- Teresa Collett, J.D. is professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, where she serves as director of the ... moreTeresa Collett, J.D. is professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, where she serves as director of the school's Prolife Center. As a well-known advocate for the protection of human life and the family, Collett specializes in the subjects of marriage, religion, and bioethics in her research. Collett has published numerous legal articles on parental involvement laws and has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as before legislative committees in several states on this topic. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and is a member of the Federalist Society's Executive Committee on Religious Liberties.edit
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This article outlines the provisions of pending Vermont legislation requiring parental notification prior to the performance of an abortion on a minor. It describes the current national consensus in favor of parental involvement laws, and... more
This article outlines the provisions of pending Vermont legislation requiring parental notification prior to the performance of an abortion on a minor. It describes the current national consensus in favor of parental involvement laws, and examines the arguments relating to the proposed passage of this law. The article reviews the federal cases addressing the constitutionality of parental involvement laws, as well as cases regarding parental involvement in other medical decisions. It examines the arguments of supporters and opponents of the Vermont legislation, and concludes that parental notification laws benefit minors through improved medical care and protection from sexual assault. The inclusion of a judicial bypass procedure insures the availability of a safe and effective means of protecting the few minors for whom parental involvement is not appropriate.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Family Law
Interest of Amici (1) Amici are physicians, philosophers, and law professors engaged in the study and teaching of bioethics. Each supports the conclusion of the Attorney General of the United States that assisting suicide is not a... more
Interest of Amici (1) Amici are physicians, philosophers, and law professors engaged in the study and teaching of bioethics. Each supports the conclusion of the Attorney General of the United States that assisting suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose," and in fact undermines the foundational commitment of medicine to healing and the promotion of human health. The signatories also strongly support improved pain management and palliative care for terminally ill patients, and believe that condoning the "quick fix" of physician-assisted suicide will undermine society's commitment to the more difficult but infinitely more rewarding task of meeting patients' real needs. Summary of Argument Amici seek to place before the court the historical record and current professional consensus that assisting suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" for use of federally-controlled drugs. Assisting suicide is antithetical to the proper conduct of a physician in the "usual course of his professional practice." See 21 C.F.R. [section] 1306.04(2001). Medical treatment has as its ultimate end the restoration or preservation of the patient's health and the relief of suffering, not the termination of the patient's life. The public's health, their confidence in the beneficence of the medical profession, and the foundational ethos of the medical profession would be profoundly eroded by recognition of physician assisted suicide as a legitimate medical treatment. Argument I. The Proper End of Medicine is Restoration and Preservation of Health and Relief of Suffering, Not Termination of Life. The profession of medicine is distinguished from other human activities, including other professions, by virtue of the good or goods to which its practitioners publicly profess devotion. Lawyers profess devotion to "a belief in the ability of human beings to communicate with each other by means of rational argument ... a belief that human beings can arrange their affairs fairly ... [and] a belief in the value of purposeful process." John T. Noonan, Jr., Choice of a Profession, 21 Pepp. L. Rev. 381,383 (1994). Theologians profess a belief in the existence of God and the human capacity to attain some understanding of God's nature. Physicians profess devotion to human health and healing, "a naturally given although precarious standard or norm, characterized by `wholeness' and `well-working,' toward which the living body moves on its own." Leon R. Kass, "I Will Give No Deadly Drug," in The Case against Assisted Suicide: for the Right to End-of-Life Care (Kathleen Foley & Herbert Hendlin, eds. 2002) at 21. This devotion to health and healing necessarily requires the cultivation of particular virtues, such as self-restraint, patience and sympathy. Id. More to the point, devotion to health and healing sets certain limits on the physician's conduct, chief among which is the prohibition against physicians killing or helping to kill their patients. The prohibition against killing patients, the first negative promise of self-restraint sworn to in the Hippocratic Oath, stands as medicine's first and most abiding taboo.... The deepest ethical principle restraining the physician's power is neither the autonomy and freedom of the patient nor the physician's own compassion or good intention. Rather, it is the dignity and mysterious power of human life itself, and, therefore, also what the [Hippocratic] Oath calls purity and holiness of the life and art to which the physician has sworn devotion. A person can choose to be a physician but cannot simply choose what physicianship means. Id. at 32. The essence of the medical profession lies in its fundamental commitment to the preservation of human life and health. This commitment precludes inclusion of assisting suicide within the list of activities that constitute "legitimate medical practice. …
