collegenews Stephen Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School, was Constitution Day speaker.
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... you can either run a campaign according to a set of rules of integrity, or run a campaign to win, but you can’t do both.
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THIS FALL, Roanoke College welcomed to campus a diverse group of speakers who shared wisdom and opinion on topics ranging from judicial integrity and honesty in government to the meaning of the 2012 elections. Among them: Dr. Stephen L. Carter, Yale Law School professor, columnist and author of numerous books, including New York Times bestseller “The Emperor of Ocean Park;” and the Honorable Dorothy W. Colom ’74, senior judge for the 14th Chancery Court District of Mississippi who, with author John Grisham, and her husband, attorney Wilbur Colom, founded the Mississippi Innocence Project. The topics of their presentations reflected the program theme for the 2012-2013 academic year: “Got Honesty?” Carter, whose distinguished career includes serving as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, spoke on Sept. 20 during a Constitution Day program titled “The Importance of Honesty to Constitutional Government.” The political candidate Carter most admired for his honesty was former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. In the 1988 presidential race, Dukakis “refused to get involved in negative politics,” Carter said. “He was an honest candidate in that sense. And he got creamed,” Carter said of Dukakis’s defeat by then Vice President George H.W. Bush. “Since that time, candidates generally have come to understand that you can either run a campaign according to a set of rules of integrity, or run a campaign to win, but you can’t do both. And the reason you can’t is that we won’t let you.”
Judge Colom, who spoke Oct. 2 in the Wortmann Ballroom as part of the Turk Pre-Law Series, said she was drawn to the judiciary after a Chancery Court judge issued a ruling against a client she was representing in his court. “With some cases you know…the facts are on your side. You know your client ought to come out ahead,” Colom said. “I knew something else was affecting [the judge’s] decision.” Colom said she discovered one of the litigants was from a wealthy political family. “To me, this decision lacked judicial integrity,” she said. “It was why I decided to run for the judgeship. We have a duty to provide [people] with the confidence they were given a fair chance to air their grievances before an impartial party. They should have faith…that judges have integrity, and are honest, straightforward and upright.” Other fall semester speakers included Dr. Robert Millet, a Brigham Young University theologian, who joined Dr. Gerald McDermott, Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion at Roanoke College, Dr. Robert Benne, Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion Emeritus, and Dr. Harry Wilson, Roanoke College political scientist, for a panel discussion on Sept. 14 titled “Mitt Romney, Christian Theology and the November Election.” A week after the November elections, two authorities of national standing — Stephen Hayes, a senior writer for The Weekly Standard, a Fox News contributor and an author, and Dr. David Gushee, a professor and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University and a columnist for The Washington Post — presented “The Meaning of the 2012 Elections” in Bast Center. 5