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Religious Lawyering: Defining Our Terms


What characterizes the "religious lawyering" conversation is its focus on how religious values and perspectives may provide a completely different structural framework for an approach to professional life.

Religious lawyering insists that there should be room in the profession for lawyers to integrate religious perspectives and substantive critiques to the issues which arise not just at the margins, but at the heart of ordinary day-to-day legal practice.

It suggests that this is a conversation to be held not just within the quiet of one's individual conscience, but as an open dialogue and debate in law offices, in judge's chambers, in legislatures, and even in law schools.

Russ Pearce and Amy Uelmen trace religious lawyering's history and current agenda in the following book chapters and law articles:

  • Religious Lawyering in a Theologal Democracy in Whose Good Rules a Theolegal Nation (forthcoming Georgetown U. Press).
  • Religious Lawyering's Second Wave, 21 J. Law & Religion 269-281 (2005-2006). Download PDF. (also in BENCH AND BAR: ETHICS, published by ICFAI (Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India) (2008).
  • Religious Lawyering in a Liberal Democracy: A Challenge and an Invitation, 55 Case Western Reserve L. Rev. 127-160 (2004). Download PDF. (also in MORALITY, JUSTICE AND THE LAW: THE CONTINUING DEBATE (M. Katherine B. Darmer & Robert M. Baird, eds., Prometheus 2007).

For a brief overview of the project:

  • What's Faith Got To Do With It? Rose Kent, Fordham Lawyer. Download PDF.