Reply Procedure from the Underside: A Reply to Professor Rodes

Extract

Professor Rodes invites us to a fresh view of the role of procedure in God's purpose. He reveals procedure as being itself a creation of God and a way for us to try to do God's business without being God. Through these insights procedure becomes more than merely a time-consuming buffer between people and justice. Professor Rodes shows us the potential of procedure as a means for us to emulate the qualities of God in our legal relations with others.

These insights are indeed welcome. They not only give us a great appreciation of the value of procedure, but also give us a metaphor by which we may call procedure to account and judge whether it fulfills its purposes. As Professor Rodes warns us, procedure separated from the purposes of God can easily be seen as a god itself, invoking our worship rather than our reformation.

Nonetheless, some, including myself, will find it hard to respond fully to Professor Rodes' invitation to take the theological considerations and relate them to our personal practice of our profession. The problem is not with the insights, but with the practice.