Papers by Nathan Goetting
Discourse Magazine, 2024
The Supreme Court could've helped solve the problem of wrongful convictions based on the discredi... more The Supreme Court could've helped solve the problem of wrongful convictions based on the discredited "Shaken Baby Syndrome" hypothesis by writing a strong, forward-thinking opinion vindicating the rights of an obviously innocent grandmother. Instead, by ordering Shirlee Ree Smith back to prison, even while acknowledging she likely hadn’t killed her grandson, it announced that the Constitution provided no protection to the thousands condemned by an outdated hypothesis. It’s likely that many of these inmates are innocent parents, falsely labelled baby killers, struggling to be believed as they grieve their lost children. Robert Roberson, who many be the next to visit Texas's death house, is among them.
Discourse Magazine, 2024
The legal rules regarding entrapment are a confusing, unworkable mess. At the state level, entra... more The legal rules regarding entrapment are a confusing, unworkable mess. At the state level, entrapment can mean one thing in one state and something fundamentally different in another. In federal courts, where the entrapment defense is most needed, it hardly exists at all, which has caused a full-blown crisis of confidence in our criminal justice system.
The court should send a message to police and the nation by clearly adopting the outrageous government conduct defense, as defined by Justice Rehnquist in Russell v. U.S.. The definition of outrageous conduct— “shocking to the universal sense of justice”—may seem vague, subjective, and written at a high level of abstraction, but its meaning will become clearer and more concrete every time it’s applied to the facts of a new case. With time, the court can develop a case law tradition that enforces universal standards of decency for police behavior.
Discourse Magazine, 2024
The American death penalty is rooted in irreconcilable philosophical and legal contradictions. Th... more The American death penalty is rooted in irreconcilable philosophical and legal contradictions. The Constitution requires heightened rational review of every case. At the same time, the deaths are motivated by the most irrational impulses of all—rage and revenge. The Constitution also prohibits gratuitously degrading inmates, yet every killing method ever used has a history of degenerating into something out of a Rob Zombie movie.
On January 25, 2024, Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith by inert gas asphyxiation (also known as “nitrogen hypoxia”), a method never tried before on a prisoner. After decades in prison and numerous appeals, Smith died the death of an unlucky laboratory animal—suffering terror, torture, experimentation. It was only after a second execution attempt that death finally came—and that’s perhaps one of the most outrageous parts of his ignominious story.
Discourse Magazine, 2024
If elected, our nation will likely survive another Trump administration. It will not survive, at... more If elected, our nation will likely survive another Trump administration. It will not survive, at least as we know it, if the constricted version of the First Amendment that the Colorado Supreme Court gave to Coloradans [in the Trump case]—and that the highest court in our land chose not to overturn—is nationalized.
Discourse Magazine, 2024
Safetyism’s proponents contend that students can't learn if stressed. They have it precisely back... more Safetyism’s proponents contend that students can't learn if stressed. They have it precisely backwards: Students can’t learn unless stressed—so long as it’s the right kind of stress and is administered in the right doses. The “Safe Space” signs decorating faculty office doors and email signatures teach the wrong lesson. They inculcate young minds with the presumption that other spaces on campus, including classrooms, are dangerous. They aren’t. They’re nothing compared to the cruel world that awaits them after they graduate, anyway. Nothing dispels fear of something faster than understanding how it works, as I learned as a young driver when I figured out how to change a tire. By welcoming onto campus the loathsome figure of the censor, safetyism reinforces anxiety and impedes the kind of understanding that makes the world around us less scary.
Discourse Magazine, 2024
The most important case the court has ever heard on the First Amendment right to exchange ideas o... more The most important case the court has ever heard on the First Amendment right to exchange ideas on campuses is Keyishian v. Board of Regents, decided in 1967. The time has long since passed for the Supreme Court to end the current academic reign of terror the way it ended the last one, by clearing stating what the First Amendment law of academic freedom is. And that should start with a demonstrated respect for its Keyshian decision: Without that, the confusing and chaotic campus free speech climate will no doubt continue.
Adapted from Our Emersonian First Amendment and Written Testimony for the Ohio House of Representatives Committee on Higher Education on the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act (H.B. No 151), listed below.
Discourse Magazine
Academic administrators tend to be neither educators nor scholars. At the higher levels—president... more Academic administrators tend to be neither educators nor scholars. At the higher levels—presidents, provosts and deans—they function as executives and personnel managers. Some may have been promoted from the faculty and may still teach and publish, but when acting in their administrative capacities, they assume a fundamentally different role. Their primary purpose is to protect the “great conversation” that should be happening on their campuses by creating the best environment possible for teaching and learning. Guaranteeing open fora for the free exchange of ideas is essential to achieving that purpose. Given the natural inclination to censor when confronted by transgressive speech and the ascent of the new post-liberal ideology, this is hard work. Administrators must be proactive and vigilant to ensure that discourse on campuses has room to breathe. Instead, too many are helping to smother it.
