Redeeming Law
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 ...
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Bruce Strom
I appreciated your article and agree that many Christian lawyers believe in: "the ennobling purpose of the law,and the servanthood of those who administer it." One of your commenters - Jerry - is obviously unaware of the Center for Law and Culture, www.lawandculture.org. I serve as the chairman of the board of this significant organization which is currently producing a leading treatise to be published by U Penn addressing his very commens. He is also unfamiliar with Adminster Jutice, www.administerjustice.org, a Christian legal aid organizaton I began because of my belief in the servanthood of those who administer justice. I left a very lucrative private law practice to redeem the law for thousands of low-income people in need. I don't know what Jerry is doing but I think he is the one being fooled. Many of us are actively pursuing the enobling purposes of the law and demonstrating servanthood in the administraton of it.
Graham Combs
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.
Isaiah Tor
I highly respect the sentiment expressed by the writer of this article. Yet perhaps whilst we would seek to Christianize many people through the gospel, even as demonstrated through a spiritual perception and consideration of our Judaeo-Christian legal system, we must realize that however influential Christian jurisprudence may be in instructing and preserving the lives of many of the young from rampant moral degradation, we must recognize the world as a system controlled by the god of this age, Satan (as opposed to the sinners therein) can never change. Whilst a Christian lawyer can flourish in an equitable, just and compassionate interpretation of the law, we must be mindful, that no amount of legal instruction apart from the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit can fundamentally and irreversibly transform a person (Rom. 8:3). The dream propounded by this article of a legal paradise is commendable if it does not seek to replace the gospel of God's salvation in Christ by the Spirit.