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As a faculty member at a Catholic law school for the past seventeen years, I have often been frustrated with the inability of many professors and administrators at Catholic law schools to describe what makes a law school “Catholic.” As... more
As a faculty member at a Catholic law school for the past seventeen years, I have often been frustrated with the inability of many professors and administrators at Catholic law schools to describe what makes a law school “Catholic.” As Professors Breen and Strang report in A Light Unseen: A History of Catholic Legal Education in the United States, too often the description is limited to something like “a commitment to social justice,” or “inculcating a strong sense of professional ethics.” Yet as the authors observe, “Catholic law schools do not have a monopoly on or even a special claim to caring for the poor or promoting professional virtue.” Breen and Strang trace how we got to this place and propose an ambitious path to the “Light Unseen.” Breen and Strang propose to create a jurisprudence grounded in Catholic social thought and human anthropology, and thus imbue Catholic law schools with a strong Catholic identity. As the co-editor of a collection of essays seeking to incorporate Catholic anthropology into American law, I fully support the authors’ proposal. I also appreciate the care with which they have built their case that such a project is necessary to avoid the continuing secularization of most Catholic law schools—secularization that both scandalizes and discourages many faithful Catholics. My focus, however, is not to reargue the case for the creation of such jurisprudence, but to explore the capacity to initiate such a project within existing Catholic law schools given the current state of the American legal professoriate. While I will not go so far as to say a spiritual awakening and enthusiasm for the Breen Strang project is impossible at most Catholic law schools, I believe such an awakening and project will require fervent prayer, God’s favor, and skillful committed leadership by both clergy and lay professionals.
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This essay reflects upon the overwhelming trend of secularization in American Catholic higher education that has led to colleges and universities largely abandoning their liberal arts heritage for a more “instrumentalist” approach to... more
This essay reflects upon the overwhelming trend of secularization in American Catholic higher education that has led to colleges and universities largely abandoning their liberal arts heritage for a more “instrumentalist” approach to education. This trend is part of what Pope Benedict XVI has identified as the “crisis of cultures” where Western concepts of reason are increasingly detached from their cultural and spiritual roots, resulting in an inability to speak to anything beyond the material world and our current understanding of it. I argue that we must resist the operational atheism that afflicts most American education, including many schools that are identified as religiously-affiliated. This atheism results resulting in what Pope Emeritus Benedict has called “the presumed completeness and use of liberty as the ‘criterion of everything else.’” This absolutizing of liberty with no higher moral criterion leaves us unable to address pressing problems as a community and specifically excludes an contribution from communities of faith.
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Research Interests: Ideology and Colonization
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The Texas case of Roman v. Roman presents the question of whether contracts can bind couples to the destruction of their embryonic children absent any attempt at implantation. In 2006, the Texas Court of Appeals for the First District was... more
The Texas case of Roman v. Roman presents the question of whether contracts can bind couples to the destruction of their embryonic children absent any attempt at implantation. In 2006, the Texas Court of Appeals for the First District was asked to determine the fate of three frozen embryos conceived during marriage but whose implantation was blocked by their father’s refusal to consent to their transfer into their mother’s uterus. This Article describes the mother’s fight to preserve the lives of her embryonic children and argues that the Texas appellate court’s acceptance of ambiguous contractual terms created an unjust result that conflicted with the intentions of the mother at the time the embryos were to be discarded.Part I of this Article tells the story of Augusta and Randy Roman’s creation of embryonic children. This is followed by a brief history of the couple’s legal dispute regarding the disposition of the embryos in Part II. Part III examines the issues surrounding the use of contract law to resolve the issues presented in the case and concludes that the appellate court’s acceptance of contractual claims resulted from its misinterpretation of Texas statutes regarding assisted reproduction and its failure to consider strong public policies that are frustrated by agreements to discard human embryos. The Article concludes by considering possible jurisprudential consequences that might have resulted from a final decision setting aside the contractual claims and awarding the embryos to Augusta for implantation.
