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November 22, 2008
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Home > 2008 > AugustChristianity Today, August, 2008  |   |  
Redeeming Law
In a cynical society suspicious of lawyers, Christian law schools are decidedly not.



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Bob Cochran came to faith in the early 1970s as a first-year law student at the University of Virginia. His life transformed, the son of a Baptist preacher contemplated leaving law school to go to seminary. At that time, he could imagine no way to express his newfound faith as a lawyer.

Fortunately, Tom Shaffer, a Notre Dame professor who would later write On Being a Christian and a Lawyer, came to Virginia as a visiting professor. A seminar on law and religion met at his home, opening in prayer (Cochran imagined university founder Thomas Jefferson's distress), and ending with beer. Says Cochran: "It was an eye opener." Cochran began to understand how his legal career could be a Christian vocation—an understanding he has spent most of his career developing and passing on to others.

During 25 years teaching at Pepperdine Law School, Cochran has nurtured a growing body of lawyers who believe "Christian lawyer" is no oxymoron. Cochran enthusiastically leads the national Law Professors' Christian Fellowship, writes and edits a growing body of literature on law and religion, directs Pepperdine's Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics (which he founded), and leads a Bible study for law students in his home. The efforts are bearing fruit, at Pepperdine and elsewhere. "Pepperdine has always had a strong Christian emphasis," he says, but in recent years "there's been more thinking about the implications of being a Christian on being a lawyer and on the law."

Until the 1970s, many Americans assumed that they shared a Christian culture, and nowhere was that attitude more pervasive or complacent than in law. Whether in church-related schools or not, law students studied the same basic elements of law set down by Harvard Law in the 1870s: property, contracts, criminal law, civil procedure, evidence, and torts. There was no distinctively Christian way to consider these; people assumed the law was fundamentally compatible with Christian thinking.

Roe v. Wade trashed that assumption, launching culture wars and struggles over religious liberty. Groups like the American Center for Law and Justice sprang up in response, going to court in defense of Christian causes. Gradually, Christian lawyers expanded their thinking beyond controversial court cases. They began to wonder what had become of their profession.

Shark, hired gun, ambulance chaser, and most of all, casuist: harsh images cling to the profession like leeches. So do derogatory jokes. "Every time I hear a lawyer speak to a group of fellow believers," a pastor told Michael Schutt, author of Redeeming Law, "he apologizes for being a lawyer."

Sam Casey, executive director of the Christian Legal Society (cls), says he was typical when he started law school at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution, in the '60s: "I wanted to make it in America." Law offered money, influence, and a membership at the country club. If some entered law school with higher ideals, the intensely competitive grind tended to wear them down. It seemed that success in the law could be measured in billable hours.

Today, Casey sees a "big change in the type of law students. They are coming to law school with a serious faith." Such students form the core of cls chapters at many law schools; they also feed distinctively Christian law schools.

Despite its reputation, law is peculiarly susceptible to Christian thinking. It's not like mathematics, in which religion plays no role; and it's not like psychology, where Christian thinking has always been in tension with other views. "Fundamentally, law in the West is a Judeo-Christian tradition," notes Casey. "Faith-based education is not a novelty, but a renewal."





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Displaying 1 - 3 of 9 comments.See all comments
Stephen Bloom   Posted: August 15, 2008 12:45 PM
This is an exciting time to be a Christian lawyer. We have a unique place of influence in the lives of our clients and in the broader culture. The opportunity for us to be peacemakers, to be witnesses for the love of Christ, even in the high stakes realm of the law, presents us with unparalleled responsibility as well. Will we help our clients find the reconciliation and joy that God intends for them? Or will we entice them down a typical secular legal path toward retribitution, revenge and destruction? The choice is ours. As a Christian attorney with 20-plus years of experience in private practice, I know firsthand that the former is far preferable to the latter! Note: Stephen Bloom is author of "The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues" (Living Ink Books, 2008)

Graham Combs   Posted: August 23, 2008 8:29 PM
I graduated from CUNY Law School in 1994. Its hostility to Christianity intimidated Catholic and evangelical students alike. Not to mention Federalist Society members. Challenging the prevailing law on abortion made me a pariah. Constitutional , contracts, and property law were politicized beyond recognition. Domestic relations law prepared lawyers to challenge marriage. Anyone who underestimates the prevailing ambitions in the ABA and law schools is not paying attention. Witness the bloodsport we call federal and state judical appointments. CUNY is not exceptional in its approach to legal education. It isn't surprising that schools produce cafeteria lawyers and a legal buffet. Kelo v. New London is not an abberation. The Supreme Court is tempted by failed international norms even as the caprice of tribal paleocivics is made an equal to rule of law. Judeo-Christian roots and Ango-American common law are critical to training future lawyers and judges.

John   Posted: August 15, 2008 2:26 PM
As a lawyer, I found this article really remarkable. We often get lost in the billable hour and the demands that our clients put on us, it's nice to read a piece about how we can re-frame what we do and how we do it in a way that honors God!

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