THE INTERACTION OF LAW AND RELIGION.

By Harold J. Berman '38.Abingdon Press, 1974. 174 pp. $4.95.

To say in this day and age that law needs religion and that religion needs law is to sound archaic. Professor Berman of Harvard Law School recognizes the heavy burden of proof upon him. The excitement of his book of lectures, dedicated to that extraordinary Dartmouth teacher, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, is that he accepts the burden and sounds a challenge and affirmation in contemporary terms. Neither Establishment nor Revolution survives without his prescription. Thus he examines the current instrumental theory that law is observed because of its coercive sanctions. Hoisting it by its own pragmatism, he points out that it hasn't worked. An inviting footnote beginning with Jean Piaget and winding up with Erik Erikson tempts the reader into a psychological byway.

"Religion" can be secular, even false or atheistic. "[It] is not only a set of doctrines and exercises; it is people manifesting a collective concern for the ultimate meaning and purpose of life." Thus it involves more than an individual's personal beliefs. It is a social as well as a psychological phenomenon. "Law is not only a body of rules; it is people legislating, adjudicating, administering, negotiating - creating channels of cooperation." It involves the individual's sense of justice. It is a psychological as well as a social phenomenon.

"To appeal to religion to rescue law in America today is like asking one drowning man to save another." Paradoxically, religion must recognize and restore its legal dimensions. Even in the most mystical religions there must be a concern for social order. Berman analyzes and refutes some current attitudes which hold that structures and processes of social ordering are irrevelant and even alien to man's spiritual aspirations. In particular he scrutinizes three Christian theological doctrines (that love, faith, or grace alone make law unnecessary) and the non-theological doctrine of the so-called counter culture or youth culture (that spontaneity, enthusiasm, and love supersede all established procedures and structures for allocating rights and obligations). He supplies for that other law professor, Charles Reich, the thought that law is part of man's whole being, the servant of justice, love, and the highest aims of the community. Communes have repeatedly foundered for lack of a sense of law. With it the values described in The Greening of America can be realized.

At the end he sees the need of the world for a regeneration. Some elements of a common universal religion are necessary to give mankind courage and a sense of direction. Humanism and good will and respect for law cannot alone overcome the gods of Nation, Race, and Class. "The world needs a radical vision of a common destiny, and common convictions for which people of different nations, races, and classes are willing to make sacrifices; and it needs common rituals and traditions that embody its convictions." The way is pointed by the growth of international law and institutions and of the "global village." People forming communes, however flawed, reflect the rejection of the out-worn and the reach for affirmation that will vitalize our developing institutions.

Mr. Sylvester, a part-time member of theNorwich-Hanover community, is an AssistantAttorney General of the State of New York.