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Includes segments from Esquire, Legal Times, Texas Monthly, and Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, as well as stimulating cases and law review articles. The order roughly tracks the ABA Model Rules. The casebook teaches students to think... more
Includes segments from Esquire, Legal Times, Texas Monthly, and Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, as well as stimulating cases and law review articles. The order roughly tracks the ABA Model Rules. The casebook teaches students to think critically about the legal profession, yet avoids the cynicism that so often accompanies discussions of the profession. Includes introduction to the legal profession; the lawyer-client relationship; confidentiality and the attorney-client privilege; conflicts of interest; lawyer advocacy and its limits; business problems in the practice of law; provision of legal services; and judges.
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If our common capacity to suffer is a moral underpinning of our prohibition of torture and cruel forms of deadly punishments, we must at least extend similar protections to the unborn members of the human family.
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Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Law, Constitutional Law, Multiculturalism, and 14 moreLegal Education, Academic Freedom, Political Science, Law and Religion, Politics, Economic Justice, Supreme Court, Philosophy of Religious Pluralism, Legal Writing and Research, Social Science Research Network, First Amendment, Cultural Pluralism, Due process, and Catholic universities
This article attempts to trace the development of the United Nations commitment to contraception as a guarantor of world peace, an engine of economic development, a guardian of the natural environment, and an equalizer of men and women.... more
This article attempts to trace the development of the United Nations commitment to contraception as a guarantor of world peace, an engine of economic development, a guardian of the natural environment, and an equalizer of men and women. Unfortunately, as UNESCO notes in their instruction regarding the connection between population and development, the UN analysis of the impact of population growth was mistaken and their policies misguided.The promotion of artificial contraception was integral to UN attempts to limit childbearing in developing nations, and any resistance led to loss of international assistance in a variety of areas. This article argues then argues that natural family planning provides many of the benefits the UN policy seeks, while avoiding unintended adverse effects that have been documented in many studies. By teaching couples to work with their fertility to achieve their personal goals - whether to avoid or increase their chances of child bearing - the virtues of mutual restraint, communication, commitment, and respect are instilled. These virtues are instrumental to achieve the very goals that advocates of contraception desire. World peace, economic development, protection of the environment, and authentic sexual equality requires each of these virtues, both individually and communally.
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The proposed Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act is grounded by the reality that parents are nearly always the first to help a teen in trouble, and that fact does not change when the "trouble" is an unplanned pregnancy.... more
The proposed Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act is grounded by the reality that parents are nearly always the first to help a teen in trouble, and that fact does not change when the "trouble" is an unplanned pregnancy. There is no other elective surgery that minors can obtain while keeping their parents in the dark, and the controversy surrounding this Act shows just how severely the judicial creation of abortion rights has distorted American law.
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University of Illinois Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson moderates this session. Panelists will speak for 15 minutes each. Papers presented: Caroline Corbin: Abortion Distortions Teresa Collett: Does Fetal Pain Matter Constitutionally?... more
University of Illinois Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson moderates this session. Panelists will speak for 15 minutes each. Papers presented: Caroline Corbin: Abortion Distortions Teresa Collett: Does Fetal Pain Matter Constitutionally? Kathy Greenier: Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers and the Ongoing War Against Women\u27s Health in Virginia Randy Beck: Overcoming Barriers to the Protection of Viable Fetuse