Perry Saidman
Honoring the Spirit in the Law: A Call to ...

For centuries, law has served as a safeguard against tyranny, enshrining dignity and fairness through principles like due process. Yet what if due process is more than a procedural shield? What if it is also a sacred act—a societal recognition of each person’s inherent worth?

This is the vision of the Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP), a collective of legal professionals reimagining justice as a deeply human, even spiritual, endeavor. In their reflection The Spiritual Dimension of Due Process, they invite us to see legal rights not merely as safeguards, but as rituals of affirmation—ways we declare, "You matter."

Honoring the Spirit in the Law: A Call to Conscience and Connection
Perry Saidman
Everything That Rises Must Converge: ...

In an era marked by deep political division and growing social disconnection, the Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP) offers a radically human vision of legal transformation. For over two decades, this coalition of lawyers, law professors, and justice reformers has been at the forefront of the “integrative law” movement—an emerging field that seeks to infuse legal practice with the wisdom of spiritual traditions and the realities of human interdependence.

Meeting in Minneapolis in advance of their 2018 national conference, PISLAP members gathered not simply to critique the legal system—but to reimagine it. Drawing from sources as diverse as neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy, Sufi poetry and criminal justice reform, PISLAP’s work rests on a shared belief: that the law should not only protect rights, but also nurture connection.

The group’s central question is both profound and practical: What would our legal and political systems look like if they were grounded in the truth that we are not isolated individuals, but deeply connected beings?

Everything That Rises Must Converge: Integrating spirituality, law, and politics
Perry Saidman
Book Review: Transforming Justice, Lawyers, and ...

If I once believed that the legal system needed change, Transforming Justice, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law has made that belief a conviction. This powerful anthology, edited by Professor Marjorie Silver, is more than a book—it’s a manifesto for a new legal consciousness. Through essays by lawyers, professors, judges, and justice reformers—many affiliated with the Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP)—the book lays out a path toward a legal system that reflects our fundamental interconnectedness.

The core argument is clear: while the law has historically protected individual rights against tyranny, it now lags behind scientific and spiritual understandings of human relationship and community. From tort and contract law to property and criminal justice, the legal system still treats people as isolated individuals—what Peter Gabel calls "disconnected monads." But as this book shows, our survival and flourishing depend not on separation, but connection.

Book Review: Transforming Justice, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law
Perry Saidman
RESTORATIVE DC UPDATE

In its latest State of Discipline Report, Washington D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education revealed a welcome trend: suspensions and expulsions are on the decline. Yet behind the promising numbers lies a persistent truth—racial disparities in school discipline remain stark. Black students, particularly young Black girls, continue to be suspended at dramatically higher rates than their peers, often for subjective offenses like “disrespect” or “disruption.”

As Tarek Maassarani of Restorative DC explains, these disparities cannot be separated from deeper social patterns—implicit bias, racialized poverty, and educational inequity rooted in America’s history. Even as schools adopt new approaches, real equity will remain elusive without addressing the structural roots of injustice.

Restorative Justice, Maassarani argues, offers a powerful path forward. By shifting the focus from punishment to dialogue and repair, restorative practices help uncover the human stories behind conflict, fostering empathy and accountability in place of exclusion. But more than a strategy, Restorative Justice is a philosophy—one that seeks not just better outcomes, but a better society.

RESTORATIVE DC UPDATE
Perry Saidman
Spreading the PISLAP Vision Through Art

What if justice began not with punishment, but with love?

Visual artist Kim Vanderheiden never expected to enter the world of law. But while preparing an exhibition at the Alameda County Law Library, a single phrase came to her with surprising clarity: “The law is love.” Initially dismissed as too naïve or idealistic, that thought became the guiding force of a years-long artistic and philosophical journey—one that has led her deep into the world of restorative justice, the writings of Peter Gabel, and the growing movement to ground legal systems in compassion and connection rather than fear and retribution.

In her reflection, Vanderheiden explores how art can serve as protest and invitation—a way to hold up not just resistance to injustice, but a vision of what justice could become. Her work seeks to shift cultural consciousness, offering a counterweight to the anger and condemnation so prevalent in our discourse today.

Spreading the PISLAP Vision Through Art

Publication of Peter Gabel's new book

Publication of Peter Gabel's new book

What drives human history—conflict, or connection? In his groundbreaking new book, The Desire for Mutual Recognition: Social Movements and the Dissolution of the False Self (Routledge Press), Peter Gabel offers a bold reimagining of liberation, grounding it not in class struggle alone, but in the human longing for authentic relationship and mutual recognition.

As restorative justice leader Fania Davis describes, Gabel’s work calls us to embed social-spiritual strategies into our movements—not only to confront injustice, but to heal the deep social fear that underpins it. This is not just a theoretical treatise—it is an invitation to co-create a more loving, conscious, and spiritually awake world.

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