The Editorial Board of the Journal of Law and Religion Presents this Award to Thomas L. Shaffer

Extract

As a lawyer, law teacher, dean, scholar, colleague and friend, you have lived what you have taught, that lawyering is a vocation most faithfully lived in friendship. A prodigious scholar, you have led us as a brilliant pioneer into our past, turning us again toward ethics as a way of life lived in reflection and discomfort, not a decision of the moment, and situating the good lawyer within her community of memory. You have told many of the old tales, making way for a return to story-telling as ethical conversation for law scholars. In your deceptively accessible writings, the daily tasks of the lawyer are honored and challenged within a rich texture of literature, religion and law.

Your life of professional service, proceeding from a major law firm to Dean of Notre Dame Law School to clinical teacher, bespeaks the courage and humility with which you explore the religiously committed lawyer's vocation. Your affirming presence as a listening, generous, humorous and insightful friend to those whom you love and those whom you hardly know, has brought strength to the lives of many others. We honor your willingness to speak of God in public places, to help us meditate on the work of the lawyer, and to affirm our halting efforts to live whole lives as faithfully religious and faithfully professional men and women.