90 Daily Devotions for Lawyers and Judges

FOREWORD

When Festus, the Roman governor of Judea, inquired into the allegations made against Paul by Tertullus, the spokesman (attorney?) for the high priest, Paul, representing himself, told Festus that he wished to appeal to Caesar. This proved to be a mistake. After King Agrippa conducted a hearing into Tertullus’ charges and heard Paul’s defense, King Agrippa confided to Festus, This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.

Tradition tells us that Paul died in Rome, the victim of an executioner’s sword.

Litigants make mistakes. Lawyers make mistakes. Judges make mistakes. Jurors make mistakes. Saints too. Although the South Carolina Reports, like similar publications, is a record of appeals, it is also a collection of books that catalog mistakes. Every appeal involves at least one mistake someone has made.

There is one appeal a person can make that is mistake-free and risk-free: an appeal to God for the direction and assistance of the Holy Spirit. One can make it every day and as many times as he or she chooses. And it can be made anywhere under any circumstance. The devotionals in this book, geared primarily to members of the legal profession, can aid in that activity.

If you, the reader, find any mistakes herein, please overlook them—just as God stands ready to overlook yours.

Bert Goolsby

Columbia, South Carolina

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

Scripture: John 1:1-18

Our world began with the spoken word of God.(1) The first verse of the fourth gospel also tells us that the Word existed from the very beginning. The verses that follow verse one indicate that the term the Word refers to Jesus. He was with God from the very beginning. In fact, he was and is God.

A word or group of words often attends a beginning.

I remember well the day I began law school. That learning experience also began with a word—a word of advice. As we sat there in the assembly room, the dean urged us not only to study but to study hard. He did it this way. He said, I want you to look at the person sitting next to you on your right and then at the person on your left. Neither will be here when you graduate.

The dean’s prediction didn’t miss the mark by much. Of the 99 law school freshman sitting there with me that September morning, only about half of us earned a law degree three years later. Obviously, from the very beginning some failed to take the dean at his word.

Words, whether spoken or written, can have wide ranging effect. They can create, and they can destroy. The can inspire, and they can dissuade. They can soothe, and they can sting. We must be careful how we use them. Misused words provide a fertile field within which both civil and criminal actions can blossom and grow.

A good way to begin a day is to consider the start of everything and identify with the Word that attended it—to take that Word seriously. You can do this by offering kind words to others. As Jeremy Bentham, that great legal thinker and philosopher, observed:

Kind words cost no more than unkind ones. Kind words produce kind actions, not only on the part of those to whom they are addressed, but on the part of those by whom they are employed[.]

Prayer for the Day:

Our Heavenly Father, As I begin a new day, help me to remember thy Word and guide me as I look at matters that concern me, my country, my family, my friends, and my profession so that what I do is in accordance with thy will. Amen.

Record Your Observations from the Scripture Reading:

*****

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

(Genesis 1:3)

Scripture: Genesis 1:1-18

A good cross-examiner will seize upon inconsistencies to paint a witness as untruthful. But what may at first appear as inconsistent may not be so at all.

Genesis tells us that God created light first. He did this on the first day; and then, being pleased with what he had done, God separated that light from the darkness.

Genesis further tells us, however, that on the fourth day God created lights in the heavens, namely, the stars, the sun, and the moon, for the purpose of dividing the light from the darkness.

If God created the stars, the sun, and the moon on the fourth day, then what was that light he created on the first day? And what about the darkness from which that light was separated? Any inconsistency here?

None at all.

Psalms 104:2 clarifies the matter. God covered himself with light as with a garment. In other words, God made his presence visible. As 1 John 1:5 affirms, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

It should not surprise us, then, that Jesus, being the Son of God, referred to himself as the light of the world(2) and declared he would so remain as long as he was in the world.(3)

Walter Chalmers Smith gives the best description of this first light in the last stanza of his great hymn Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,

Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight.

All praise we would render: O help us to see

’Tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

Prayer for the Day:

Dear God, Creator of light, enlighten me in thy ways. May your light shine both inside and outside me so that others may see you within me. Amen.

