The Georgia Crawl

Introduction The Georgia Crawl by Jack L. Sammons * Imagine, if you will, that you are a lawyer and that you are observing a gathering of people sitting at a round table. The assembled group is there addressinga particularlydifficult problem in the local community-it does not really matter what the problem is so long as it is a complex one. The group includes a priest, an accountant, a business executive, a psychologist, an engineer, a philosopher,a physician, a city planner,an architect, and a lawyer; but you do not know the occupationsof any of the people. If I asked you to identify the lawyer, my guess is that you could do so readily, even if the conversation had not afforded the lawyer the opportunity to display his or her knowledge of legal matters. In fact, if I pressed you harder, and the conversation was long enough, you probably would be able to give me some gross assessment of the lawyer's merit as a lawyer The reason you would be able to do this is that the practice of law shapes lawyers toward certain habits of thought and manners of being that lawyers then recognize in each other. For example, * Griffin B. Bell Professor of Law, Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University 985 986 MERCER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 53 consciously or not, to identify the lawyer in the group, another lawyer would likely look for: the ability to recognize what is shared in competing positions; an attentiveness to detail, especially linguistic detail; an attentiveness as well to the ambiguities of language;a use of these ambiguities both for structuring the conversation and analyzing the issue; a focus on text and a markedly different sense of its restraint;a rhetoricalawareness of the reactions of potential audiences to each competing position and even to each argument; an imaginativeanticipation of future disputes; a realisticassessment of the situation even as a partisan in it; a recognition of the persuasive elements of all positions,especially those in opposition to the lawyer's own; a very particularform of honesty; an insistence on practicality combined with an acceptance of complexity; a shying away from broad principles and "proud words"; a concern with the procedures by which decisions are to be made; an equal concern with the quality of the roundtable conversation itself including a concern that all voices round the table be well heard and considered; an evaluation of positions in terms of an objective hypothetical authoritative decision-maker who serves as stand-in for social judgment, and, thus, a consideration of each proposed course of action from a particularsocial perspective. Many other practices may shape its practitionerstoward many of these same habits of thought, and surely this is all a matter of degree. Nevertheless, these habits of thought, these virtues of the practice of law, if you will, considered collectively can be seen as defining a unique characterfor lawyers as an ideal. Of course, the characterdefined by the practicemakes sense only if the world works a certain way. In other words, the practice carries with it an implicit description of the way the world works. And, if we avoid the temptation to bracket God from this, we can see that it carries a theology as well. This is, of course, not the usual way we think of theology, but it may be a good way for our purposes. Here is an example: Some of the habits of thoughts by which we would recognize the lawyer at the roundtable make sense only if doing good, at least social good if not all good, is a difficult thing to do. According to the practice, then, the world is the kind of place in which this is true, and our relationship with God is one in which He has placed upon us a rather heavy responsibility to exercise our judgment carefully. What is this theology that is implicit in the life of good lawyers? How would we describe it? What is the theology implicit in the activities that constitute a good lawyer's life? The theology implicit, for example, in speaking persuasively for others, in a willingness to 2002] THE GEORGIA CRAWL 987 argue either of the opposing sides of many issues, or in the constant offering of competing translationsof the texts by which we define our communities? What would it mean to think of these activities, as our Patron Saint, Thomas More, did, as God's work? What might this attitude toward this work mean for the practice of law, for the lives of lawyers, for the legal community, and for our broader communities? And what might this theology of the legal practice have to offer to other theologies and to the discipline of theology itself?. What might these learn from it? And what might it, in turn, learn from them? These are the broad questions our presenters and commentators will address this morning. Each will do so in his or her own unique way. For, in our time, we have no choice but to be uncertain about how to address such questions and even whether they can be or should be addressed at all. Consider each speaker, then, as suggesting a way of getting started on the difficult task of returning us to this very long neglected conversation about the theological meaning of our work as lawyers, a conversation we hope you will join. What you just read was part of a program I prepared for the audience of this symposium to read as it settled down along the rows of seats in our Moot Court Room to hear the speeches that follow this introduction. Those speeches, in some ways, were preparation for a roundtable conversation that the audience did not get to hear, but you will get to read. The transcript of the roundtable conversation is followed by a concluding dinner speech by Millard Fuller, a helpful primer on theological conventions, written by Father Dan Edwards, and a brief afterwards that addresses a few concerns I had about the conversation as a way of continuing it. The conclusion of the program materials, the part suggesting that the audience "consider each speaker as suggesting a way of getting started on the difficult task of returning us to this very long neglected conversation about the theological meaning of our work as lawyers," was a hedge. Oh, I knew, because I had read most of them in advance, that the speeches were, without exception, terrific. This hedge, though, was against the possibility that they would not hang together. Now that the symposium is over, I am still not sure they do. It did become clear to me, however, as the day and the conversation progressed, that the speakers and the later participants in the roundtable conversation were headed in the direction of hanging together in a very interesting way. 988 MERCER LAW REVIEW [Vol. 53 The interesting way in which they could hang together, however, is not exactly what I had expected. Before I wrote the afterwards, I thought about subtitling it, borrowing a line from the folk-rock group, Belle and Sebastian, "Oh, that wasn't what I meant [for us] to say at all,"1 and then confessing my culpability for giving so little guidance to the participants about what I had in mind-a neglect that, at the time, seemed like a good idea. And maybe it was. The more I worked on the afterwards the clearer it became to me that what we had done not only could hang together, but was something important-something, perhaps, very important-although, as I said, not what I had expected. I think you are going to be pleased with this symposium and find it rewarding, perhaps even in unexpected ways as I did. There is no hedge in this. Now, as designated author of the introduction, I am in the position of wondering what might help you, dear reader, to find your way into the importance of this conversation more readily than I did. It occurs to me that an analogy to a practice other than the law, assuming that the law is your practice, might help because it is sometimes easier to see our own lives through analogies to others, and this symposium is about our own lives as lawyers. So I offer to you here, by way of introduction, an analogy to a different profession. It is an odd analogy, to be sure, and oddly presented. I think you will find it interesting; I hope you will find it useful. At the concluding dinner of the symposium, Millard Fuller, a lawyer and the co-founder with his wife, Linda Fuller, of Habitat for Humanity International, spoke to us about his practice of law and its relationship to his faith.2 His speech was a cleansing for mental palates that may have been dulled by a day of overly rich academic fare, for Millard is a man of rock-like faith, clarity of vision, and has a very healthy skepti- 1. Belle & Sebastian, Get Me Away From Here, Pm Dying, on IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER (Matador Records 1999). 2. Millard Fuller, A Symposium: The Theology of the Practiceof Law, Reflections, 53 MERCER L. REV. 1137 (2002). 2002] THE GEORGIA CRAWL 989 cism towards theology. He is someone who is not surprised at all that when he speaks of God he finds himself telling stories.3 For Millard, justice is what both theology and law are about; and justice is, more than anything else, a giving of preference to the poor. He is an extraordinary man and one against whom others, especially other Christians, can measure their lives.

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