PISLAP and the Aspirations and Challenges of Holistic Lawyering!
The Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law and Politics emerged in 1996 from a gathering of 1,800 social activists who attended the first, ‘Politics of Meaning’ conference in Washington D.C.
It is, “an international network of lawyers, law professors, law students, legal workers and others who are seeking to develop a new spiritually-informed approach to law and social change…”
PISLAP., “…begins with the belief that human beings are fundamentally motivated by more than material needs and economic interests”. Ahh… I’m home!
On the 20th May 2020, during Covid19 ‘lockdown’ as a Member of PISLAP, I attended one such online conference Zoom call. It was exciting to meet other Members from Germany, New York, Florida, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, California, Washington D.C. Oxford, London, Ireland… Peter Gabel, Harvard Law Graduate, PhD in Psychology, Associate Editor of Tikkun Magazine, Professor of contracts, organiser of the Network of Spiritual Progressiveness, co-founder of PISLAP, led the call. Peter spoke of current legal systems reinforcing ‘separation'. By giving birth to a new paradigm of human connection, whilst elevating what works in the old paradigm, we can heal the legacy of separation, towards connection.
All present were asked to introduce ourselves, where we were from and use this call as, “The opportunity to share about our endeavours, aspirations and challenges we each face in moving the legal culture in a more healing direction and integrating spirituality into law and politics”. It is a great question and one that I would invite any Lawyer, Mediator, Magistrate, Judge, Policy Maker and Politician to ask themselves.
I cannot improve on PISLAP’s beautiful words about Mission which I fully share, so I set them out below in full:
“We believe that human beings long to live in a world in which people can fully recognize and affirm each other's humanity and that law can help bring that world into being through new legal processes that foster empathy, compassion, and mutual understanding. This in turn requires a definition of justice that goes beyond what can be achieved through the clash of individual rights that characterizes the existing adversary system toward a vision of justice that is based on the healing of the alienation between self and other that is at the heart of so much social injustice and social conflict. To this end, we hold conferences, write books and articles, teach classes, have ongoing conference calls, and in other ways seek to support one another's efforts to create a new legal system that can help to heal and repair the world”.
For further information, please contact http://www.spiritlawpolitics.org or amber@amberlaw.com.