Discourse Magazine, 2023
The most essential aspect of a student’s identity should be that of truth-seeker. Their common qu... more The most essential aspect of a student’s identity should be that of truth-seeker. Their common quest for knowledge should bring all students, regardless of the other aspects of their identity, together in a common cause. But that’s far from the way things are on today’s college campuses, where identity is far more atomizing than uniting. This environment is a far cry from what Plato envisioned he founded the first university about 2,500 years ago. He recognized that the discovery of truth comes through free-ranging discussion and debate. This applies to all intellectual pursuits, even those where there is profound disagreement. He also believed that the difference between Greeks, whom he thought civilized, and the barbarians was that when Greeks disagreed with one another resolved disputes with argumentation rather than violence—with reason, not rage.
Following Plato’s guidance, college campuses should be special enclaves carved out of the larger society where every other social interest is subordinate to the pursuit of knowledge. No question sincerely asked and no viewpoint honestly expressed should be discouraged on our campuses, no matter the offense it might cause. After all, some of the scholarship’s greatest discoveries—that the earth traveled around the sun, for instance—were first condemned as offensive.
Discourse Magazine, 2023
Thousands of wrongful convictions over the past few decades have shown that juries are far less r... more Thousands of wrongful convictions over the past few decades have shown that juries are far less reliable than we thought. That’s turned the finality of jury decisions into a problem: The near-unreviewable status of jury verdicts often makes the path to exoneration for innocent inmates a prolonged, painful, often futile slog. Innocent people have died in prison because of it.
Discourse Magazine, 2022
Examines how rulings of the Supreme Court facilitate wrongful convictions.
The University of Toledo Law Review, 2022
GVSU Koeze Business Ethics Initiative , 2022
We’re in the midst of a free speech crisis. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as we’... more We’re in the midst of a free speech crisis. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as we’ve come to know it over the past century, is in trouble...Today’s free speech crisis might be different. Those of the past involved a failure to live up to our ideals. Lately we’ve begun to lose faith in them altogether.
The problems stem from two causes. The first has always been with us and, given human nature, always will be. The second is unprecedented and, like a political whirlwind, is beginning to wipe free speech from the landscape...
National Association of African American Studies & Affiliates 2020 Monograph Series, 2020
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Papers by Nathan Goetting
The court should send a message to police and the nation by clearly adopting the outrageous government conduct defense, as defined by Justice Rehnquist in Russell v. U.S.. The definition of outrageous conduct— “shocking to the universal sense of justice”—may seem vague, subjective, and written at a high level of abstraction, but its meaning will become clearer and more concrete every time it’s applied to the facts of a new case. With time, the court can develop a case law tradition that enforces universal standards of decency for police behavior.
On January 25, 2024, Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith by inert gas asphyxiation (also known as “nitrogen hypoxia”), a method never tried before on a prisoner. After decades in prison and numerous appeals, Smith died the death of an unlucky laboratory animal—suffering terror, torture, experimentation. It was only after a second execution attempt that death finally came—and that’s perhaps one of the most outrageous parts of his ignominious story.
Adapted from Our Emersonian First Amendment and Written Testimony for the Ohio House of Representatives Committee on Higher Education on the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act (H.B. No 151), listed below.
Following Plato’s guidance, college campuses should be special enclaves carved out of the larger society where every other social interest is subordinate to the pursuit of knowledge. No question sincerely asked and no viewpoint honestly expressed should be discouraged on our campuses, no matter the offense it might cause. After all, some of the scholarship’s greatest discoveries—that the earth traveled around the sun, for instance—were first condemned as offensive.
The problems stem from two causes. The first has always been with us and, given human nature, always will be. The second is unprecedented and, like a political whirlwind, is beginning to wipe free speech from the landscape...
The court should send a message to police and the nation by clearly adopting the outrageous government conduct defense, as defined by Justice Rehnquist in Russell v. U.S.. The definition of outrageous conduct— “shocking to the universal sense of justice”—may seem vague, subjective, and written at a high level of abstraction, but its meaning will become clearer and more concrete every time it’s applied to the facts of a new case. With time, the court can develop a case law tradition that enforces universal standards of decency for police behavior.
On January 25, 2024, Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith by inert gas asphyxiation (also known as “nitrogen hypoxia”), a method never tried before on a prisoner. After decades in prison and numerous appeals, Smith died the death of an unlucky laboratory animal—suffering terror, torture, experimentation. It was only after a second execution attempt that death finally came—and that’s perhaps one of the most outrageous parts of his ignominious story.
Adapted from Our Emersonian First Amendment and Written Testimony for the Ohio House of Representatives Committee on Higher Education on the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act (H.B. No 151), listed below.
Following Plato’s guidance, college campuses should be special enclaves carved out of the larger society where every other social interest is subordinate to the pursuit of knowledge. No question sincerely asked and no viewpoint honestly expressed should be discouraged on our campuses, no matter the offense it might cause. After all, some of the scholarship’s greatest discoveries—that the earth traveled around the sun, for instance—were first condemned as offensive.
The problems stem from two causes. The first has always been with us and, given human nature, always will be. The second is unprecedented and, like a political whirlwind, is beginning to wipe free speech from the landscape...