Hinckley Institute of Politics Law Day Panel
Monday, April 5 to begin at noon
“Law in the 21st Century: Enduring Traditions, Emerging Challenges”
Moderator: Randy Dryer, Shareholder, Parsons, Behle & Latimer
Panelists: -Chief Justice Christine M. Durham
-Dean Hiram Chodosh, S.J. Quinney School of Law, University of Utah
-Stephen Owens, Utah State Bar
The topic for the panel will focus primarily on the challenges the legal community is facing in the 21st Century. The law is changing dramatically as it seeks to shape and adapt to new conditions and circumstances. Some of the challenges to be discussed are as follows:
-How to expand and maintain access to justice when economic distress has undermined a community's ability to support basic legal services for the poor?
-How to preserve due process in the digital age when technical innovations make us question what is real and what is imagined?
-How to ensure a jury system is impervious to bias or prejudice when communication devices tempt jurors to tweet or blog about a trial or to research a case before a verdict is rendered?
-How to preserve the core values of an ethical, independent, legal profession in the U.S. when these core values in other countries are being "modified" in order to compete more profitably in a global economy?