Michael S. Ariens

What Hath Faith Wrought? Faith and Law: How Religious Traditions from Calvinism to Islam View American Law. By Robert F. Cochran. New York University Press 2008. Pp.299.

While engaged in research on another project in the Lon L. Fuller Papers at the Harvard Law School, I came across a letter from early 1960 from William Stringfellow to Fuller. Stringfellow invited Fuller to speak at a conference on the subject of the relation, if any, between Christianity and the law. Fuller was invited to offer a jurisprudential perspective on whether there was a connection between the two, and was to be joined on the panel by a minister and philosopher. Stringfellow noted the unusual nature of what today would be called an interdisciplinary conference, but thought much could be learned by all. In the intervening half-century since Stringfellow wrote Fuller, a number of academic lawyers have explored the relationship of religion (and religious belief) and law. The late Harold Berman’s The Interaction of Law and Religion represents a starting point connecting the two. Tom Shaffer’s books On Being a Christian and a Lawyer and Faith and the Professions and Milner Ball’s The Word and the Law assay how, if at all, a Christian lawyer can practice law. Professor Samuel Levine, an orthodox Jewish rabbi and one of the contributors to the volume under review, has written extensively concerning both the content of Jewish law and the relevance of Jewish legal thought to American law. The “religious lawyering” movement evaluates the role

25.00. ISBN: 0-814-71673-3.

Much of the history of the American law of evidence, including its most contentious issue, hearsay, is the story of stasis and reform. The case of Hoffman v. Palmer represents one of few cases concerning hearsay known by name, and illustrates that “false” evidence has often been used to caution against efforts proclaiming “radical reform” of the law of evidence. In this case involving a collision between a car and a train, the critical question was: Is the defendant railroad permitted to introduce into evidence the transcript of a question and answer session made two days after the accident between the engineer of the train and another railroad employee? If believed, a statement made in this session would exonerate the railroad from liability. Writing for a divided court, Judge Jerome Frank held that the absence of a motive to lie on the part of the declarant (the railroad engineer who gave the statement) was required in order for the statement to be admissible. Because such a motive could reasonably be presumed present, the engineer’s statement was therefore determined not admissible. Frank’s opinion was unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court in an opinion written by Justice William O. Douglas. However, Edmund M. Morgan, Jr., law professor and prior member of both the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Committee on the Model Code of Evidence, vehemently disagreed with both Frank and Douglas’s opinions. Frank and Douglas’s decisions in this case, and Morgan’s opposition to the precedent those decisions set, incited considerable debate over the law of evidence and the issue of hearsay, and launched significant reform efforts. For these reasons, Hoffman v. Palmer is emblematic of the history of the American law of evidence, law reform, and the history of twentieth century American legal thought.