Jacob's Blessing, Cooperative Grace, and Practicing Law with a Limp John M.A
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives Faculty Scholarship 1998 Jacob's Blessing, Cooperative Grace, and Practicing Law with a Limp John M.A. DiPippa University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://lawrepository.ualr.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Legal Profession Commons Recommended Citation John M.A. DiPippa, Jacob's Blessing, Cooperative Grace, and Practicing Law with A Limp, 38 Cath. Law. 265 (1998). This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JACOB'S BLESSING, COOPERATIVE GRACE, AND PRACTICING LAW WITH A LIMP JOHN M. A. DIPIPPA* I. INTRODUCTION How does a lawyer's religious beliefs affect the lawyer's practice? I will answer that question by reflecting on baseball players, wrestling with mysterious strangers, and practicing law with a limp. This essay is divided into four sections. First, I will share the story of baseball star Sandy Kou- fax's refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur. Second, I will present a brief theol- ogy of grace. Third, I will discuss the Genesis story of Jacob's wrestling match with the Angel. Finally, I will relate a personal experience from my own practice. In truth, each of these sections demonstrates the same theme: that God's grace is present in our everyday encounters and that it has the power to change who we are and what we do. These sections are like dif- ferent lenses turned on the same specimen.' II. SANDY KOUFAX: A JEWISH PITCHER In 1965, Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Sandy Koufax was at the top of his game.2 During the regular season he won 26 games and set * Professor of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. My wife, Karen DiPippa, has brought the presence of God into my life for 25 years and has played a special role in helping me develop my perspective on life and law. I owe her more than I can ever express. The method I will use to illustrate God's grace resembles the theological method of Ber- nard Lonergan. See, e.g., BERNARD J. F. LONERGAN, S.J., METHOD IN THEOLOGY (1972). An adaptation of Lonergan's theological method is used in the Loyola Institute for Ministry Exten- sion Program (LIMEX) associated with Loyola University, New Orleans. See CHARLES WINTERS ET AL., MINISTRY IN CONTEXTS: A METHODOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION (1987). I developed parts of this paper while enrolled in the LIMEX program. 2 This story is taken from Sanford Levinson, Identifying the Jewish Lawyer: Reflections on the Construction of ProfessionalIdentity, 14 CARDOzO L. REV. 1577 (1993). For the Koufax story and other baseball stories as they relate to legal practice, see Jack L. Sammons, On Being a Good Christian and a Good Lawyer: God, Man, Law, Lawyering, Sandy Koufax, Roger Marls, Orel Hershiser,Looking at the Catcher, and Corked Bats in The Kingdom (with a Brief Guest Appearance by Ty Cobb), 27 TEx. TECH L. REV. 1319 (1996). 38 CATHOLIC LAWYER. No. 4 the major league record in strikeouts.3 He was the best left-handed pitcher of his time, and arguably, of all time. The Dodgers won the National League pennant and met the Minnesota Twins in the 1965 World Series. The opening game was set for Sunday, October 6. Ordinarily, the star pitchers for both teams engage each other in this game. But October 6 was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, and Sandy Koufax was Jewish. He refused to pitch.4 Koufax was a Jewish pitcher, but being a Jew did not make him pitch any differently. His curveball was devastating not because he was Jewish, but rather, because it curved wickedly. He pitched like a regular baseball player. His religious beliefs did not change the way he performed his role as a baseball player except in one respect: he recognized an ultimate authority in his life that "could, even in circumstances so weighty as the World Series, abrogate his 'civilian' identity as a key member of the Los Angeles Dodgers with obligations to his teammates." 5 The Koufax story puts the issue of what it means to be a lawyer with a serious religious commitment in perspective. To say that one is a Christian (or more specifically in my case a Catholic) lawyer is to say more than just that one is a lawyer who happens to be Catholic. There is a complex rela- tionship between one's religious identity and role and one's professional identity and role.6 Few of us, however, are as prominent as Sandy Koufax. Moreover, rarely are we presented with a clear choice between our profession and our See Levinson, supra note 2, at 1579-80. " See id. at 1580. The Dodgers lost that game but went on to win the World Series in seven games. See id. Koufax pitched the seventh game on three day's rest. Pitchers usually take four days rest between starts. See id. ' Id. at 1581. 