Cross & Gavel Audio

The legal profession tends to breed a type of disposition more akin to something in Homer than The Wonder Years. A rooted posture towards adversity rather than compromise or even common ground. Much of this is taught in law school, even if indirectly, with a ruthless employment competition cycle the second 1Ls start their fall semester and that infamous curve that pins students against one another and judged over the smallest of differences. My guest today is David A. Grenardo and our topic is an antidote to this madness, which is civility. We discuss not only what it is, but more importantly, how it tends to improve the quality of the legal profession and those inside. His latest paper in the Toledo Law Review is called Why Civility?, but his record on this goes back 15 years. David is a professor of law and associate director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions. He joined St. Thomas Law in 2022. He was previously a professor at St. Mary's University School of Law (Texas) where h

Today, I discuss a book that goes to the heart of why religious freedom matters and how protecting its exercise confounds the forces of disintegration and violence. My guest is Allen D. Hertzke, whose book Why Religious Freedom Matters is an indispensable resource for not only showing the true value of religion, but also why it remains so important that people of all stripes band together to protect it from forces of coercion and restriction. Allen is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Oklahoma. He is author or editor of ten books, including Freeing God's Children and The Future of Religious Freedom. He served a ten-year term on the prestigious Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

In the last few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household name, slowly creeping into the corners of every technological device we've all grown to depend on. But what happens if the underlying training data and the people training the models perpetuate the common biases that we all from time to time commit against our neighbors—whether intentionally or not. That is the focus of our conversation today. Joining us is Sonia Gipson Rankin, whose 2024 paper, Mitigating Algorithmic Bias: Strategies for Addressing Discrimination in Data, serves as a jumping off point for this discussion. Sonia is a legal scholar and educator whose work combines her background in computer science with her passion for legal justice. She teaches in the fields of Torts, Family Law, Technology and the Law, and Introduction to Lawyering at the University of New Mexico School of Law. She is also Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Africana Studies. Full bio. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY.

The John Witte, Jr. Lecture Series on Christianity & Law is back! A new venture from Christian Legal Society aimed at advancing the conversation surrounding the integration of Christianity & law. In our third lecture inspired by the Düsseldorf School of painting, we discuss law, family, and religion in late antiquity. Our keynote is Dr. Maria Doerfler, an Associate Professor of Late Antiquity at the Yale University's Department of Religious Studies. Before joining the Yale faculty, she held the position of Assistant Professor of Christianity in Late Antiquity at Duke Divinity School, as well as serving as director of the Duke/UNC Center for Late Ancient Studies. Her work focuses on the interpretation of authoritative texts, of law, philosophical writings, and scripture, in the second through sixth centuries C.E., with particular emphasis on how contexts of personal or communal crisis shape exegesis. She was joined by Elizabeth Kirk for a period of Q&A after the lecture. Elizabeth is the Co-Direct

Many who discuss political theology run to the likes of Augustine or Aquinas to explain the ways their minds express the world and treat its people. And while those thinkers are profound and helpful, the idea of political theology carries a lifeblood that invites Christians to think creatively about its seams and the ways it informs and binds our common connections. That is why I'm excited to produce this conversation with Vincent Lloyd, who co-authored a recent book entitled What Is Political Theology (Columbia University Press 2026) that touches on the multifaceted concepts of political theology and what it means today. Vincent and I discuss the meaning of the term and its scandals, the idea of domination that undergirds his writing, the way academics and activists work together on advancing a political theology from below, and so much more. This is a dense episode: for those who listen 1.2x speed, you've been warned! Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by

One of the most difficult issues to solve is the careful balance of criminal reform with the punitive aims of state power. While most of us don't want to needless lock up our neighbors, we are also in favor of the systematic creation of spaces of safety for our families and friends. But with underlying aims of justice comes the sins of man's overreach in search of solutions. Alas, enters mass incarceration. I talk today about this pervasive problem through the lenses of Christian Realism. My guest once again is Jeff Baker, the first Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. His scholarship focuses on issues of human rights and dignity, social justice, legal education, and ethics, at the intersections of law, theology, jurisprudence, and public policy. Full bio. His paper, Christian Realism and The Sins of Mass Incarceration, is a clarion call for applying ethical lawyering to issues of present concern. We discuss what is mass incarceratio

