Teaching Youth to Learn from Our Mistakes
First Published April 28, 2007 in The Daily Item
May 1 is Law Day. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day by proclamation in 1958. The purpose of the day is to celebrate the American legal system and honor those who work to uphold and serve its principles. Each year the American Bar Association chooses a Law Day theme. This year's theme calls on us to consider how the law might better serve our nation's youth and equip them to become effective citizens in our democracy.
The Joint State Government Commission Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions was authorized by Senate Resolution 381, created under the leadership of Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, and is chaired by Duquesne Law Professor John Rago. Resolution 381 recognizes that at least eight individuals have been exonerated in Pennsylvania through post-conviction DNA testing, including one on death row.
It is important to understand why these wrongful convictions occurred to prevent similar miscarriages of justice; and to understand that, by incarcerating an innocent person, it is likely a guilty person remains free to commit additional crimes. The committee is called upon to examine the known wrongful convictions and recommend reforms.
The greatest lessons in life are those that are learned from mistakes. The establishment of this committee and the work it will do serve our youth in important ways. It tells our young not to cover up their own mistakes, or quickly write them off as unlikely to reoccur or insignificant in the big picture, but instead to celebrate them as a way of learning and improving. Our legal system and the citizens of this great nation, young and old alike, should respond to the discovery of mistakes in the way that science responds. Mistakes create an opportunity to expand knowledge and for improvement. We see this approach taken by hospital review committees, which study errors that occur in a hospital setting, and by National Transportation Safety Board examinations of plane crashes to determine causation.
Today's young will also benefit from an improved justice system. To the extent humanly possible, let us create for their adult life a criminal justice system free from the known systemic flaws that have led to 200 post-conviction DNA exonerations around the country.
Let us also engage our young people in discussions about the important work to be done by this committee, and what lessons there are for all of us to learn. Susquehanna University is taking an important step in that direction by creating units of study for high school students on wrongful convictions. These units of study provide educational opportunities that will serve our youth as citizens and in their daily lives.
Given the work of Sen. Greenleaf and his colleagues, Pennsylvanians have special reasons to celebrate Law Day 2007.
Allan Sobel is director of the Arlin M. Adams Center for Law and Society at Susquehanna University.
