The Ministry of Litigation

Almost every Christian student who considers law school is confronted with a peculiar question: Is it possible to be a Christian lawyer? This question arises primarily from a bad reputation promoted mostly by popular fiction and a misunderstanding of the reality of practicing law, that lawyers will do or say anything to win on behalf of their clients. Particularly troubling to many is an apparent mercenary willingness for attorneys to sell their services to paying clients, even if the attorneys themselves do not believe in the clients’ cause and even if the client is facially wrong or unrighteous.

Even in law school, believing law students confront their siblings who aspire to litigation with the same question: How can a Christian be a litigator? This concern arises from the apparent conflict between a Christian pursuit of peace, reconciliation, cheek turning and general humility and the role of advocates in an adversarial system. How can you fight and brawl and litigate in a spirit consistent with Jesus?

As a litigator, engaged in heated conflicts, the temptation is great to descend into personal acrimony and resentment. Feelings run high with extreme stakes for the litigants, their futures and fortunes. Courts are our arenas of conflict and confrontation and battles of adverse interests.

Here, though is the grace of the Rule of Law. Above our constitutional system, republican democracy and economic freedom, the greatest civic tool to realizing visions of justice and peace is the Rule of Law. Without it, if Alpha and Beta were fighting over the intestate assignment of Blackacre, Alpha and Beta would fight to the death or visit vindictive pain on the others’ loved ones for the right by power to occupy the controversial plot. So it is in so many societies now and historically. Without the Rule of Law, Alpha and Beta also could be subject to the whims of King who lops off both their heads, because Blackacre might be a nice place for King’s stables.

With the Rule of Law, however, when two candidates for Chief Executive find themselves embroiled in an electoral controversy, the loser and his followers do not take to the streets in gory bloodletting and insurgency. The candidates instead yield to the decision of neutral arbiters, Courts appointed by the representatives of the governed, who themselves are subject to the Law. The Rule of Law normatively abhors caprice, and the subjects can lodge their grievances with Courts for resolution, not a duel at daybreak at twenty paces. Without the Rule of Law, people who love a young mother who is in a “persistent vegetative state” might feel compelled to kill all who attempted to remove her life support, even out of mercy. In the highest example of the Rule of Law, parents submit to the death of their child because of judicial determination of standards established by the peoples’ representatives. Even in their mourning, they do not seek revenge, an eye for an eye, but they strive to amend the law, to replace representatives, to appeal judgment. What a gift to all of society is that willing submission to the Rule of Law!

This is the litigators’ ministry, to advocate, even zealously, in an adversarial environment, governed by procedures and judges and the written law to give effect to the Rule of Law. Zealous advocacy with a loving heart and motivation for peace is a tall order, but the Christian litigator must exercise the discipline. Without honest, ethical, respectful and excellent litigators confronting others in Court, the system would evaporate and degrade into unjust chaos. Inherently necessary for the Rule of Law is trust in the system and submission by all to its outcomes, even in loss. Without submission to the outcome, the governed would not submit their disputes to Court but to vigilante and vindictive feuds. The Rule of Law only survives effectively when the advocates have a mind for peace and resolution.

Abuse exists to threaten the system in all jurisdictions, but there the Christian attorney bears a greater burden to confront those abuses, for the sake of their clients, yes, but also for the sake of the Rule of Law and the sake of a civilization who relies on it.

Does this not bear on every profession, every agent in the marketplace? II Corinthians 5 charges us to take up Christ’s ministry of reconciliation. We are His ambassadors in His mission to reconcile the world to Himself. All who bear His name, must seek peace and reconciliation, not domination and conquest. We must love others, even our enemies, as we love ourselves, and we should love none greater than our Lord. The Christian’s job is not to win. We are not called to seek victory against our foes. We are not called to bend society and public policy to our wills. We are called foremost to give glory and honor to God, to do good works so that those who see them may praise our Father in Heaven. The Lord says, stand firm, keep quiet, I will fight for you so you do not need to fight for yourselves. We are called to love, to seek peace, to liberate the oppressed, to feed the poor, to reconcile and to be reconciled, to do the good works that He has prepared in advance for us to do. If we are successful in this, by God, the hearts of the people, even the secular people, will turn toward God and His will for us. As hearts turn in response to love and peace and justice and good, public policy, politics and litigation will reflect it.

Then we will have won.