Mark Fischler

Mark Fischler

Mark Fischler is a Professor of Criminal justice and current program coordinator for the criminal justice and criminology programs at Plymouth State University. Prior to joining the Plymouth State faculty, he practiced law, representing poor criminal defendants for the New Hampshire Public Defender’s Office. Mark has worked extensively with alternative theoretical models in law, constitutional law, and higher education, and has published on integral applications to teaching, being a lawyer, and legal theory. His focus in the classroom is ethics and criminal procedure, and is well respected for a teaching philosophy that emphasizes recognizing the humanity and dignity of each student. Professor Fischler was awarded the outstanding teaching award at his university in 2014. He currently offers a weekly Spiritual Inquiry class through Satya Yoga Studio.

Website: http://www.markjfischler.com/

Posts by Mark Fischler

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Between Hope and History: An Integral View on Israel-Palestine

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Mark Fischler and Corey deVos bring some integral perspective to the Israel-Palestine conflict, navigating the multiple nested contexts that make this issue one of the most enduring and complex in modern history. The conversation explores the critical tensions between different historical legacies, cultural identities, and political intricacies, all contributing to a seemingly intractable conflict that defies simplistic narratives. With deep compassion and empathy, Mark and Corey acknowledge the ongoing violence and suffering experienced by people on both sides, underscoring the urgent need for solutions that address these deep-rooted issues.

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From Socrates to Social Media: Renewing Our Commitment to Free Speech

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Mark Fischler and Corey deVos are joined by Nadine Strossen, a renowned advocate for free speech and former president of the ACLU, to traverse the rich history and the evolving frontier of free speech — a legacy that reaches from the philosophical debates of ancient Greece to today’s dynamic platforms of social media. Together, Nadine, Mark, and Corey illuminate the journey of free speech (a crowning achievement of the rational/modern (Orange) stage) celebrating it as a beacon of individual rights and a testament to the unyielding human pursuit of truth and expression.

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Building a Just World: How Our Laws Express Our Collective Values

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Constitutional law expert and criminal justice professor Mark Fischler has a thirst for justice and a gift for teaching. With cogency and passion, Mark explains that law is not the absolute that we perhaps thought, but an ever changing reflection of the values we hold as a society. Law is a developmental process, and will benefit from our own dedication to inner moral development.

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Transform the Police: A More Integral Approach to Law Enforcement

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Mark and Corey are joined by Chris Orrey, a retired police lieutenant with over 30 years of service with the Hayward, California Police Department, to discuss the abuse and resulting death of Tyre Nichols, who was severely beaten and ultimately killed by five Memphis police officers after a routine traffic stop. What allowed this tragedy (and others like it) to take place? What sorts of personal, cultural, and institutional transformation are necessary to prevent something like this from occurring again?

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Taking Justice Personally

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Mark and Corey offer an intimate sharing of their personal stories, reflecting on some of the most formative experiences in their own lives that influenced their interest and enactment of justice. It is a tender and heartfelt conversation that we hope not only allows you to better understand their own passions and perspectives, but also invites you to reflect in a similar way on the critical fulcrums in your own life, and how these experiences continue to shape your standards of goodness, integrity, and justice.

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Abortion, Freedom, and the Sanctity of Life

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Watch as Cindy Wigglesworth, Mark Fischler, and Corey deVos take a careful look at the Supreme Court’s deeply controversial decision to overrule Roe vs. Wade, and the subsequent banning of abortion access in dozens of states across the country. How does something like the sanctity of life change from one developmental stage to another? How do integral “metaphysics of wholeness” inform our views? Watch to find out.

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What’s Wrong With Education (And How Can We Fix It?)

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Broken education produces broken people. How can integral perspectives and practices help our education systems generate more happy, healthy, and wholesome kids? Watch as Mark and Corey take a close look at the many dysfunctions, injustices, and failures we see in our education system — both within the system (how and what kids are being taught) as well as surrounding the system (access to education, funding, etc.).

