Regarding Cassell’s argument at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jody, I have no opinion on the merits of the particular case at issue, but generally speaking—in opposition to your claim—I think it makes a lot of sense to allow victims to present evidence at the sentencing hearings of offenders.

It makes sense not because we’re confusing torts and crimes—though violent crimes are torts, so I’m not sure that there is so much confusion after all—but because of the availability heuristic. As Tversky and Kahneman showed in work that later got a Nobel Prize in economics, people tend to systematically confuse the ease with which they bring a kind of event to mind with the objective frequency of that event. Thus, since we hear about horrific child abductions quite frequently but drownings in swimming pools less often, people tend to think the former are a more serious threat to children than the latter. The reverse is actually the truth by multiple orders of magnitude.

In sentencing criminals, the relevant considerations include not only the effect on the defendant sentenced but also the effects on his potential future victims if the defendant gets a light sentence. We cannot identify these people at the time the sentence is passed, however, and so they cannot appear in court. Because of the availability heuristic, there is a systematic danger that judges will overestimate the interests of the defendant whom they can see and underestimate the interests of the future victims whom they cannot see. Allowing the victims of the crime for which the defendant is being sentenced to testify is thus a rough corrective to this problem: it puts before the judge (makes “available” to him in the sense of availability at issue) the other interests he should consider and that he is otherwise likely to systematically underestimate.

Paul Cassell, a former Federal judge who resigned from the bench to become a pro bono lawyer and advocate for victims rights, is now blogging on the Volokh Conspiracy, a (more or less) libertarian law-professors blog that has some of the most interesting legal analysis on the web.

Cassell’s first post is here, an account of an attempt to force the courts to recognize the victims’ right to participate in the sentencing of a man who sold a gun to a teenager. The victims in this case are the parents of a girl killed when the teenager used the gun to open fire last year in the Trolley Square murders in Salt Lake City.

The connection of the plaintiffs (the parents of a victim of the murderer) and the defendant (the man who sold the gun to the murderer) is weak, legally, and the courts have so far refused to allow the plaintiffs to compel discovery to find out how they could strengthen the connection.

But Cassell thinks that ought to change—and when we think of the grieving parents, who could not want it to change? And yet, the concept of victims’ rights is a peculiar one, and it slips very easily into vengeful understandings of law. As I wrote of the death penalty, the confusion of torts and crimes is one of the most disturbing transformations overtaking U.S. law in recent years. Our readers at the time were not happy with my rejection of the death penalty, but this element of the argument remains, I think, important. When we take crimes primarily as harms against individuals, we open up the legal system to all kinds of claims about justice and retribution that it was never designed to consider.

In recent days students and faculty activists has kicked up a lot of dust at the venerable Sapienzia University in Rome which was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII. Benedict had been invited to give an address to the university. The protestors, well, protested. Stated reason: accusations that Benedict is “anti-science.” Real source: the ongoing cultural conflict in the West. The pope decided to cancel his visit, though he is sending his already written speech.

The accusation is based on a 1990 speech by Benedict in which the Pope quoted well known (and quirky) philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend’s defense of the reasonableness of the Church’s prosecution of Galileo. Here is what Feyerabend wrote: “The church at the time was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just.” As with controversial quote about Islam in the 2006 Regensburg speech, Ratzinger/Benedict did not explicitly endorse Feyerabend’s assessment. Instead, he used the quote as part of a larger arguement against the contemporary tendency to simplistically (and erroneously) set faith and reason in opposition.

You don’t really need to revisit the 1990 speech or research the details of the Galileo trial to know that “anti-science” is just a pretext. The real issue at Sapienzia in Rome is pretty much the same issue at Harvard or UCLA. The Catholic Church is the single most articulate voice for a culture of truth that — I know this will shock readers — includes moral and spiritual truths. This threatens postmodern secularism, so much so that the Catholic voice is pushed to the margins, if not altogether silenced.

