by In his book, American Lawyers and Their Communities, Thomas Shaffer envisions a downtown street. On one side of the street is a house of worship; on the other is a courthouse. According to Shaffer, American law schools train lawyers to look at the religious congregation from the courthouse–that is to analyze the problems that the religious congregation creates for the law. Law schools ignore the possibility that there might be a view of the courthouse from the house of worship.
“Prophetic witness is discounted in law teaching. Our part of the academy, more than any other, has systematically discouraged and disapproved of invoking the religious tradition as important or even interesting. It ignores the community of the faithful so resolutely that even its students who have come to law school from the community of the faithful learn to look at the [religious congregation] from the courthouse, rather than at the courthouse from [the religious congregation].”
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