The Fetzer Institute’s mission is “to foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in our global community.” Fetzer planned to convene 16 advisory councils comprised of world class practitioners in various professions, from social scientists to artists, and from lawyers to athletes. Fetzer assigned me six professions and asked me to research the very best candidates to sit on these councils, including recommendations for chairperson and convener for each. I composed a brief biography for each candidate, at least 60 candidates for each council. They then asked me to research trends in these six professions and write an executive summary for each showing how these trends bear on Fetzer’s mission.

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Fetzer Advisory Council on Law Professions
David Vermette
December 3, 2010
Law is a rules-based system that regulates social relations between individuals, or between the
individual and the community. Law is divided traditionally into the spheres of public (international,
constitutional, administrative, and criminal law) and private (property, domestic relations, contract, and
tort law). The historical bases of systems of law differ among the nations of the world. Some of the more
widespread systems include those based on English Common law which are found mainly in the
Anglophone countries; Civil law, based on the principles of ancient Roman law, found in much of
Europe, in Latin America, and parts of Asia; and Shari`a law, based on the Quran, found in the Islamic
world. The law professions include legislators who author and officers who enforce the law; judges or
justices who adjudicate cases and interpret the law; attorneys who advise and advocate for individuals,
the State, or other bodies; scholars and professors who teach and theorize about the law; and a vast array
of professionals such as paralegals and administrators who provide essential support.
As a designedly impersonal system, most often characterized as an adversarial process, the law
professions do not seem to be a natural fit for the Fetzer Institute’s mission of fostering love and
forgiveness. The purpose of law, some voices might claim, is to punish wrongdoers or to balance out
inequities and not to forgive or to demonstrate compassion. However, over the past quarter-century new
models of law have appeared which hold out hope for the Fetzer Advisory Council (FAC)
on Law Professions.
Law and Justice
The idea of law is bound up with the notion of justice. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates entertains and
rejects the idea that justice means “giving to each what is fitting” or due. And yet this notion of giving to
each what is due – be it an individual, a corporation, or a nation – remains the cornerstone of Western
notions of justice. This is evident in the traditional personification of Justice: a blindfolded woman
holding a balance with which she weighs what is due to each, while she remains blind to the personhood
of the parties involved. She also carries a sword symbolizing the coercive power of the law. But has this
ancient notion of a blind balancing act, enforced at sword point, brought healing, peace, love and
forgiveness to our world?
To forgive does not mean to forget the injustices done to victims by perpetrators of crimes, nor, on the
international scale, is it to gloss over the consequences of the injustices of the past. It serves our
common humanity ill to forget the Holocaust, the African slave trade, or the more recent events in
Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. To forgive is not to pass over, but to reintegrate and to purify this
suffering into the body of our common humanity. The balancing of claims, whether it involves one
person against another, or a family divided against itself, or one nation against another, can result in a
calculus of human suffering the net result of which is a negative number. Healing cannot occur in an
atmosphere of retribution, nor can it exist in a system that remains blind to personhood. The only means
by which a new model of law and justice may emerge is to replace the notion of balancing competing
claims, of giving to each what is due, with newer models that speak to restoration, collaboration, and
healing, models that allow Justice to peek from underneath her blindfold, models that take into account
the systemic nature of injustice in society, and that respect the wholeness of the human person as a being
with a body, mind and spirit.

2. Such a notion of justice may be found in the Judeo-Christian traditions. In the Greek translations of the
Hebrew Scriptures, as well as in the Christian Scriptures called the New Testament, the same Greek
word – dikaiosyne – translates the related Hebrew words tzedakah and tzedek. The latter means
“righteous judgment or justice,” while the former refers to “charity, generosity or benevolence freely-
bestowed,” particularly on those less fortunate than oneself. This notion of justice, in bridging these two
related Hebraic concepts, is not about rendering what is due, but it is a justice concerned with
compassion, rooted in benevolence, and bestowed from a position of abundance. Rather than a balance
achieved through an impersonal or mechanistic system, this notion of justice arrives at the common,
underlying humanity of the parties involved in legal disputes.
From a Retributive to an Attributive Model of Law and Justice
The move to foster love and forgiveness in the legal consciousness of the emerging global community
seems to involve a shift from a retributive to an attributive model of law. Mechanistic bureaucracies,
“blind” justice, the adversarial process, as well as the requirement to assign blame, are characteristic of a
retributive model. An attributive model is based on attributing a shared humanity to victims of crime and
to criminals; to both oppressed and oppressors; to both poorer and richer nations. Through
understanding the systems that create and maintain habits of choice that have evolved into paradigms of
dominance and oppression – either within the minds of individuals who perpetrate crimes or within the
collective consciousness of States that commit the atrocities with which the pages of history are stained
– we may arrive at the possibility of healing in ourselves and in our world. This new, attributive model
is emerging in the legal profession in several forms:
Holistic Law focuses on the entire context involved in a legal issue or dispute. It considers the
individual’s place in this context, the effect of the dispute on the community, as well as on the lawyer’s
own role. The practice of Holistic law sometimes incorporates spiritual practices, enabling the lawyer to
approach the issues from an integrated, centered consciousness. Holistic Lawyers also tend to seek a
basis of commonality between contending parties rather than viewing them as irreconcilably opposed
interests.
Restorative Justice employed most often in criminal law, frequently in the context of juvenile offenders,
recognizes that crimes are not merely offenses against the State but against individuals, their families
and loved ones, and the specific community involved. This approach creates a direct or indirect dialog
between offenders and victims in which the offender acknowledges and takes responsibility for the harm
he or she has done. The focus in restorative justice is on compassion for the victims, on preventing
crime, and on healing perpetrators of crimes by allowing them the chance to help repair the harm they
have caused.
Collaborative Law is most often practiced in the context of family law. In this approach, lawyers sign a
contract to agree to work toward a settlement outside of the customary adversarial process. If the
collaboration fails, and court proceedings follow, new attorneys must be retained. Thus collaborative
lawyers have an incentive to engage in creative dispute resolution, to maintain honest and respectful
communication with all parties, and to work toward a mutually beneficial settlement.
Law as Coaching encourages clients to view their legal disputes as opportunities for growth and
constructive change. The lawyer coaches clients particularly with respect to empowering them to claim
their ability to choose. The Lawyer-Coach helps clients to understand the implications of their ability to
interpret and to make meaning of events, and helps them to honor past and future aims and intentions.
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3. Other emerging models of law and justice include Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Integrating Law,
Preventive Law, and Community Lawyering. Sometimes all of the approaches mentioned above are
gathered under the umbrella of Comprehensive Law which views law as primarily a healing discipline
like clinical psychology or medicine.
The FAC on Law Professions has before it the task of engaging these or other innovative, attributive
notions of justice in each of the areas of public and private law. Since law regulates relations between
human beings and communities, it is essential that the law professions embrace the qualities of love and
forgiveness if a genuine and sustainable global community is to emerge.
Copyright 2010 The Fetzer Institute. All rights reserved.
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