Welcome to God, Man, and Law. The intent of this, and future posts, is to attempt to restore public confidence in the legal system by explaining and discussing the Biblical and moral principles that serve as the foundation of our legal system. I will discuss past and present decisions and topics and address their implications in an effort to help promote justice for all. It is also my intent to point out where cases or topics have strayed from Biblical and moral principles and the resulting implications on justice and society.
Unfortunately modern legal education has been largely purged of its Biblical foundations and this has had a detrimental impact on the practice of law ever since. Since our Nation's founding until sometime past 1850, most lawyers were not trained in law schools but in law offices. That is not to say that there were no law schools - from 1829 to 1945, Harvard Law School earned great respect under the leadership of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. In 1869, however, Charles William Elliot became President of the school and it was then that legal education changed. Elliot hired Christopher Columbus Langdell, who began the "purge" and replaced teaching the law as based on Biblical and moral principles with the emerging trend of the day, the scientific method. Within 10 months of Langdell's hiring, he became Dean of the law school, a position he held for the next 25 years.
During this time, he developed what became known as the Langdellian method of teaching law that spread across the Nation and is in current use today. Prior to the Langdellian method, students would receive a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries and a Bible, and legal instructors would lecture on general rules and then provide examples of their application in particular cases. The basis of the Langdellian method, on the other hand, was not only science and the scientific method, but that the law was governed by an evolutionary principle of growth. The method may sound familiar to many lawyers and law students today - take a collection of case opinions, present them in a text book for students to read and study. Thereafter, the reasoning of the judges, and the students, would be questioned until generalized rules of law could become refined and extracted from the daily deliberations.
Langdell's philosophy, as stated in his own preface to his book, Cases on Contracts, 1879, was that "Law, considered as a science, consists of certain principles or doctrines...Each of these doctrines has arrived at its present state by slow degrees; in other words, it is a growth, extending in many cases through centuries. This growth is to be traced in the main through a series of cases; and much the shortest and best, if not the only way of mastering the doctrine effectually, is by studying the case in which is it embodied." In other words, the law was ever evolving.
Nothing, however, tends to make lawyers more frustrated than having shifting standards. We love bright line tests and certainty. Our clients like the same. It is very cliche now that the average attorney's answer to a client's every question is "it depends." This is also the primary reason why most people have little faith and confidence in the law and justice. The idea that the law evolves, or "grows," necessarily implies that the rules of the game will change over time and have little certainty. This erosion of public confidence is further damaged when our legislatures engage in similar conduct by enacting new changes to existing laws, or passing laws that are redundant or otherwise unnecessary. Recent examples that come to mind are yearly changes to the nonjudicial foreclosure statutes, paralyzing banks and borrowers alike as well as investors and ordinary home buyers. Another example would include creating the new traffic infraction of driving while texting or using a cell phone. This infraction was intended to stop people from texting and driving, or talking on a cell phone and driving. Such conduct would already be considered negligent driving, a serious moving violation affecting one's insurance rates. The new cell phone violation is only treated as a non-moving violation and never affects your insurance rates. Not only is this law redundant, but it hardly serves its intended purpose and has become a useful option to generate revenue for county and local municipalities as an amendment to a more serious violation. The Counties or Cities get the fine money without a fight from the defendant who only wants t protect his or her insurance rates. This is hardly justice, and definitely not confidence inspiring.
These and other subjects will be presented and discussed frequently and it is my hope that everyone reading this will enjoy, learn, teach, and benefit from all the posts. Ideally if the legal system overall could be transformed as a result, generating greater confidence in the law, my goal will have been accomplished.
Thanks.
Soli Deo Gloria!
