Riding the Second Wave
Three Articles That Speak to the Mission & Purpose of ICLS
“If the [law and religion] field is to survive, it will need to reorient itself toward new problems that afflict a very different world from the one in which it came into being.”
(Marc O. DeGirolami)
Introduction
Throughout my work, I run across countless excellent articles that speak to the underlying richness of the law and religion tradition that feed into my work with students and attorneys alike. Articles that challenge the very foundation of our sense of self as a religious nation and the role of Christianity in shaping law and politics. Since last summer, many of these articles have made their way onto the Cross & Gavel Podcast as I sought to engage the authors in the quality of their ideas and bring to attention their work on a more popular level.
That is my aim here today, not only because of my recent assent to the directorship of the Institute for Christian Legal Studies (ICLS) at Christian Legal Society. But, more fundamentally, because this work has been captured well by three articles that strengthen the fibers of what ICLS strives to become in the years ahead.
For those uninitiated, ICLS has a simple mission: to advance the conversation surrounding the integration of Christianity and law. It will do this by a series of three focuses: (1) developing resources (e.g., academic, practical); (2) promoting public engagement (e.g., lectures, panels); and (3) fostering a community of likeminded individuals. For those involved, I hope it will be a season of seedtime and harvest—a reinvigorated attention to the confluence of academic, practical, and pedagogical life here at CLS. My goal will not primarily be to engender the bricks for the developing legal cathedral—far smarter people will do that work more effectively than I. What I strive to do is serve as a field manager for advancing the conversation and promoting the work of others toward this blossoming design. Current ICLS projects include the Cross & Gavel Podcast and Substack, the John Witte, Jr. Lecture Series on Christianity & Law (see lectures in 2024 and 2025), and, of course, our flagship Journal of Christian Legal Thought.
As such, my focus here is to highlight three recent articles that speak to the heart of what ICLS hopes to achieve in the coming years!
The Life and Death of Law and Religion
The first piece is from professor Marc O. De Girolami, published in the Oxford Journal of Law & Religion. In his erudite narrative of the life and death of law and religion, he takes us first into the first wave of this movement and its advent forces with those like Harold Berman and John Witte, Jr., who took on the critical mantle of reacting to “the deconstruction of the American Christian legal heritage proceeding apace in the courts and the academy.”
Following this wave, De Girolami discusses the priorities that animated the early scholars of this movement and the eventual decline of the movement with not only various forms of categorical capitulations and concept desuetude, but also the ravages of retirements and the changing landscape of legal discourse. As De Girolami writes, the “nature of religion, the plausibility of state neutrality, and the sustainability of religious exemption no longer merit the intellectual attention that they once did,” thus offering us a new vision for what this discipline might look like in the years to come (i.e., the “second wave”).
His paper not only focuses on the academic interest that naturally accompanies ICLS, but also speaks directly to the Witte Lectures we’ve launched last year in an effort to further the conversation on the future of Christianity and law.
READ IT HERE.
Religious Law Schools, Rankings, and Bias
The second article comes from professor Michael Conklin pending publication in the Florida Journal on Law & Public Policy, which explores the various dimensions of the law school ranking system and the penalties that peer ranking scores impose on religious law schools.
Throughout the paper, Conklin demonstrates with great effect the importance of religiously affiliated law schools (RALS) in their pedagogical mission of training students to think beyond the narrow confines of customary legal education. This creates tensions with existing establishment of secular priorities of most law school programs and undeservingly creates a peer rankings penalty that impacts the rankings of devout law schools by a measure of -17.65 points. The short of it is that devout law schools are much better than their peer scores would suggest and, but for this bias, they would find themselves in more rarified, elite air. Schools like Baylor, for example, suffer a 60-point drop if you compare their overall scores with their peer scores (i.e., peer deviation). The same goes for BYU with a 53-point peer deviation. Regent University a 72-point peer deviation. Etc.
There are several reasons why this is important. First, students will be disinclined to attend lower ranked law schools and thus potentially diminish the overall quality of the student population. Second, a lower ranking diminishes the potential of these institutions to attract higher-end faculty and create disadvantages for existing faculty when it comes to finding homes for papers because the higher-ranked law reviews get so many submissions that they inevitable start the review process by sifting through the application’s authors and discarding those faculty members at less prestigious institutions. And, perhaps most importantly, it diminishes the likelihood of students finding work, especially in a competitive urban city market that assumes that students who attend a better ranked law school are inevitably better suited for legal practice.
These three consequences are based largely on bias and not reality. These schools have excellent faculty and hardworking students that bring a level of dedication I did not witness when attending a Top 30 secular law school. But it does speak to the dynamic between the importance of legal education and the attendant opportunity of contributing a thought to the wider legal conversation with the likes of the so-called T14 (or maybe T17 now). I have written on the importance and potential for RALS for the future of the legal profession (READ). It is inevitably one of the major areas of concentration for ICLS and will continue to be so to protect the integrity of religious law schools in carrying out their mission and purpose.
READ IT HERE.
Christian Lawyers in the Public Interest and Outside the Political Right
The final piece is authored by professor Jennifer Koh, slated for publication for 2026 in the BYU Law Review. This piece is profoundly unique and speaks to the opportunity of those on the political left who have been unable to find community within the broader Christian legal community. Koh’s study is empirically based, involving not only an excellent summary of the Christian conservative legal movement, but also a testimony among those in public interest work largely hidden from the public eye.
Her project is an important one for me, not only because I work for the largest Christian legal non-profit focused on Christian students and attorneys, but also given my desire to develop our Christian Legal Aid ministry to better embrace the public-service calling that many have answered, which is deeply in need of community given the unique spiritual challenges that emerge with serving the disadvantaged in society. That is why I advocate that our student chapters not only embrace the Service Mandate, but also that they serve their local legal aid clinics through pro-bono work after graduation.
The reason why this article is also essential for my thinking in ICLS is because it touches on the fundaments of vocational stewardship and what a faithful presence should look like in the legal profession. While the first two articles deal with the academic side of law and religion and the pedagogical mission of devout law schools, Koh’s contribution covers the importance of service over politics and contributing one’s legal career to advancing the interest of justice for marginalized communities.
READ IT HERE.