One of the things that we at Christian Legal Society constantly implore law students to do is to think about what sort of lawyer they want to be. Yes, we want them to be successful, but more than that, we want them to bear witness to the grace of God and to manifest His character across the legal profession. My conversation today provides a much needed resource for those looking to develop their reputation as Christian lawyers and for those hoping to make a positive difference in the lives of those they encounter. My guest is Jeff Baker, the first Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. His scholarship focuses on issues of human rights and dignity, social justice, legal education, and ethics, at the intersections of law, theology, jurisprudence, and public policy. Full bio. His paper, A Sermon on the Law, is a clarion call for ethical lawyering on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed.  Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN

Our first episode of the year takes us to Dayton, Ohio, where under the auspices of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court sits the Kushinda Court ("the Court") under the vision and direction of the Honorable Gerald Parker. This Court is part of the wider strategy to create specialized dockets that allow for a therapeutic approach to law. My guest is Judge Parker, who talks to me about his journey to the Court, his vision for the Court, and how his faith plays a role in the ministry he performs. Judge Parker was elected to the Common Pleas Court Bench, General Division, in November of 2018, taking office in early January of 2019. He serves on the Offender Supervision and Security Committee. Judge Parker received his B.A. from Georgetown College (KY) in 2004 and his J.D. from Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University in 2007. From 2007 to 2011, he was an Assistant Montgomery County Prosecuting Attorney spending a majority of his time on felony dockets. In 2012, Judge Parker joined the ci

One of the chief affections we as humans should pursue along with truth and virtue is the appreciation for beauty. As lawyers, we are uniquely predisposed to ignoring this element of human life for want of loveliness in our work and in the people we come across. My discussion today is an attempt to rethink the Christian attorney's relationship with beauty. My guest has written a seminal work (here) on the importance of beauty in the law, providing an essential primer for inquiring minds committed to the common good. Mark Fowler is a practicing lawyer whose specialist areas of advice include the law applying to not-for-profit organisations, income tax exempt institutions, charities and deductible gift recipients. He has advised a wide range of schools and other educational institutions, international aid organizations, charitable housing associations, benevolent institutions, disability service providers, peak bodies, arts and cultural organizations and religious organizations. For more. Happy New Years! Cross

The question of natural law continues to come up in the context of Christian jurisprudence, and for good reason. It is a topic both fascinating and formative, touching on topics as vast as the origins of the American constitutional experiment, human vulnerability, and modern society. And so with the new book from Alex Deagon (here) on the interaction of Christian natural law and religious freedom, I get an opportunity to learn something new on this mysterious topic. Alex and I talk about his intellectual journey, the shaping of his thesis, the meaning and application of natural law, the importance of religious freedom, and more. Alex is an Associate Professor in the School of Law, Queensland University of Technology. He is an international expert in religious freedom and the author of From Violence to Peace (2017) and Reconciling Freedom and Discrimination (2023). Full bio. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

All year, we've witnessed in America a law enforcement presence dedicated to a single mission: mass deportation. While initially this mission was centered on the eradication of dangerous criminals, those now detained with no criminal history has outpaced those with convictions or pending criminal charges. The stories have been saddening and legally complex, leaving Christians with a tension between the mandates of "loving the foreigner in our midst" and the respect we owe to the ruling authorities appointed by God. A tension that cannot be broken by partisanship or by reducing this multifaceted issue to a binary designation of legal vs. illegal. In today's episode, I talk to two World Relief staff members working in this area about the state of things in our country in an effort to continue my own education and to show just how complicated this all is. Ted Oswald and Anna Colby are both attorneys with World Relief's Immigration Legal Services helping immigrants and refugees in the Sacramento area. (You can fi

In 2010, the Supreme Court issued a consequential opinion that stifled the freedom of association across countless campuses when it came to religious groups. In CLS v. Martinez, in a divided 5-4 opinion, the Court opened the way for universities to limit group association by refusing to grant them power to elect those leaders best suited to carry on that group's mission and purpose. In a forthcoming article (here) in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, my guest today, Benjamin Fleshman, covers the infamous Martinez decision and the problem it created for student organizations across the country. Given the closeness of this topic to my own work, we discuss in some detail the infamous "all comers" policy (see this and this) still upheld in some law schools, e.g., UC-Berkeley (see this), nature of student organizations, the importance of recent Supreme Court decisions (see recent FCA en banc decision in the Ninth Circuit and then the other mentioned FCA case in Washington, D.C.), the recent attempts to strengt

