Jamaica, Queens, New York 11439

 

Stephen M. Krason

 

Panel 68: Catholicism and Law, Lawyers, and Social Policy

 

Abstract

 

“Trends in American Law That Are Undercutting Justice”

 

This presentation will highlight a number of trends in American law in recent decades, such as the increasing vagueness and contradictoriness of laws, diluting of certain traditional common law protections, runaway plea-bargaining, the absolutization of rights of certain groups. It sees the root of these developments in the increasingly utilitarian mind-set of contemporary law, growing out of the diminishing of natural law thinking.