Some Good and Recent Books on Faith & Law

The Christian Legal Society just finished its list of "20-some" good books on faith and law on Twitter.

Here's my revision of that very good list. 

Second Tier

Joseph Allegretti, The Lawyer's Calling (1996)
Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution II (2006)
Stephen L. Bloom, The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues (2008)
Gerard V. Bradley, A Student's Guide to the Study of Law (2006)
Jeffrey Brauch, Is Higher Law Common Law? (2008)
J. Budziszewski, Natural Law for Lawyers (2006)
Jonathan Chapman, Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (2011)
Edwin S. Corwin, The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law (2011)
John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (1995)
Stephen Grabill, Recovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (2006)
H. Wayne House, The Christian and American Law (1998)
David Hoffman, A Course of Legal Study (1846)
P.C. Kemeny, ed., Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views (2007)
McConnell, Cochran, and Carmella, Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought (2001)
Jay Milbrandt, Go + Do: Changing the World One Story at a Time (2012)
Michael Scaperlanda and Teresa Collett, Rediscovering Self-Evident Truths: Catholic Perspectives on American Law (2007)
Michael P. Schutt, Redeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession (2007)
Thomas L. Shaffer, On Being a Christian and a Lawyer (1981)
John Witte, Jr. and Frank Alexander, eds., The Weightier Matters of the Law: Essays on Law and Religion (1996)

First Tier

Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Law (2000)
Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983)
Harold J. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion (1974)
Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (1960)
Gary Haugen, The Good News About Injustice (2009)
Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism and Politics, in The Stone Lectures on Calvinism (2008)
Paul Marshall, God and the Constitution (2002)
Ken Sande, The Peacemaker (2004)
John Witte, Jr., God's Joust, God's Justice (2006)
John Witte, Jr. and Frank Alexander, eds., The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature (2007)
Nicholoas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2010)

The Journal of Christian Legal Thought

This month the Institute for Christian Legal Studies published the inaugural issue of the Journal of Christian Thought, available in hard copy (to Christian Legal Society members) and in full electronic version at no cost. The mission of the Journal is to equip and encourage legal professionals to seek and study biblical truth as it relates to law, the practice of law, and legal institutions.

We hope to provide practitioners and students a vehicle through which to engage Christian legal scholarship that will enhance theological reflection about the law and the lawyer's work, and, in addition, to provide legal scholars a medium through which to explore the law in light of Scripture, under the broad influence of the doctrines and creeds of the Christian faith and on the shoulders of the communion of saints across the ages.

The Journal will usually feature two or three scholarly articles, abstracted in the print edition and available in full online. But we decided to make the first issue a special one, highlighting works that a variety of scholars view as important to the project of cultivating Christian legal thought. So we approached a number of Christian professors and theologians, and asked each to write 500 words on a book or article of his or her choice, “helpful to the project of cultivating Christian legal thought.” The result is a collection of 31 very short essays that give a diversity of expression to the concept of Christian legal thought.

The collection has a nice range: from broadly theological foundations—both Roman Catholic (Newman and John Paul II) and Protestant (Calvin and Kuyper) perspectives—to narrow practice areas (Climate Change and International Law), to sophisticated integration of the two (Uelmen’s Toward a Trinitarian Theory of Products Liability, and Craig Stern on Jeff Tuomala’s Christ’s Atonement as the Model for Civil Justice).

The essays cover a variety of sources for, perspectives on, and approaches to Christian thinking about law and legal institutions. Some essays address the body of work of an important thinker, others only one book or article. From the broadly philosophical to the very practical, there is something of interest here for every lawyer and law student.

I'd love to hear from readers with suggestions and ideas for future issues. Let me know what you think!

Annual Conference on Catholic Legal Thought

The Sixth Annual Conference on Catholic Legal Thought is set for May 17-19, 2011 at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.

The lineup this year is extraordinary:

Paul Griffiths

The Essential St. Augustine for 21st Century Lawyers and Law Professors

John Breen, Kevin Lee, Lisa Schiltz

The City of Man: What role should law playing in infusing the City of Man with the City of God?

Mark Osler, Meghan Ryan, Susan Stabile

Forgiveness and Conversion: What should be the law’s attitude toward and treatment of post-conviction criminals?

Steven Smith

“The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse”

I plan to be there.