stands. . . . In a world of considerable violence, and one in which violence begets violence, it has emphasized the persuasive power of ideas. It has sought—and the unique response of faculty and students has made this possible—to handle its own affairs in a way consistent with its ideals. [Public statement, 14 February 1969]

That is a great lesson for every organization, especially those involved in teaching. Do your own work, and don’t ask the law or other organizations to do it for you.

After two months of individual hearings on 150 students summoned to university discipline, our faculty committee concluded its assigned task and the university continued its work, all without outside intervention. This was a time of great disruption on campuses throughout the country. When the political desire to punish student demonstrators produced proposals for federal legislation, I was asked to write my recommendations to Arthur F. Burns, a counselor to President Richard M. Nixon. I was merely following the teaching and leadership of Edward Levi when I wrote:

My advice is for the federal government and federal officials to stay out of this controversy. Spare us the spectacle of federal prosecutions of university students for campus-related activities. . . . Let the response to student disorders be local. Let universities, in cooperation with local law enforcement
agencies if necessary, handle the problem. . . . [B]y all means stay off the campus, and don’t make university administrators and faculty look like federal policemen. [Letter of 15 May 1969]

I am happy to recall that no federal legislation was enacted. As Levi was fond of saying, the law is a crude instrument. He taught that we should only use the law when we have to.

2. President John K. Edmunds

John Edmunds was Elder Oaks’ stake president for much of the time he was in Chicago. Elder Oaks credits President Edmunds as a distant mentor who exemplified merging service in the Gospel with being as successful lawyer. Specifically, he learned an interesting nugget that I think is helpful for all in the Church:

From his example I learned that if Church leaders single out a small number of key principles and emphasize them again and again, these few fundamentals have the capacity to raise individual performance on a multitude of other subjects rarely mentioned. This is more effective than trying to push everything equally, like the proverbial river a mile wide and an inch deep that never achieves the concentration necessary to erode a mark on the landscape. Leadership requires selective concentration.

3. Chief Justice Earl Warren

Elder Oaks was a clerk to the chief justice for 1957-58. It was perhaps the most interesting to hear of Elder Oaks’ experience at the Supreme Court as well of the Chief Justice Warren, whom I learned to low esteem for his influence on the Court.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was an unlikely mentor and boss for a conservative lawyer like me. As you know, he and others on the so-called “Warren Court” are the authors of many opinions that represent and set the direction for what is now known as judicial activism. In my view this judicial activism has worked far-reaching mischief in the law. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the outcome of these activist decisions, they are unfortunate precedents
because they are matters that should be decided by elected lawmakers, not life-tenured federal judges.

For this and other reasons my confidential personal year-end tally shows that I disagreed with the chief justice’s votes on 40 percent of the cases decided on the merits that year. The 60 percent in which I agreed with him were obviously more comfortable for me, especially in cases where he was writing the opinion for the Court. Many of these were very satisfying to me personally.

Those cases in which I disagreed with the votes of the chief justice allowed me to learn a good lesson in professionalism. Regardless of your opinion of your client’s choices, it is your professional duty to serve your client to the best of your ability—subject, of course, to the constraints of legality and legal ethics.

Despite his occasional legal differences with the Chief, Elder Oaks respected his boss not only as a lawyer but as a loyal family man who treated others with great respect.

In contrast to my disagreements with his votes on some cases, I adored the chief justice as a person, and I admired him as an administrator of the Court and as a wise and considerate employer. . . I loved how the Chief treated those who came to his office. He always came from behind his desk, shook hands, and ushered the visitor to a seat. . . He said it was his way of showing his feeling that each person was important and his official position did not put him above anyone. Here I recall the prophet Nephi’s statement that “all are alike unto God” (2 Ne. 26:33) and Jacob’s teaching that “the one being is as precious in [God’s] sight as the other” (Jacob 2:21). In my lifetime I have observed that some people, like the Chief, have the quality of treating everyone like a child of God even though they lack the doctrinal understanding that requires this. Others who have the doctrine sometimes fail to act on it.

Despite similar misgivings I have had over the impact of the “Warren Court” (that more than lingers today), it is very enlightening to learn a little more about the personal side of the Chief Justice and his respect of others, his family, personal confidences (Elders Oaks slams the all too common “kiss and tell” memoirs), and even the Church.

4. Lewis F. Powell

Another future Supreme Court Justice, Mr. Powell mentored Elder Oaks when he was the director of the American Bar Foundation, the research arm of the ABA. Elder Oaks credits Powell with preparing him to become president of BYU, helping to establish the J. Reuben Clark Law School, as well as serving on the boards of PBS and the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Elder Oaks ends his talk reflecting on how his legal experiences prepared him for the last two decades as he has served as an Apostle.

My participation in litigation wars has stamped my soul with an imperative to avoid the uncertainties and ambiguities that foster controversy. It has also given me a bias to resolve differences, where possible, by private settlement rather than by adversary litigation, causing me to believe that sometimes even a poor settlement is better than a good lawsuit.

I have also seen the gospel ideal of service to others being nobly expressed by the uncompensated and even the compensated service of members of the legal profession.

And, finally, I rejoice in the fact that the profession of the law is clearly the best preparation for the role of Advocate, a role and title our Savior designated for Himself (e.g., D&C 29:5, 110:4; 1 John 2:1; Moro. 7:28).

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