The Professional Thought for the Month of June is by Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit:

Here is the insight I offer for you to consider. To build a community that extends beyond your family or congregation-and I believe we are compelled by our understanding of the Atonement of our Savior to do just that-involves the law. Properly understood, the highest and most noble role of a lawyer, then, is to help build communities founded on the rule of law. By doing so, lawyers are participating in the redeeming work of the atoning power of the Savior at its zenith. To be sure, the working out of the power of the Atonement occurs initially at the intimate level of a sinner realizing her individual need for God's grace. But it must also ultimately include creating a community based on the rule of law.

The rule of law is the idea, of staggering importance in the progress of humankind, that a community should not be organized according to the principle that might makes right. Rather, a community and its laws should reflect the reality that each person is a son or daughter of God and by virtue of that fact alone is entitled to be treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. The most famous and influential expression of this radical idea came from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, Virginia's greatest son and the founder of my other alma mater:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Thomas B. Griffith, “Lawyers and the Atonement”, Life in the Law, p. 236