As some of you may have noticed, we are accepting applications for junior fellows at First Things. Young writers and scholars who are thinking of applying might wonder what’s it like to be a junior fellow. Do you do it for the power, the popularity, or the bling? An answer to the question requires an elaboration on the job itself.

I think of the junior fellowship as having three parts. The first involves doing what needs to be done around the office: helping to format the archives, running errands, managing book reviews, managing the website, answering the magazine’s primary e-mail account, etc. These jobs are divided up among the fellows and assistant editors.

The second involves lots of reading. We all keep our eyes on articles in the news, in other magazines and journals. We also read the articles that are being considered for publication, and we participate in the editorial meetings where the content of the magazine is decided. Once the magazine is laid out, we proofread the issue before publication.

The third part of the job involves writing, primarily for First Things but also for other publications. This year, we fellows have written a few essays that appeared on the website, as well as posts for our daily blog. Now, five months into our time here, we have small book reviews in the magazine and are hoping to publish full-length reviews soon.

That is what our job in the office entails. The junior staff, Fr. Neuhaus, and a Lutheran pastor all live in single apartments in a townhouse. We have community evening prayer every night at 7 PM and community dinner on Saturday evenings. Attendance at these is expected unless you have another commitment, but there are no problems when these other commitments come up. In the community, we help keep the house clean, take out the trash, do odd jobs etc. We also do not pay rent or utilities and, as I said, have one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan, which is an excellent deal. On top of this, we receive a modest stipend.

So why be a junior fellow? Excellent accommodations, good people to live and work with, meeting interesting people at events and lectures, having the artistic and religious life of New York at your fingertips, and a life of reading and writing to make a difference in the church and the world. That’s more than enough to keep a twenty-something happy for a year or two.

An Iranian Muslim has directed a film about Jesus: Jesus, the Spirit of God.

Of course, this Jesus is just one of the many many Jesuses the world has concocted in an effort to circumvent the sin and sacrifice business, and because, well, everyone has to deal with Jesus eventually. So this Jesus is not the Son of God, he did not rise from the dead for our justification, but is merely the penultimate prophet. He did not even die on a Roman cross—something very few secular or non-Christian historians/scholars debate anymore (unless they’re woefully illiterate or just plain goofy).

But the film seems to have been made in a spirit of interreligious dialogue and not as a provocation. “I wanted to make a bridge between Christianity and Islam, to open the door for dialogue since there is much common ground between Islam and Christianity,” said filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh.

But will Muslims be willing to engage in serious “dialogue”—one that risks the possibility of conversion to the Christian point of view? In other words, how open are Muslims to having their “the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were corrupted” apologetic falsified? Will they examine manuscript lineage and how accurately scribes transmitted biblical texts (for example, the Isaiah Dead Sea scroll)? Will they read and credit ancient writers’ references to New Testament texts that predate the oldest manuscripts we have, thereby reinforcing our confidence that the Bible we read today reliably reflects the original autographs?

In which case, are Muslim dialogue partners then willing to examine the New Testament texts in light of their proximity to the actual events and reliance on eyewitnesses and community-controlled oral histories—making the crucifixion of Jesus one of the most “provable” events in history, one that does not require an act of faith on anyone’s part?

In short, I see “dialogue,” but I hear “monologue.”

By way of Herr Veith at Cranach.

Got your attention, didn’t I? Well, it’s not what you think. The twin teens are Alex and Brett Harris, and they’re Web geeks for Huckabee.

These young evangelicals have a history of organizing online communities with a focus on motivating a young Christian base to get involved culturally and politically. This time, they’re pushing Huck for Prez: “If we had every evangelical vote, statistically speaking, we’d win,” says one of Huck’s Army (a Catholic, it should be noted).

Add email blasts to the full armor of God . . .

Kudos to Wired News for reportage sans snark.

I don’t know which is more contemptible, that Larry Craig is still a U.S. Senator or that the ACLU is coming to his defense and has filed a brief saying people who have sex in public bathrooms “have a reasonable expectation of privacy.“