Jack Sammons

Griffin B. Bell Professor of Law

Professor Sammons is the Griffin B. Bell Chair of Law, the former Director of Clinical Education, and the former Associate Dean at the Law School. He teaches courses involving the First Amendment primarily, including the issues surrounding and defining freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and issues regarding the establishment of religion, along with courses concerned with the relationship of law and lawyering to religion more generally. He was selected as the Most Distinguished Professor by the Classes of 2005 and 2007.

To give you a sense of his range of interests, some of his more recent publication titles include: The Law's Melody 2010, Justice as Play 2009, A Rhetoricians View of Religious Speech in Civic Argument 2008,The Moral Obligation of Lawyers to Write Well 2008, The Practice of Law as Parable 2008; Censoring Samba: An Aesthetic Justification for the Protection of Speech 2008; Parables and Pedagogy, 2006; Brainerd Currie Biographical Entry (Yale Encyclopedia of Law) 2005; “Cheater!”: The Central Moral Admonition of Legal Ethics, Games, Lusory Attitudes, Internal Perspectives, and Justice, 2004; Traditionalists, Technicians, and Legal Education, 2003; The Georgia Crawl (An Essay on The Theology of the Practice of Law), 2002; The Theology of the Practice of Law Symposium Afterwards: Four Concerns, 2002; and Counter Productive? Book Review: O'Donovan, Theology of Law and Authority in the English Reformation. He is currently at work on several articles involving an application of phenomenology to our understanding of law.

Most of these recent articles, along with numerous others, can be downloaded from http://ssrn.com/author=54430. Book chapters and other contributions to various collections can be found online as well. The book, Lawyer Professionalism, is available from Carolina Academic Press.

A frequent speaker at symposia, conferences, and at other law schools, Professor Sammons recent presentations include: "The Law's Melody," (Scarpa Symposium, Villanova Law School, 2009), "Virtue and Professional Identity," AALS Section on Clinical Education, Annual Conference, Cleveland 2009), "Rhetoric's Making Strange," (Conference: "Legal Writing Through a Rhetorical Lens," San Diego 2009),"The Practice of Law as Parable," (Seattle University School of Law Symposium "Law, Religion, and Pluralism" 2008); "St. Paul and Free Speech," (Mercer FSCF 2006); "St. Augustine and the Lying Lawyer" (Baylor School of Law, National Conference of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools, 2006). His next scheduled presentation will be “Inevitability in Judicial Opinions,” at the National Conference on Law and the Humanities.

A graduate of Duke, the University of Georgia, and Antioch, with post-graduate work in professional ethics at the University of Nebraska, Professor Sammons serves the practice in a variety of way including serving or having served as: Vice Chair, State Bar of Georgia Task Force on Advertising; Vice Chair, Formal Advisory Opinion Board of the State Bar of Georgia; Executive Committee Member, Georgia/ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Task Force; Chair, Board of Directors, Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest; Georgia Judicial Campaign Ethics Committee; Reporter, Standards of the Bar Committee; National Professionalism Website Advisory Board; Ethics 2000 Advisory Committee; AALS Professional Responsibility Section; AALS Section on Law and Religion; Dan Bradley Fellowship Committee, and he as a founding member of the Georgia Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism. Locally, Professor Sammons has been the Senior Warden and Treasurer, St. James Episcopal Church; Vice President, Macon Film Guild; Treasurer and Board Member, Loaves & Fishes Homeless Services Organization; President, Friends of the Ocmulgee Old Fields; Board of Directors, Ocmulgee National Monument along with several other local non-profit and Macon Bar Association committees. He is currently at work on a local project seeking to concert the Ocmulgee National Monument to a National Park.

SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=54430