Record Your Observations from the Scripture Reading:

*****

And the eyes of them both were opened[.] (Genesis 3:7)

Scripture: Genesis 3:6-9

As today’s law students can tell you—tuition being what it is—knowledge does not always come cheap. Often, it comes with a high price. This has always been so. Adam and Eve found that out a long time ago when, at the suggestion of a snake no less, they ate the forbidden fruit.

Yes, their eyes were opened once they had eaten it; but consider what the acquisition of knowledge cost them.

As indicated above, one must pay a heavy price to become a lawyer today in terms of money. There are also the costs of time and effort. It is only when law school is done and the bar examination successfully stood that the practicing lawyer can realize a return on the legal knowledge that he or she paid so dearly to acquire.

But just as Adam and Eve one day returned unto dust, the knowledge for which they paid such a heavy price perished with them—just as will yours and mine. Psalms 146:4 tells us as much.

How quickly that knowledge will disappear depends in large measure on what one does with it. If shared with others or applied ethically in the pursuit of justice, it may outlast the one who acquired it.

Clarence Darrow, for example, used his legal knowledge to gain a reputation as a first-rate criminal defense lawyer. He did not always represent the rich and famous. American author Irving Stone, writing in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1980, pointed out that more than half of his clients never paid him. According to Stone, Darrow felt a lawyer owed at last fifty percent of his time to preserving democracy. His legacy remains to this day because he practiced what he preached, using his legal knowledge to preserve the rights of even the less fortunate.

Prayer for the Day:

Heavenly Father, I pray that the legal knowledge I possess will always be used for the good of others and for the cause of justice. Amen.

Record Your Observations from the Scripture Reading:

*****

This know also, that in the last days . . . men . . . shall be unthankful[.] (2 Timothy 3:1-2)

Scripture: Luke 17:11-19

The ancient Greeks believed the worst crime one could commit was that of ingratitude. While Paul in his second letter to Timothy does not echo the Greeks’ belief, he does regard ingratitude as a major sin. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare writes, I hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood.(4)

We all have given gifts or assistance for which the recipient failed to express thanks or even acknowledge. Then too, others have given us gifts or assistance that we too failed to offer thanks or to acknowledge.

One of our greatest gifts is the blessing of living in the United States of America, a gift made possible by the sacrifices of countless others and a gift we often take for granted. Every morning provides each of us with an opportunity to tender thanks to God for our country and the Constitution that governs it, for those who drafted that splendid charter, and for those who fought to preserve it. This precious instrument lies at the very foundation of our legal system.

Often, people attack the legal profession, focusing primarily on the lawyer arm of it. They delight in quoting the words of Shakespeare, The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.(5) They never stop to think where this country might be without lawyers, especially when the government takes aim.

Lawyers throughout our blessed land devote hours to performing pro bono labor, often without any expression of thanks from anyone. Every day, courts appoint lawyers to represent indigent defendants for little or no pay. When a lawyer represents a defendant, the lawyer is not only defending the person but is upholding the Constitution as well.

But whether the legal profession and the individuals who compose it receive the thanks they may deserve for services rendered is not important in the final analysis. What is important is that they continue to safeguard the rights of each American by serving the ends of justice.

Still, a measure of thanks, whether given individually or corporately, would be nice every now and then.

Prayer for the Day:

Heavenly Father, Thank you for another moment of life, a life lived in a free country in which every citizen has the protection of the legal profession, the guardians of our laws. Amen.

Record Your Observations from the Scripture Reading:

*****

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilse thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. (Matthew 5:25)

Scripture: Matthew 5:25-26

Every practicing lawyer will face, if he or she hasn’t done so already, the situation in which one party to litigation offers to conclude a legal claim by settlement and the lawyer’s client will refuse to accept it, notwithstanding the lawyer’s advice to settle. An offer of settlement is a feature common to both the criminal and the civil courts. The former takes the form of a plea bargain while the latter often, but not always, involves the transfer of money or property.

The question of the settlement of a legal claim is not a new one. It has dogged litigants since at least Jesus’ day, as we learn from Matthew’s report of the Sermon on the Mount.

Our Savior’s advice to settle