Tiffany Williams Brewer and Eric Brewer (both Howard University) have posted Faith, Freedom, and the Rule of Law: Christian Responsibility, the Beloved Community, and the Lawyer as Social Engineer on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article argues that sustaining the rule of law requires more than fidelity to legal procedure; it requires a moral architecture capable of evaluating whether law serves justice and a practical methodology for transforming institutions when it does not. Drawing upon Black theological and legal traditions, we bring liberation theology, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beloved Community, and Charles Hamilton Houston’s conception of the lawyer as social engineer into conversation. Liberation theology supplies the moral lens through which law is evaluated from the perspective of the marginalized; King’s Beloved Community supplies the normative destination—a social order oriented toward dignity, reconciliation, and human flourishing; and Houston supplies the institutional method—the intentional use of law to dismantle structures of injustice and engineer more just ones. Together, these traditions recast the rule of law not simply as a system to be preserved, but as a moral vocation requiring continual evaluation, repair, and reconstruction.
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Lawrence Solum