In God in the Courtroom: Religion's Role at Trial, Brian H. Bornstein and Monica K. Miller have provided a well-written overview of religion's role in American trial practice. What separates this book from many in the “religion and law” realm is its active engagement with religion's practical, rather than theoretical, role in the lives of judges, juries, advocates, plaintiffs, and defendants. The authors have laid out the pathway for future research in the field. This is impressive considering the scope of their topic and the mere 258 pages in which it is covered. Hopefully, this book will spur researchers to collect more data in this area, as a greater depth of material would have allowed the authors to supplement their somewhat cursory findings and draw stronger, more useful conclusions.

The book consists of two main sections: (a) the juror and religion and (b) judges, attorneys, litigants, and religion. The first section, addressing religion and the jury, covers the use of religion during voir dire, the relationship between jurors' religious affiliation and their legal attitudes, the relationship between jurors' religious characteristics and their legal attitudes and decisions, and jurors' use of religion in jury deliberation. This last subject was the most interesting and yielded the most unexpected commentary. One expects attorneys to use religion as an element of jury selection, but one may be surprised to learn how often jurors explicitly, rather than implicitly, use their religion to decide cases. For example, the authors found that jurors may “cite scripture during deliberation, pray, or consult with pastors” (67). Most of the cases examined were criminal rather than civil, and many of the cases cited dealt with sentencing in general and death sentences in particular (71–72, 74, 75). While sentencing and death penalty cases may be those in which religion plays the most prominent role, the examination of them in the book carries the chapter beyond the realm of applicability for most attorneys who litigate civil actions. In the death penalty cases, it is less surprising, and perhaps even appropriate, that jurors refer to matters of faith when deciding whether someone will live or die. The authors point out that jurisdictions are split as to the appropriate level of explicit religious reference in jury deliberations (67). Hopefully, other scholars will be able to take up and examine this interesting topic further.

The second section, which deals with religion and judges, attorneys, and litigants, is divided into four chapters and is followed by a general conclusion. The first chapter examines the judge's religion; the second looks at the attorney's religion; the third explores attorneys' use of biblical appeals; and the fourth takes up religious figures and institutions as litigants. The chapter regarding biblical appeals is particularly interesting—first, because the authors work to identify which particular biblical verses and stories are used to support or discourage punishment and, second, because the authors demonstrate how a single story can be used by both the prosecution and the defense to make opposite points. One particularly noteworthy example is the story of Jesus and the two thieves on their crosses (153). Defense attorneys have used Jesus's quote from this story, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do,” to argue that as Jesus forgave his killers, so should the jury mete out mercy rather than condemnation to the criminal (151–52). Prosecutors, however, have used the same story to highlight that although Jesus, as the spiritual authority for appeal and absolution, forgave the criminal hanging on the cross, Jesus did not take the guilty thieves down from their crosses. The thieves still underwent their earthly punishment—a death sentence—and the jurors, prosecutors argue, ought therefore to concern themselves with the criminal's just earthly punishment rather than with his eternal salvation (149). The authors expertly addressed these delicate matters of scriptural interpretation, and they draw the reader's attention to the implications of quoting biblical passages in these circumstances, rather than to the validity of any particular reading.

Stylistically, God in the Courtroom is a pleasant read. It has the distinction of being an academic survey that is written in clear, plain English. This is no small feat. It is mercifully devoid of academic verbosity, and thankfully, the word “explicate” is nowhere to be found in its pages. Or, if it did appear, the quality of the authors' writing kept it from standing out. The book is approachable for practitioners and academics alike and does a good job highlighting each of the various areas where religion comes in contact with or influences trial practice.

Although the book certainly succeeds as an introduction to religion's role in the courtroom, it has three main deficiencies. First, the authors draw frustratingly ambiguous statistical conclusions and couch these conclusions in words such as “may,” “could,” or “seemingly.” Admittedly, the use of prevaricating language is a bad habit that is common among lawyers, and perhaps the reviewer would do well to mind the beam in his own eye before beholding the mote in the eyes of the authors. Furthermore, the lack of strong conclusions may be due more to deficiencies in the amount and depth of data available to the authors than to any unwillingness to draw firm conclusions. In fact, the authors acknowledge that they are working with piecemeal and unsatisfactory studies and hope that their book will spur further research (197). Hopefully, more in-depth research, with the benefit of more data, will yield stronger conclusions in the future.

Second, the authors have a tendency to state the obvious and present it as an important conclusion drawn from the considered result of survey data. A few examples from the chapter on jurors' religious affiliation illustrate this practice:

The propensity to present the obvious as the result of social or psychological studies may be merely a function of the authors' social science background. This is, after all, a volume in the American Psychology-Law Society Series. Nevertheless, these statements distract from the book's otherwise insightful analysis. They patronize the audience, dampen the reader's curiosity, and distract from the book's otherwise practical focus.

Third, many sections of the book examine trends in cases and jurisprudence, but the authors generally fail to identify the jurisdiction of the cases they cite in the text. Instead, the authors have placed a general “cases cited” section at the back of the book (249–53). They state that certain jurisdictions hold a position and cite a string of cases; then, they follow it with a statement of another jurisdiction's contrary view and another string of cases. However, the authors do not identify the jurisdictions of any of the cases, leaving it to the reader to find each case in the back of the book and piece together the contours of the jurisdictional split. A good example of this problem is found in the section on attorneys' use of biblical appeals. The authors state that “biblical appeals are forbidden in some jurisdictions because they lead jurors to follow a law other than the state's law” and that they are similarly forbidden in other jurisdictions where “they are impermissibly prejudicial or inflammatory,” appending to each statement a string citation without jurisdictional references (156). This problem is most acute in sections where readers may have a specific interest and actually want to consider the landscape of the law across and between jurisdictions. Perhaps the decision to omit jurisdictional identifications in the text was made for brevity's sake, or perhaps it was an editorial mandate. In any case, it is frustrating for any attorney reading the book.

Despite these shortcomings, which appear to be either editorial or a function of a dearth of data, God in the Courtroom is a good introduction to the many ways in which religion enters the courtroom through judges, attorneys, litigants, and jurors. The authors have drawn from a wide range of different scientific and legal sources to consider, in one volume, the mutual influence and confluence of two institutions, Faith and the Law, that struggle with our highest ideals. Much ink has been spilled discussing God and the Law in theoretical or historical terms, but what makes God in the Courtroom worth reading is that it ably, if sometimes cursorily, examines how each of these complex topics intersects with the lives of actual legal participants. The authors hope that their book will “inspire other social scientists to add to this fascinating and important topic,” (207) and this reviewer shares that hope.