Faith, law schools, and Dean Rudenstine

Thanks to Mark, Michael, and Brian Leiter, for alerting us to Dean David Rudenstine's remarks (Rudenstine is the dean of Cardozo Law School) about "faith" and legal education.  Apparently, Dean Rudenstine said to a group of pre-law advisors, among other things:

"Faith challenges the underpinnings of legal education. Faith is a willingness to accept belief in things for which we have no evidence, or which runs counter to evidence we have."

Dean Rudenstine's remarks are illuminating, and frustrating, in many ways and for many reasons.  Mark noted that they are "unworthy of the dean of a religiously-affiliated law school."  I cannot help thinking that we should expect better from the dean of any law school, or from anyone tasked with informing future law students about the nature of the legal enterprise.

Put aside, for now, the fact that Dean Rudenstine seems to be working from the tired playbook according to which "faith" makes people "intolerant", is "divisive", or is at war with reason and "evidence."  (I do not share Professor Leiter's more charitable view of Dean Rudenstine's remarks).  Mark does a good job responding to these canards.  (My only quibble with Mark's post has to do with his own unhelpful -- and therefore uncharacteristic -- digs at "the Republican/Religious Right rapprochment" and the "the Bush/DeLay/Frist type of 'Christian nationalism'".  If Dean Rubenstine's comments are misguided -- and they are -- it is not simply because he failed to say nice things about tolerant Catholic progressives.)

According to the original news story, "Mr. Rudenstine said that America's law schools have a social responsibility, especially at a time of religious fundamentalism, to foster reasoned debate over the facts and science of such controversial matters. To shirk this role, he suggested, would be to leave the way clear for faith-based organizations to impose 'divisive' views."  Again, brushing past the tedious bogeyman of "divisive" faith-based organizations, I would think that law schools do indeed have a "social responsibility" to "foster reasoned debate" . . . but not just in the face of "religious fundamentalism."  Anyone remotely familiar with legal education at top schools knows that "reasoned debate" is curtailed on a wide range of subjects, and not by "religious fundamentalis[ts]."  A similar point could be made with respect to the Dean's statement that "Faith does not tolerate opposing views, does not acknowledge inconvenient facts. Law schools stand in fundamental opposition to this."  Yes, law schools should "stand in fundamental opposition to this," but do they?

Then there is the Dean's insistence that "[f]aith challenges the underpinnings of legal education," because "[f]aith is a willingness to accept belief in things for which we have no evidence, or which runs counter to evidence we have."  As Mark and Michael have already observed, this is not really what (or, not all that) "faith" is.  But is the Dean's claim really that one of the "underpinnings" of legal education is that one may believe in or accept only those "things for which we have . . . evidence"?  Or, more precisely, is his claim that we may not, as legal educators and lawyers, believe in things "for which we have no evidence, or which runs counter to evidence we have"?  As Steve Smith has argued, well and in several places, lawyers are hardly the scientists, or empiricists, that Rudenstine seems to imagine.  Lawyers make claims, craft arguments, and tell stories; they present evidence, yes, but they also stand on principles, norms, values, and morals for which -- perhaps -- they lack evidence.  Who is to say that our profession's devotion to the "rule of law" does not reflect a "faith" of the kind Dean Rudenstine seems to disparage?

Don't get me wrong:  Facts are (often) facts, and they should not be avoided, just because they are inconvenient and unsettling.  But "facts" are also complicated, and they come wrapped in context.  So, it strikes me that "faith" is hardly at war with the legal enterprise; instead, it can provide a stance, platform, or perspective from which that enterprise can be better carried out. 

I'd like to hear more from my MOJ colleagues about their views on this matter.  Dean Rudenstine's remarks, it seems to me, are a fundamental challenge to what we are about on this blog.

Rick

Update:  Here are some thoughts from Kaimi Wenger, at "Prawfsblawg", who voices concern that "Dean Rudenstine's remarks . . . are toxic in their overbreadth.  They are a set of sweeping statements of anti-religious bias, seemingly based on bigoted ideas about how religious faith operates in all people."

Here is Howard Friedman's take (at "Religion Clause"):  "Rudenstine commits a . . . fundamental error.  He assumes that religious faith is about things for which the accumulation of evidence is possible. Faith should be about fundamental values, not about historical facts or scientific theories."