Shawn Marie Boyne

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Welcome to my Website

If you have found your way to my website, you have been spending too much time at your computer. Go take a walk, read a book, or hug your loved one. For those of you who are neurotic enough to continue reading, I am a former criminal trial lawyer currently working on my Ph.D. in comparative politics at the University of Wisconsin. It appears that I am nearing the seventh inning of this endeavor, though my parents hope that I am closer to point in the game when the vendors run out of warm food.

For almost ten years, I served as a prosecutor and then as a criminal defense attorney in New Mexico. Although I loved the practice of law, I walked away from it when battling for justice entailed viewing too many visions of violence. I embarked on this quest for a Ph.D. hoping to be able to spend time contemplating the links between law and politics on a more theoretical plane.

But, in my first weeks at the University of Wisconsin, the tragedy of 9/11 struck. In the buildup to the Iraq war, I had difficulty appreciating the nuances of the differences between quantitative and qualitative methods in the field of political science. Instead I was drawn to researching and writing about the legal framework of our nation’s response to terrorism from a comparative standpoint. The contrast between America’s decision to declare war and Germany’s attempt to craft a response to terrorism constrained within a legal framework has led me to more deeply explore the connections between politics, legal culture, and history. That is the journey I am now on……I still hope someday to live in an America that lives up to the promise of its ideals, rather than under a regime that exploits the gaps between the rich and the poor and the privileged and dispossessed... One cannot respect a government that claims to operate in the name of a faith founded on fear, power, and tax breaks.

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