Alternative Medicine Portal – Holistic Healing – updated daily

 This book review, written by Lainey Feingold, was first published by www.BeyondChron.org.  J. Kim Wright is an ambitious woman. In this comprehensive resource manual, she describes dozens of ways in which lawyers, judges and legal workers across the country (and around the world) are attempting to change their profession for the better. The terms sound hopeful Holistic Law, Renaissance Law, Transformative Law, Law with a Meditative Perspective. Spiritual Law, Law as a Healing Profession, Restorative Justice, Therapeutic Jurisprudence. Most profoundly, as the title reflects, Lawyers as Peacemakers.

For Lawyers, For Others

Lawyers as Peacemakers , published by the American Bar Association, clocks in at over 500 pages including appendixes, resources and information about its many contributors. The book includes essays, quotes, interview snippets, profiles and articles written by both Wright and leaders in the various alternative legal processes she explores.

Hopefully portions of the book will be excerpted in publications for the legal profession. Lawyers and legal workers who have never heard the umbrella terms comprehensive law and integrative law but know something is missing from their day-to-day experiences will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief that alternatives exist. People who have had frustrating experiences with the legal system as a client, witness, offender or victim, may find an explanation, on a systems level, about how and why their experience fell short.

Other information in Lawyers as Peacemakers , about the basics of mindfulness, time management, or the importance of relationship building for example, could fit well in the pages of Oprah Magazine or Shambhala Sun. In other words, you dont have to be a lawyer to get something from this book. (Though you will probably want to take the book out of the library with a $74.95 price tag from the publisher and a $186.65 Amazon re-seller price, the book, unfortunately, was clearly not priced for public consumption.)

This book will be fascinating to anyone who has wondered just how a society would look if its legal system was structured by outside-the-box thinkers. By people who believe that whenever possible, problems are best resolved not with confrontation and games-playing, but with awareness, care, attention, and collaboration.

If you think such an alternative vision is possible, youll be glad that J. Kim Wright undertook her ambitious project.

Holistic Law in the Gulf of Mexico?

Reading the book in June, 2010, I couldnt help but wonder: Would any of these approaches work in what is possibly the biggest legal mess the United States has faced in years claims relating to the BP Oil Disaster?

The Gulf of Mexico deep water drilling debacle occurred after publication of Wrights book. One measure of the books worth is whether its ideas have a place in rectifying the staggering losses wrought by BPs malfeasance. Given the cornucopia of suggestions for handling disputes in alternative ways, there is no doubt that Wright would unequivocally say YES to the role of lawyers as peacemakers in the Gulf Coast.

First, the author would assure skeptics, as she does in the book, that legal approaches that recognize the whole person, and lawyers practicing law with compassion and a wider perspective, in no way diminish the potential relief available to injured parties.

For example, in the BP drilling disaster, the traditional adversarial perspective of civil law and the processes based on that perspective can provide money to workers who have lost their livelihood and impose penalties under environmental laws. The traditional criminal courts can, and hopefully will, mete out significant punishment to BP decision-makers who cared only about profit, ignoring the needs of people, the underwater ecosystem, and the above-water environment.

Wright would argue that holistic lawyers could and would be equally successful in the realm of money, penalties, fines, and prison time. But this book suggests that alternative legal mindsets and institutions (the

Click here to view rest of article from original site