Georgetown Law Alumni Magazine - Res Ipsa Loquitur
Spring/Summer 2009 - Online Volume 1
Faculty Notes
Goldberg Appointed to Denny Endowed Chair
On February 26, Professor Steven P. Goldberg was installed as the first James and Catherine Denny Professor of Law. In a lecture to faculty and friends, Goldberg analyzed the differing approaches to uncertainty found in religion, philosophy, literature, science and the law. Goldberg based his remarks on the Book of Job, which, he said, “confronts us not only with the famous question of the origin of evil ... [but the] even more unsettling possibility that there are crucial things about life and the universe that we can never comprehend.”
While the Book of Job is frequently referred to in literature and philosophy, judicial opinions have mentioned it only a handful of times in the last 50 years, said Goldberg.
“Judges almost never mention Job,” Goldberg said — not because there is any lack of legal ambiguity but because “what happens in ordinary legal discourse is that an awful lot simply gets converted into odds. Suppose a drug company executive is considering a certain course of action in response to a regulator’s request for documents, and he asks his lawyer if the government could force wider disclosure in a lawsuit. The lawyer might say something like, ‘Your approach is quite likely to be upheld in Court.’ If pressed she might even say, ‘I’d put the odds in your favor at something like 10 to one.’ Of course, on other facts the odds might be very different.
“This is uncertainty, but of a very mundane and manageable sort,” Goldberg said. “It is nothing like the radical lack of knowledge that Job must live with after God speaks out of the whirlwind. … Thus the uncertainty we are quite happy to live with as lawyers is of a very uniform kind. We see it, to a greater or lesser extent, wherever we look in our professional lives. We deal with it, and life goes on. There is nothing like the abyss Job peers into.” Furthermore, Goldberg said, every judge “understands that not to decide is a decision. There is nowhere to hide. You cannot indulge a taste for the unknown.”
Goldberg’s work focuses on the intersection of law, science and religion, and he has taught a wide range of courses and seminars in the 32 years he’s been at the Law Center, including Law and Science, constitutional law, contracts, administrative law, Federal Courts, and Law and Religion. He is the author of Bleached Faith: The Tragic Cost When Religion is Forced into the Public Square (Stanford University Press, 2008), Seduced By Science: How American Religion Has Lost Its Way (New York University Press, 1998) and Culture Clash: Law and Science in America (New York University Press, 1994). A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Goldberg served as a law clerk to Chief Judge David L. Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and to Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court.
James Denny (L’60) practiced law in New York City and Paris for several years, after which he redirected his career to financial and general corporate management. He has served as a senior corporate executive for three Fortune 500 companies and is on the boards of several Catholic colleges and universities. Denny is currently a director of the GATX Corporation, a major railcar leasing company, and lead director of Gilead Sciences Inc., which produces the leading therapy for the treatment of HIV/ AIDS. Catherine Denny has been active in numerous charitable organizations and is currently a director of the newly founded Chicago Jesuit Academy.
“Steve Goldberg is a profound scholar in the areas of science and religion and law. His teaching at the Law Center is legendary. This is a well-deserved honor,” said Dean Alex Aleinikoff. “We are deeply grateful to James Denny and his wife, Catherine, for their generosity in endowing this chair.”