One of the cliches of culture is that we are polarized. Perhaps because it has become so commonplace to speak of our divisions, our divisions have become normalized. In my conversation today, I speak with someone who is very much at the heart of the American political order and has a unique vantage point for elucidating the cosmic significance of our clashes. Jim DeMint is an American businessman, author, and retired politician who served as a United States Senator from South Carolina and as president of The Heritage Foundation. A leading figure in the Tea Party movement, Jim is a member of the Republican Party and is the founder of the Senate Conservatives Fund. His most recent accomplishment was serving as the founding chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute. Jim and I talk about his new book entitled What the Bible Really Says About Creation, End Times, Politics, and You. I ask him about his faith inside the many offices he held, the church and whether he trusts the pastors to deliver the "right

Today marks the 200th episode of the Cross & Gavel. As part of that celebration, I have brought back the original host to have an unscripted and (mostly) unedited conversation about all things ministry, movies, books, and more. Mike Schutt is now the Executive Director of Worldview Academy, the director of the CLS Law School Fellows Program, and the author of the seminal work for Christian law students, Redeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession. Mike is also an affiliate professor at Trinity Law School and a decent human being (I don't care what Myron says). Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

My guest today comes from outside the United States and has been studying the religious freedom landscape in Australia for quite some time. In his new book—Unshaken Allegiance: Living Wisely as Christians with Diminishing Religious Freedoms—he chronicles many of these challenges, offering a constructively approach to matters of difference and the various ways to express our Christian identity in the heat of public contest. Patrick Parkinson (AM, MA, LLM, LLD) is an Emeritus Professor of Law and former Dean of Law at the University of Queensland. He has been involved in advocacy for religious freedom in Australia for many years, in particular as board member and sometime Chair of Freedom for Faith. He is an expert on family law and child protection and has held various positions chairing governmental advisory bodies in Australia in these areas, leading to significant law reform. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

My guest this week is Whittney Barth, an associate teaching professor at Emory Law School and the Executive Director and Charlotte McDaniel Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Our conversatiion centers around her new piece arguing that religious actors act as friction creators in the discussion and development of AI tools, ethics, and regulation. Full paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/14/5/67 Full bio: https://cslr.law.emory.edu/people/cslr-leadership/barth-whittney.html Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

In this special film festival edition, I talk with Crystal L. Downing about the medium of film and how to approach the viewing experience. At the heart of our discussion is her new book, The Wages of Cinema: A Christian Aesthetic of Film in Conversation with Dorothy L. Sayers. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

One of the major challenges in religious freedom law is figuring out to what extent a claim of accommodation is justified given the low barrier of entry for claims of sincerity. While American law tries to prevent a man from becoming what Justice Scalia in Smith called “a law unto himself,” something of the sort is happening when a person claims that his faith prevents him from following the normal course of obedience. My conversation today helps illuminate some of this in a profound way, specifically looking at Soren Kierkegaard’s ethical system and considering its corollary in the rule of law. My guest is Joshua Neoh, a senior lecturer in law at the Australian National University (ANU), Australia. He has an LLB, LLM and PhD from the ANU, Yale and Cambridge, respectively. Full bio. His paper at the heart of this conversation is called Kierkegaardian Ethics and the Rule of Law, available here. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from

In Part I, Ross Halperin and I laid a foundation for the work of ASJ in Honduras under the leadership of Kurt Ver Beek and others. In this episode, I am joined by Kurt himself to discuss his exchange of letters between Nicholas Wolterstorff in a wonderful book, Call for Justice: From Practice to Theory and Back, which looks at the meaning of justice and the work ASJ. Kurt is joined by Emily Cole, who has focused on Latin America most of her career and remains a passionate advocate for the well-being and development of that region. I speak to them about a number of things, focusing on the structural details of working in the area, including the difference between social justice and community development, the importance of long-term missionary work, the significance of elections, working with the government, and more. Kurt and his wife, Jo Ann Van Engen, are currently the directors of Calvin University’s Justice Studies Semester, which studies the concept of justice in relation to history, economics, politics,

Today, we start a two-part journey into the heart of Honduran society. Our focus will be on one man, Kurt Ver Beek, and the organization he co-founded, Association for a More Just Society (ASJ). Kurt is a professor of Sociology (Emeritus) at Calvin University and lead investigator for an agreement between Transparency International, the Honduran Government, and ASJ. For this first episode, we are joined by the reporter Ross Halperin, whose recent biography (here) of Kurt’s ministry (New York Times profile here) paints a fascinating picture of a man dedicated to the cause of justice. While Ross and I do not discuss the entire scope of the book, we do focus on the criminal justice system and the many barriers erected for victims seeking relief. Ross and I talk about how he came to write the book, the work of ASJ in helping reduce the violence in Honduras, some of the main characters in the story, and much more. Ross attended Harvard University and worked under Mark A. R. Kleiman, one of the world’s leading crim