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An Integral Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

The following article outlines the major approaches to constitutional interpretation and explains how either approach on its own ultimately leads to a narrow and incomplete understanding of the law, which ignores the rich reality that both interior and exterior perspectives carry. The author will introduce Integral Legal Theory as a method of interpretation that will allow each perspective its day in court while offering coherence to a jurisprudence gone slightly mad.

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Justice Breyer, Originalism, and the Engine of Enfoldment

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Mark and Corey take a look at the life, legacy, and retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and what distinguished his judgements and legal philosophy from other Supreme Court Justices. We then examine the legal doctrine of “originalism” — the idea that our founding documents should only be interpreted according to the specific contexts and understandings of the time they were written.

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Wicked Problems: Bringing Wisdom and Compassion to Immigration

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Immigration matters have been viewed by many as a “wicked problem” — implying a complexity that has sets of values in tension, something societies have dealt with since the very dawn of civilization itself. Watch as Magdalena, Mark, and Corey offer their own ideas and reflect on the reasons this issue has become one of the central fault lines in the culture wars.

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Israel/Palestine: Where Do We Go From Here?

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Watch as Magdalena, Mark, and corey explore the long and complex history of the region, offer their own thoughts on whether Israel qualifies as an “apartheid state”, and suggest some next step solutions in order to inch ourselves closer to genuine peace, stability, and justice for the men, women, and children on all sides of this seemingly intractable conflict.

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What’s Wrong With Policing in America?

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Why do we see so many cases of apparent police abuse being recorded so frequently, but punished so rarely? What are some possible solutions that can help create more social trust for our police organizations, and a more peaceful society for all of us? Watch as Mark and Corey take a careful look at the Derek Chauvin verdict — and at the state of policing itself in America — as they offer their own personal views and try to sort through the conflicting narratives surrounding this tragically controversial cultural fault line.

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Heartbreak in Boulder: Finding Meaning in the Wake of Tragedy

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On March 22nd, a mass shooting took place at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado which claimed the lives of 10 people. What follows is a heart-full conversation that invites all of us to bring more awareness to the full spectrum of emotion that is likely moving through all of us right now, a much-needed reminder that the integral heart is big enough for all of this, because it is a heart that is both utterly unbreakable, as well as always-already broken.

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Biden’s First Month, Trump’s Second Impeachment, and Cancelling Cancel Culture

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How is the Biden Presidency going so far? Will Donald Trump be convicted in the Senate for his impeachment trial? Now that the political left has regained tentative control of our government, what do we do about “cancel culture” and other illiberal tendencies coming from the left? Watch this latest episode of Integral Justice Warrior as Mark and Corey shine a light upon these three questions.

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Insurrection, Censorship, and Madness

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Mark and Corey take an in-depth look at the heart-breaking events at the Capitol, offering their own full-spectrum response to this American travesty. They also discuss the response coming from corporations such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook, who are now beginning to purge their platforms of far-right voices and Q anon supporters. Is censorship ever the right thing to do? If you think you have a simple answer to the question, you might be missing something important.

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Supreme Court, Systemic Racism, and Sea Monsters

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Mark and Corey discuss the state of Trump’s challenges to the election results (e.g. “The Kraken”), the recent Supreme Court decision around religious liberties in the face of a pandemic, and what it says about Amy Coney Barrett’s future tenure as Supreme Court Justice, and whether Joe Biden’s plans to address racial justice are coming from healthy liberal values and methods of enforcement, or from unhealthy illiberal (woke) values and enforcement.

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Doing Justice: Integral Law and the Mueller Report

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In this new monthly series with Mark Fischler, we take a look at some of the most pressing and most complex issues of our time through the lens of Integral Law. In this special premiere episode Mark describes his own background, how he arrived at this fascinating intersection between the integral world and the legal world, and what exactly he means by the phrase “integral law”. Mark and Corey then turn their attention to the big story of our day — the Mueller report — offering their own views about the investigation, Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Mueller Report, and how this story might play out in the weeks and months to come.