Dan Crane's Series on Evangelical Under-representation in the Legal Elite

Readers may be interested in Professor Dan Crane's three part series on the under-representation of Evangelical Christians in the legal elite.  Part I presents the core claim.  Part II offers several explanations. Part III reflects on whether it matters, and concludes with this:

Finally, if I’m not convinced that evangelicals would systematically display traditionally Protestant approaches to texts, authority, and tradition, I do think that a greater evangelical presence among the legal elite might have an important effect on the development of law in another way. The defining element of modern American evangelicalism is its individualistic experientialism, its insistence on a personal born-again experience, its adherence to what religion critic Harold Bloom defines as the key trait of any genuinely American religion—walking alone with Jesus in the wilderness.  To be an evangelical means to know Jesus in the heart.

 It is not hard to see the misfit between evangelicalism’s experiential epistemology and law as a rationalistic, deductive system.  But to a pointy-headed legal academic like me, the portrayal of law as rationalistic and deductive seems so nineteenth century.  In the post-realist, post-modern world, law is increasingly understood as personal, subjective, and even experiential.  To take just one small example, the whole “expressivist” strand of contemporary legal scholarship is about how law is received, understood, internalized, and experienced.

Although evangelicals may not understand this well, modern legal thought may be very much up their alley.  It would be a shame if evangelicals continued to stand on the sidelines while the legal academy, the courts, and other legal institutions worked through the implications of law in the post-modern world—something about which evangelicals should have lots to say.