Theologians, law professors, and scholars are responding to Milner Ball's work. I, however, am only a country lawyer and preacher, a practitioner who strays each spring into the academy to teach and to learn.

Professor Ball graciously leaves a place for my kind, though. He observes that you cannot work out the law you conceive in an ethical vacuum any more than you can conceive it in an ethical vacuum. You must practice it. I comment as one who practices law.

I frequently represent persons accused of crimes. These accused citizens usually have given six or more statements to the authorities, each statement more incriminating than the preceding one. In these cases, the issue is not guilt, but sentencing. In short, the question is: What will the State of Tennessee do with the offender?

In many jurisdictions, including those where I most practice, the prosecutors and judges demand that offenders be placed behind the bulwark's bars for considerable periods of time. They typically understand criminal law as “the bulwark of freedom”: