From the Blawgernacle – September 30, 2009
After last week’s amusing stories of crazy litigants, Jeff Breinholt’s legal series on Mormon Matters takes a more serious turn to discuss legal aspects of sex abuse in the Mormon Church. It’s not exactly light reading, but I would recommend it to any attorney who attends any church, as well as all ecclesiastical leaders. Jeff concludes that despite recent efforts to crack down on abuse, the number of such civil liability cases against the LDS Church will grow as criminal cases with long statutes of limitations wrap up.
In a lighter note, sometimes-Times and Seasons-blogger Raymond Takashi Swenson noted a humorous lawyer-related anecdote in a recent post by Julie M. Smith about sarcasm:
I must also admit that sarcasm was an occasional mode of speech for inspired men like Brigham Young. Speaking to a congregation one Sunday, after having observed the operation of a local court, Brigham described the lawyers: “Their hearts are as black as the ace of spades. They love sin and roll it on their tongues as a sweet morsel. They are a stink in the nostril of God and the angels.” Then he called for all who agreed with him to say “amen”, at which point the recorder noted a unanimous “Amen” from the congregation.
This was before Brigham sent two of his sons to law school in the East, corresponding with them in very measured tones about their duty to be righteous lawyers.
Jeff Breinholt’s second post last week on Mormon Matters talked about Mormons and the IRS, but the meatiest part of the post was the discussion of whether the litigation of Bob Jones Univ. v. U.S. influenced the 1978 Proclamation on the Priesthood, and whether Bob Jones could be invoked by gay rights litigants against schools such as BYU.
A couple weeks ago I somehow missed this excellent post by Steve M. on Dissenting in Part about whether the LDS temple endowment ceremony is protected by copyright. The genesis of the post was the controversial Big Love episode in which part of the endowment ceremony was portrayed. Steve presents a good primer on copyright basics and concludes that the original endowment ceremony text entered the public domain in 2002, pursuant to § 303 of the Copyright Act of 1976. It’s a must read for anyone interested in copyright.
