"Consent, Consequences, and Christian Law Schools"

[From a student in my "Catholic Social Thought and the Law" seminar]:

On Consent, Consequences, and Christian Law Schools

In our culture, consent is the paramount moral criterion: the presence of consent is the ultimate blessing, while the lack thereof is the ultimate curse. This is readily seen in the way we think about the consequences of our actions. We believe that we should have free reign to act according to our whims and fancies (or deep principles and convictions, if you swing that way), and that any results of those actions can and should affect us only if we first consented to those costs. We certainly don’t think we should have to suffer the consequence of any unintended or unforeseen consequences—after all we didn’t consent to it, and thus it must not be our fault. And we definitely don’t think we should have to do so for someone else’s actions.  We shun commitment because we fear that we won’t get to do what we want down the road; we are unwilling to pay the costs of what we believe in. Our culture likes to deny that principles and beliefs require consistent actions, and that actions have actual consequences. Our culture thus effectively denies the existence of natural consequences in favor of contractual costs.

But Christians don’t believe that. The Christian does not deny the existence of sin’s consequences; he affirms that all those consequences have already been paid by Christ. At the foundation of the Christian faith is the belief that we are sinful beings, but that the consequences of such sin were borne by Jesus Christ: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rom. 3:23-25) Actions have consequences, whether we like it or not, and someone must pay the price—even if we didn’t know the full price.

Now you may think that I am about to say how important it is to hold people morally accountable and how significant it is that we have a justice system which holds individuals responsible for their actions. And, in fact, that is certainly a significant aspect to the idea of actions and their consequences. But I think there is another aspect: our commitment to our principles may require us to bear more burdens and make more sacrifices than we had initially thought as consequences of our convictions. The idea that consent is crucial to the moral legitimacy of any given consequence is often introduced and cemented in post-secondary educational institutions; therefore the refutation that consent is not necessary for a morally legitimate consequence may and should also be introduced at that time.

Christian educational institutions, then, have a significant part to play in the formation of their students: in the midst of our cultural denial of consequences the Christian has an intimate understanding that consequences are real and their existence is not contingent on our consent. Christian law schools in particular have a unique role to play in training their students that in a discipline and field which places so much emphasis on contractual agreement—from the “social contract” to apartment leases—it is incumbent on the Christian lawyer to recognize that unintended and unforeseen consequences must and should be paid even if they have not been agreed on.

Lawyers, though, are entirely willing to tell others that costs must be paid; it is entirely another matter to apply that to themselves. Thus, the Christian law school faces another duty: to teach students that their faith, their convictions, and their principles will require them to make sacrifices. In a professional field which tends to measure success in terms of status (and the accompanying symbols), power, wealth, and creature comforts, students need to be willing to give them up as called in the course of living a life pleasing and glorifying to God. Professor John Breen encouraged the law students of Loyola University Chicago that “[t]he way our Christian faith defines success and the sign that represents it are radically different form the understanding of success prevalent in American society. According to the faith, success is to act with love in the imitation of Christ, and the sign that quite literally embodies this love is the Cross.” Christian law students are to be lawyers, to be sure, but they are also called to obedient to the living God with whom they have a relationship: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord desire of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8)

Of course, our law schools can make that unique character of the vocation easier or harder, and they can make their message more or less efficacious. One thing our Christian law schools might want to consider is that it may be difficult for students to accept a new hierarchy of what is worthy if the school itself does not follow its own teaching. For example, can students really take seriously the Christian message that worldly status is unimportant, if their school is unwilling to take risks to conform its students to the image of Christ for the sake of a U.S. News & World Report ranking?

The world we live in has natural consequences for our actions, quite independent of our consent to their existence. The reality of unintended consequences which must still be paid seems at odds with the legal preference for the “four corners of the contract,” but it is therefore that much more important for Christian lawyers to recognize and bear witness to in their vocation, from crafting policy to sitting on a judicial bench to advising clients. It is incumbent on the Christian lawyer to be mindful of how grace and mercy relate to justice and righteousness within the context of the rule of law. And it is the duty of Christian law schools to instill those values and convictions in their students not only through their teaching, but also through their example.