Abstract
Absent legislative reform, the victim of a sexual assault at the hands of a federal employee may be left without any remedy against either the government or the individual in any venue, state or federal. In this presentation, Professor Sisk will highlight the preclusion of a remedy for sexual assault by a federal agent and the avoidance of federal responsibility, together with a proposed legislative resolution.
Speaker
Professor Gregory Sisk is the Pio Cardinal Laghi Distinguished Chair in Law and Co-director of the Murphy Institute. After law school, Sisk entered into public service, serving in all three branches of the federal government: legislative assistant to a United States Senator, law clerk to a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and appellate specialist with the United States Department of Justice. Subsequent to government service, he was the head of the appellate department for a Seattle law firm. As an appellate attorney, Sisk has handled appeals cases before ten of the thirteen federal courts of appeals and several state appellate courts. Sisk joined the faculty of the Drake University Law School in 1991, where he was appointed the Richard M. & Anita Calkins Distinguished Professor.
Sisk is also the author of a novel, Marital Privilege, published in 2014 by North Star Press, which is a legal drama with a law professor, lawyers, and judges as characters and which is set in the Twin Cities.
Sisk is a nationally-recognized scholar on the subjects of civil litigation with the federal government and empirical (statistical) analysis of judicial decision making; he also writes about federal courts, legal ethics, and constitutional law. He is the author of the casebook, “Litigation With the Federal Government,” which is published by Foundation Press, and a treatise by the same name, which is published by ALI-ABA. Sisk’s empirical work on court decisions was honored with the Article Prize from the Law and Society Association in 1999.
He has remained an active member of the practicing bar, primarily in appellate litigation and as an expert witness or consultant on legal ethics. In recent years, he has briefed cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on civil suits against the federal government and jurisdiction in the Court of Federal Claims. He served as reporter for the Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct Drafting Committee appointed by the Iowa Supreme Court to draft the new set of ethics rules to govern lawyers in Iowa. Sisk also is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
The Common Good Series
The common good, as defined by the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, refers to “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (GS 26). This is undoubtedly a high call to make tangible in a fallen world but one that is necessary for all persons of faith to strive toward in their own capacity.
The Murphy Institute’s “The Common Good” series invites St. Thomas faculty from across the university to explore their own areas of expertise as it relates to the promotion and pursuit of the common good. This initiative is a continuation of the 2020 series “The Common Good in Uncommon Times” which hosted conversations pertinent to the year’s experience within the pandemic, cultural reckoning, and political divisions. As society continues to grapple with these conflicts and many others, “The Common Good” aims to showcase the role each discipline has to play in the building up and fostering of the fulfillment of all peoples.
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