Law and Liberation

According to Robert Rodes, liberation theology―with its concern for the individual's to respond to building God's kingdom; its demand that Christians align themselves with the oppressed and work to reform or dismantle unjust social structures; and its recognition of the Church as a sign of God's salvific and liberating purpose―gives to the pursuit of justice through law an eschatological significance independent of any immediate or predictable consequences. Rodes assigned new importance to laws that symbolize aspirations they cannot fully implement, and laws that confront destructive forces they cannot fully implement, and laws that confront destructive forces they cannot fully contain. He begins by briefly discussing the basic tenets of liberation theology and relates them to goals that traditional jurisprudence has assigned to law. In later chapters he develops agendas for ameliorating some of the major problems in contemporary American life, rootlessness, powerlessness. He addresses each in light of past perceptions, how a Christian should respond to them today, and how law can respond to them.

Robert E. Rodes, Jr., (1927- 2014) was the first permanent holder of the Paul J. Schierl/Fort Howard Paper Corporation Chair in Legal Ethics as a professor at Notre Dame Law School. Professor Rodes taught and wrote in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, ethics, jurisprudence, law and theology, legal history and welfare legislation. He is the author of Pilgrim Law (Notre Dame Press, 1998).