Religious Values, Legal Ethics, and Poverty Law: A Response to Thomas Shaffer

Abstract

As a lawyer, law teacher, and legal scholar, Thomas Shaffer is inspired and guided by religious values. Being a lawyer for Thomas Shaffer is a vocation, a calling to pursue social justice. He is, to use his term, a "role model" of a lawyer who believes that his religious values require that he pursue justice. Shaffer is clearly right in asserting that there is much in the prophetic literature, and, indeed, in the entire Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, that could serve as a moral impetus for social justice lawyering. One can find considerable support for Shaffer's religious thesis in the texts that he cites, and in the words of the prophets he looks to as role models. Nevertheless, it is my intention to present a skeptical response to Professor Shaffer's thoughtful essay.