Priest-lawyer says law is center of U.S. culture

Jesuit Father Robert Drinan’s career has had taken several unusual turns: lawyer, law school dean, priest and then congressman from Newton, Mass., from 1970 to 1980. He stepped down in obedience to a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding high public office. Since then, he has served on the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center and written several books on human rights. He gave the Francis X. Riley Lecture on legal ethics at Northern Illinois University April 5; while in Illinois, he spoke by telephone with The Catholic New World.

TCNW: You’ve been a politician and you’ve been an observer for a while. What do you think of the campaign finance reform bill that was just signed into law?

FRD: I followed that closely. I’m on the national governing board of Common Cause, and ever since my days in the Congress I have worked for campaign finance reform. The bill that just passed is not perfect, but I think—I hope—that it’s going to bring about significant improvement in this whole area. As you know, it will be tested in the courts, and they may invalidate one or two sections. That will not invalidate the whole process.

That system does not call for what the better people are calling for in connection with the election of judges. …They have to run a campaign to get elected or reelected. They go and they take money from lawyers in the community. I think that’s a very dangerous thing. It’s less acute in Illinois and some other states, but 38 states have elected judges in various ways. This is a scandal we need to break. When lawyers give money to judges, the lawyers can say we have no expectation of favorable treatment, but it looks terrible to the public.

The solution that’s being proposed that in my view is the best solution for judges is public financing. A candidate would be required to raise a small amount of money, and if he qualifies, he gets public funding, and his opponent does. This is a way of payment that has worked very well at the presidential level, and I hope that it can be done for elected judges.

TCNW: What would you change in the campaign finance reform bill that was passed?

FRD: Well, I’m not sure I’d change anything. I think it's a reasonable compromise and combination. For some people who feel strongly, any restriction of expenditure of money is a violation of the First Amendment, because money is speech. ... I think the Congress has made it clear that we have corruption or the appearance of corruption when you have unlimited amounts of money—soft money—coming into campaigns. The rich or the wealthy, they dictate who gets elected and we want to deter that and change it.

TCNW: Cardinal George recently spoke at Ave Maria Law School, and discussed how law and culture are necessarily linked. How do you think the law or legal professionals can improve our culture?

FRD: It’s very self-evident that law is more important in this culture than in any other culture in the world. We don’t have a common theology or religion or culture or even language that unites us like other nations do. We have law. And we now have over one million lawyers. Law is becoming almost the center of our society. That’s why lawyers have a particular obligation to update and to reform modern institutions. That’s why an unprecedented number of young people are going to law school. This is the area that creates the shakers and the movers. Law impacts the culture in many, many ways, and I think that the law is improving it in many ways, not all.

For example, the question of the death penalty. The Catholic Church is very firm against the death penalty, and that’s an area where law and culture and ethics intersect.

TCNW: Do you think the law is moving towards the abolition of the death penalty?

FRD: I think it’s very clear. People are stubborn, but all the nations of the earth except China have in essence repudiated the death penalty. You could argue as I do in my recent book, “The Mobilization of Shame” (Yale University Press, 2001), that the customary international law forbids the death penalty. It’s gone—it’s not in international law. I think that the people in America, especially the lawyers, are recognizing that it’s almost impossible to have an effective and fair way of administering the death penalty. The poor and the unrepresented are chosen to be indicted; they go on trial and sometimes they plead guilty. This is the system of which I am a foe. That is why Gov. Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. I hope that moratorium becomes permanent. … Unfortunately 60 percent of the people still believe in the death penalty, and I’m not sure that’s better for Catholics than for non-Catholics. There’s something in the mindset that we want to kill someone if he has killed someone. But as the pope keeps saying, that brings us down to the level of a killer. There are other remedies. If someone has killed, he can be incarcerated for life without the possibility of parole, and that’s sufficient protection for the public. “He killed someone; therefore, we should kill him”—I don’t think that is good logic or good Catholicism or good law.

TCNW: I’d really love to ask you about the sexual abuse scandal. As a lawyer, what do you say about the ethics of the way it was handled in the past?

FRD: You mean by the lawyers? Some of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, it seems to me, have stirred up litigation, seeking these people, and then they intimidate some of the Catholic officials. Even if the people are saying we want to settle, we don’t want to go to trial, they push it.

TCNW: So the lawyers are the ones who are trying to make a name out of this?

FRD: That’s right. And money.

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