6 Levinson develops several models to describe the relationship between religious commit- ment and professional identity. They are 1) the Jewish Lawyer as the Intersection of Sets, see id. at 1585-90; 2) Jewish Lawyering as an Expression of Social and Political Solidarity, see id. at 1590-94; 3) Judaism Enters the Workplace (But Leaves the Internal Norms of Legal Practice Untouched), see id. at 1594-96; 4) the Jewish Lawyer as a Practitioner in Jewish Courts, see id. at 1596-1600; 5) Judaism as a Constitutive Aspect of the Practice of Law, see id. at 1600-I1. For a similar typology from a Christian perspective, see JOSEPH G. ALLEGRETTI, THE LAWYER'S CALLING: CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LEGAL PRACTICE (1996). Allegretti adapts H. Richard Nie- buhr's work, Christ Against Culture, to the practice of law. His models are Christ Against the Code, see id. at 10-13; Christ in Harmony with the Code, see id. at 14-17, Christ in Tension with the Code, see id at 17-20; and Christ Transforming the Code, see id. at 20-23. Both Levinson's and Allegretti's work have influenced my perspective, but to some extent, Allegretti is too "theological" and Levinson is too "professional." However, this essay is not the place to de- velop my critique fully. The purpose of this essay is to discuss a "religious" experience that oc- curred in my "professional" life, and to offer my understanding of its meaning as Allegretti, Levinson, and others have helped me understand it. See also THOMAS L. SHAFFER, ON BEING A CHRISTIAN AND A LAWYER: LAW FOR THE INNOCENT (1981). PRACTICING LAW WrrH A LIMP religion. Catholics are so thoroughly assimilated into American culture that there are few opportunities for overt conflict between our religious commitments and our professional duties.7 We can safely say that we too would have chosen the primacy of God's authority because it is unlikely that we will ever have to.8 III. AN AMATEUR THEOLOGY OF GRACE Being a Catholic lawyer, like being a Jewish pitcher, requires one to recognize God's ultimate authority. It would be an incomplete picture of reality, however, if we only understood this statement in the context of con- flicts between religious and professional obligations. It is not the infre- quent conflict that defines us as Catholic lawyers. Rather, it is our constant openness to the sacramentality of the world.' Humans are made "in the image and likeness of God,"' 0 and the world is filled with God's spirit." ' Catholics may experience moments of tension when faced with decisions that contain moral dimensions, but usually the religious element is subordinated to the secular. For example, Levinson describes the "degradation ceremonies" that Catholic nominees to the Supreme Court must undergo whereby they pledge to decide abortion cases on the basis of the "law" as opposed to their consciences. See SANFORD LEViNSON, CONSTITUTIONAL FAITH 56 (1988). In a similar vein, Jack Sammons has written that ethics is descriptive. See Jack L. Sammons, The Radical Ethics of Legal Rhetoricians, 32 VAL. U. L. REv. 93 (1997). Following Alasdair MacIntyre, Sammons asserts that there is no privileged position outside of a practice from which to stand in judgment of it. Rather, the critique must come from within the practice itself. See id. at 93. For me, description is the first step in a cognitive process that requires multiple judgments from a va- riety of perspectives outside the practice itself. See BERNARD J. F. LONERGAN, S.J., INSIGHT 291 (1957) (description and explanation are fundamentally different processes: description is the "tweezers by which we hold things while explanations are being discovered or verified, applied or revised"). 9 Cf.ALLEGRETTI, supra note 6, at 14 (describing the "Christ in Harmony with the Code" model and relating a story in which a lawyer asserts that he never had a conflict between his per- sonal morality and his professional conduct). The inability to think that American culture may have multiple conflicts with mainstream Christian belief may account for the Supreme Court's treatment of Free Exercise claims, see Employment Div., Dep't of Human Resources of Or. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 884-85 (1990) (stating the compelling interest test is inappropriate in Free Exercise cases) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. See City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S.