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Howard Vogel

"Law is artwork in pursuit of justice, performed by lawyers in a social context, through the craft of counseling and advocacy. If it is to be practiced elegantly, it requires mastery and compassion."

Professor Vogel is known for not only teaching the principles of law, but also for helping students learn how to think seriously about their professional identity as lawyers. Trained in both law and theology, Professor Vogel's teaching and research is located at the intersection of law, religion and ethics and focuses on the possibilities of law to serve the common good in a diverse social and cultural context. He teaches Constitutional Law, Restorative Justice, International Human Rights, and a seminar in ethics that explores the lawyer's professional identity and responsibility within the context of the quest for integrity in the practice of law. In 2005, as an extension of this seminar, he created a program of continuing education for lawyers entitled The Courage to Practice Law with Integrity. In recent years his teaching and scholarship have increasingly been devoted to exploring the promise of restorative justice as an approach to conflict resolution for social healing based on social justice principles.

Prior to joining Hamline, Professor Vogel did extensive public interest litigation in environmental law and was staff attorney with the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group.

Professor Vogel's current research and writing is devoted to two major projects, both of which are related to restorative justice as a response to the legacy of the dispossession of indigenous people from their homelands and the problem of the color-line in the United States. The first of these is entitled The Restorative Justice Wager and the Trauma of America's Past: The Promise and Hope of a Value-Based, Dialogue-Driven Approach to Conflict Resolution for Social Healing of the Wounds from the Dark Side of the American Experiment. This project involves an exploration of the potential of restorative justice practices and principles as a creative response to the legacy of ethnic cleansing and slavery in the United States. The dispossession of the indigenous peoples of their land which was then worked with slave labor based on the color-line have brought a legacy of trauma to both the victims and beneficiaries of these practices which is evident in a host of data about widespread social dislocation, dysfunction and injustice in the present day. This project explores the potential of restorative justice to address the full truth of that past with courage as a step toward the development of action aimed at creative transformation in the present so that all life may flourish.

The second project is entitled: Wo-o-hoda in Minisota Makoce: Taking Respect Seriously in the Encounter with the Sacred as an Act of Hope for a Shared Future in the Land where the Waters Reflect the Skies. This project involves the application of restorative justice principles to the study of collaborative efforts by the Indigenous Peoples and the Descendants of Immigrants in the State of Minnesota to pursue the possibilities of true partnership in recovering the truth of the past on the road to justice and reconciliation in order to transcend the traumatic history of the 19th century, and especially the disastrous legacy of the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862. One aspect of this work involves the study of disputes over the protection of Native American sacred sites on public and private land, and possibilities of developing a reparative response to these disputes through the restorative dialogue processes of restorative justice as a means for securing reconciliation in the American republic. Reports on this work are posted and periodically updated on the internet at Sacred Sites & Human Rights.

For over twenty-five years he has been an active member of the Society of Christian Ethics and is co-founder of the Restorative Justice Interest Group of the Society. Since 1989 he has served as one of the editors of the Journal of Law and Religion.

In 2003 Professor Vogel received the highest award given by the Hamline University Board of Trustees, the John Wesley Trustee Award for Faculty for outstanding commitment to leadership and service.

Previously Professor Vogel has taught in Budapest, Hungary as a member of the faculty of the Hamline University School of Law Dispute Resolution Institute Summer Program (2005), in Jerusalem, Israel as a member of the faculty of the Hamline-Hebrew University Summer Program in Law, Religion & Ethics (1994 & 1995), as Visiting Professor in the Doctor of Ministry Summer Program at Emory University Theological Seminary (1986), and as Visiting Professor in the Political Science Department of the University of Minnesota (1989-90 & 1996-97). He received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Minnesota, and his Master of Arts in Religious Studies from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.

Selected Publications

• The “Ordered Liberty” of Substantive Due Process and the Future of Constitutional Law as a Rhetorical Art: Variations on a Them, 70 Albany Law Review (forthcoming Dec. 2006).
• Reframing Rights from the Ground Up: The Contribution of the New UN Law of Self-Determination to Recovering the Principle of Sociability on the Way to a Relational Theory of International Human Rights for the 21st Century, 20 TEMPLE INT’L & COMP. L.J. 443 (2006).
• African Americans and the Right to Self-Determination in a Christian Context, 22 J. SOC. CHRISTIAN ETHICS 201 (2002).
• The Terrible Bind of the Lawyer in the Modern World: The Problem of Hope, the Question of Identity, and the Recovery of Meaning, 32 SETON HALL L. REV. 152 (2001).
• The Clash of Stories at Chimney Rock: A Narrative Approach to Cultural Conflict over Native American Sacred Sites on Public Land, 41 SANTA CLARA L. REV. 757 (2001). PDF
• The Judicial Oath and the American Creed: Comments on Sanford Levinson's The Confrontation of Religious Faith and Civil Religion, 39 DEPAUL L. REV. 1107 (1990). PDF
• In the Cause of Justice: Reflections on Robert Cover's Turn Toward Narrative, 7 J.L. & RELIGION 173 (1989). PDF
• Welfare Rights and the Constitutional Ethic of Justice Thurgood Marshall, ANN’L SOC’Y CHRISTIAN ETHICS, 93 (A. Anderson ed. 1986).
• Social Ethics as a Resource for Constitutional Adjudication, ANN’L SOC’Y CHRISTIAN ETHICS, 273 (L. Rasmussen ed. 1984).
• The Wild Rice Mystique: Resource Management and American Indians' Rights as a Problem of Law and Culture, 10 WM. MITCHELL L. REV. 743 (1979) (with Charlene Smith). PDF
• A Survey and Commentary on the New Literature in Law and Religion, 1 J. L. & RELIGION, 79 (1983). PDF
• The Case for Brain Death Legislation: A Response to the Critics, 62 MINN. MED. 121 (1979) (with William H. Manning).
• The Possibilities of American Constitutional Law in a Fractured World: A Relational Approach to Legal Hermeneutics, 83 U. DET. MERCY L. REV. 789 (2006).