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Abstract:
The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other developed nation by orders of magnitude, yet nearly 47 million people, including nearly 9 million children, do not have health insurance. The vast majority of uninsured Americans are working poor people who earn too much to be eligible for public coverage but who make too little to afford private insurance or exorbitant private care. Two questions spring from this "gap" to implicate Biblical ethical precepts. First, is access to health care for our uninsured neighbors a moral issue that should spur redress by conscientious communities? Second, if so, what should be the righteous response in national health care policy? As demonstrated here, access to health care in America is a matter of wealth. Biblically, this situation presents at least two broad moral imperatives: the call to care for the poor and sick and the aspiration toward justice regardless of social and economic status. This paper attempts a view of the contemporary health care debate in America though the prism of Biblical scripture and concludes that the current state of the American health care system presents a moral crisis of justice and charity. Observing the community of Christians described in the New Testament, I suggest that people of faith in the American republic rightly should consider the use of progressive governmental policy to address an unjust health care system.

Abstract:
Every state provides civil protection for victims of domestic abuse, but these regimes typically fixate on physical violence. Domestic abuse, however, does not spring from violent tendencies. Rather, abuse arises from a perpetrator's desire to exert power and control over his victim. Abusers often deploy emotional, economic, political and social tactics to coerce responses from vulnerable partners long before they resort to violence. Violence is the extreme tool to maintain control when a victim challenges the abuser's power over her life. Civil protection systems should confront domestic abuse more comprehensively by providing relief from oppressive coercion. By empowering victims earlier in their relationships, civil protection orders might be tools of prevention and redemption, not merely emergency responses to imminent physical danger.

domestic violence, domestic abuse, women, family law

Abstract:
In Christian universities, leaders, teachers and students expend great energy to discern the purpose and place of Christian higher education. Christian schools seek a path of academic and intellectual rigor while hoping to secure a peculiar identity and mission. Christian educators work to prepare students who are useful when they graduate, who effect transformation in their communities and professions, who will contribute to kingdom life for the glory of God. If pedagogy is to square with this purpose of Christian education, Christian teachers should consider direct application of their doctrine to the students’ vocation. Students should acquire more than a well intentioned, theoretical understanding of their discipline. Rather, students should graduate with a seasoned respect for work in the marketplace, with experience among those at the margins of society, with engagement in their communities and a taste of effective service in the world. Service learning pedagogy affords a powerful means of grounding students’ theoretic notions in the “real world” and in the reality of oppressed or impoverished people. Teachers can provide students with transformational experiences that center their learning on practical problems and actual neighbors with the hope that the students leave better equipped to fulfill their kingdom missions. This paper includes a survey of service learning virtues and pedagogy, a closer examination of clinical legal education at the Jones School of Law and a thorough discussion of service learning through community education. Community education initiatives are uniquely fruitful forms of service learning that can fulfill the great objectives of service learning: transformational student experience and effective contribution to the public interest.

Abstract:
The rise of multidisciplinary practices among public-interest lawyers and other professionals promotes more effective and thorough services for vulnerable clients. In various forms, these professionals are creating formal or ad hoc partnerships as they minster to whole clients, not just to a client’s peculiar, momentary problem. For a victim of domestic violence, these collaborations can yield better outcomes and fruitful service, but they may also be critical to her very survival. As the common client works to escape a violent, oppressive relationship, her diverse professional servants must address the acute conflation of legal, medical, psychological, emotional and financial crises that beset her.

Although multidisciplinary collaboration can ease the client’s access to timely, appropriate solutions, such practices challenge traditional roles and boundaries among professions. These collaborations can strain ethical standards and the foundations of a profession’s purpose and culture. This promising movement generates complex problems for attorneys and counselors bound by distinct, sometimes contradictory rules of confidentiality and privilege. As the creative, well intentioned attorney works to render service with mental health professionals, their exchanges and cooperation might threaten precepts of confidentiality, client identification, zealous advocacy and loyalty. Domestic violence victims should not be made to choose between candid communication with their lawyers and counselors and the potential exposure of their confidence in court.

Current applications of professional privileges do not accommodate multidisciplinary practices adequately, leaving clients vulnerable to continued exploitation and coercion by their abusers. The professions’ ethical rules exist to protect clients and society, so the value of collaboration should prompt renewed understanding of inter-professional relationships and the rules that govern them. The very policies that justify strict limitations of professional conduct now may justify a new framework for collaborative services to certain clients.

This article proposes two reforms to accommodate the virtues of multidisciplinary practice while promoting greater professionalism and ethical lawyering. First, under the rules and in federal common law, domestic violence counselors and victim advocates should be “necessary third parties” to the attorney’s privilege so that their presence and contributions do not expose the client’s confidential communication. Second, rules of evidence should permit the privileged professionals to collaborate and communicate on behalf of the common client without destroying their privileges, even if their privileges are not co-extensive.