Sherrard Conversation | "The Heart Balm Torts, an American Anachronism"

All members of the Inn are welcome to attend - please book a ticket

The Honourable J. Matthew Martin in conversation with Joshua Xerri.

In this session the Honourable J.Matthew Martin will discuss the heart balm torts: alienation of affections and criminal conversation, civil actions that the United Kingdom abandoned fifty years ago, but which still exist in Hawaii, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah. They allow cuckolded spouses to sue for "injuries" to their marriages. While these may seem quaint or even the fodder for jokes, in North Carolina they are no joke, as unsuspecting defendants have found out.

The Honorable J. Matthew Martin is the first American Bar Association(ABA) Tribal Court Fellow. In 2013 Judge Martin retired from the Cherokee Court, the Tribal Court for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians after eleven years of service. He has written extensively on issues of traffic safety among the United States’ indigenous population and the jurisdiction of Tribal Courts. His book, “The Cherokee Supreme Court: 1823-1835" is being published this fall by Carolina Academic Press. Judge Martin has spoken nationally and internationally on issues ranging from federal Indian law to criminal law and the judicial process. For over 25 years, Judge Martin has been Board Certified as a Specialist in Federal and State Criminal Law by the North Carolina State Bar.  In the 1991 Term, at age 31, he argued Wade v. United States before the Supreme Court of the United States.  He received a BA with Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD from the UNC School of Law.  He also holds a Ph.D. in Judicial Studies from the University of Nevada-Reno.  In 2014 the ABA’s National Conference of Specialized Court Judges awarded him the Franklin Flaschner Award, as the United States’ outstanding specialized court judge.
 

[Bookings will open at 18:00 on Friday 18 December]