Robert F. Cochran

Most lawyers, from Wall Street to the county seat, spend their days drafting documents, negotiating with other attorneys, trying cases, researching the law, and counseling clients. How does this everyday law practice relate to Jesus' call to follow him in servanthood? With decades of experience in the law office, courtroom, and classroom, Robert F. Cochran Jr. explores Jesus' call on lawyers to serve both individual clients and the common good. Cochran pulls back the curtain with stories from his own career and from the legal community to address a wide range of challenges posed by law practice, including counseling clients, planning trial tactics, navigating tensions with coworkers, and handling temptations toward cynicism and greed. This honest and accessible bookshares wisdom from an experienced practitioner and master teacheraddresses real-world situations and relationships experienced by most lawyerscharts the way toward a truly Christian practice of everyday lawFor students considering a career in law as well as for seasoned attorneys, The Servant Lawyer casts an encouraging vision for how lawyers can love and serve their neighbor in every facet of their work.

The Bible is full of law. Yet too often, Christians either pick and choose verses out of context to bolster existing positions, or assume that any moral judgment the Bible expresses should become the law of the land. Law and the Bible asks, 'What inspired light does the Bible shed on Christians' participation in contemporary legal systems?' It concludes that more often than not the Bible overturns our faulty assumptions and skewed commitments rather than bolsters them. In the process, God gives us greater insight into what all of life, including law, should be. Each chapter is co-written by a legal professional and a theologian, and focuses on a key aspect of the biblical witness concerning civil or positive law - that is, law which human societies create to order their communities, implementing and enforcing it through civil government. A foundational text for legal professionals, law and pre-law students, and all who want to think in a faithfully Christian way about law and their relationship to it.

In Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah found that American's lives exhibit strong strains of both individualism and communitarianism, but that their predominant language is that of individualism. American law reveals a similar pattern, both in the dominance of individualist rhetoric and in the existence of a quieter, often unnoticed, communitarian strain. Law and Community: The Case of Torts uses tort law—the law through which individuals recover from those who have injured them—as a window through which to explore the relationship between law and community. Tort rules are frequently American society's method of sorting out the rights and responsibilities of individuals, and the authors find that tort law exhibits communitarian strains even as it attempts to protect individuals from harm. Robert F. Cochran Jr. and Robert M. Ackerman eloquently argue that we should balance our concern for individual rights with the need to preserve those institutions—such as families, religious congregations, and governments—that help build the social capital that keeps society together.

In Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah found that American's lives exhibit strong strains of both individualism and communitarianism, but that their predominant language is that of individualism. American law reveals a similar pattern, both in the dominance of individualist rhetoric and in the existence of a quieter, often unnoticed, communitarian strain. Law and Community: The Case of Torts uses tort law-the law through which individuals recover from those who have injured them-as a window through which to explore the relationship between law and community. Tort rules are frequently American society's method of sorting out the rights and responsibilities of individuals, and the authors find that tort law exhibits communitarian strains even as it attempts to protect individuals from harm. Robert F. Cochran Jr. and Robert M. Ackerman eloquently argue that we should balance our concern for individual rights with the need to preserve those institutions-such as families, religious congregations, and governments-that help build the social capital that keeps society together.