Higher Callings

In 1963, in a case called Gideon v. Wainwright , the United States Supreme Court held for the first time that a person accused of a crime in a state court has a right to counsel secured by the United States Constitution. Before that decision, a defendant’s federal constitutional right to an attorney in a criminal proceeding applied only in federal cases, by virtue of the Sixth Amendment. In Gideon...

I got to know Michael Bogdanow when we co-chaired the Litigation Section of the Boston Bar Association in the early 2000’s. An alum of Harvard Law School and chair of the appellate practice at a small but powerful personal injury law firm, Michael also is an accomplished artist. His vivid paintings of themes from the Hebrew Bible and his more secular works of colorful skies and flying planets reve...

Denise Reilly is a judge on the Minnesota Court of Appeals. As a religion major in college, her passion for justice instilled in her a calling to become a lawyer. While raising a young family, she attended law school. She then served as a law clerk to a federal district judge, joined a large private law firm, and later became a federal prosecutor.  Denise then heard another calling, this time to b...

Last week I had the privilege of publishing portions of my interview of Rev. Pashington Obeng in which he described his work with descendants of Africans living in India, known as the Siddis. In this bonus episode, we shift our focus from India to Africa, as Pash describes an exciting project being built in his home country of Ghana, known as the Pan African Heritage World Museum.  A link to the M...

Reverend Pashington Obeng, Ph. D. is a Protestant minister and scholar, who was born and raised in Ghana, West Africa, and has been living and working in Massachusetts for more than 30 years. In 1998, he learned of a community of people of African descent, known as the Siddis, who have lived in India for more than 800 years. Some of their ancestors were brought to India as enslaved people, and som...

Dr. Tom Benninger is a retired physician who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. On more than a dozen occasions, Tom, along with other volunteers, traveled to third world countries where they worked to address the medical needs of people who had little access to healthcare. Motivated by a deep and abiding faith, Tom has participated in medical missions in the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, and Nicara...

As we begin work on Season Two, we wanted to share this episode of highlights from the four interviews featured in Season One. First, mediator David Hoffman describes an insightful model for understanding and resolving conflicts. Next, retired homicide prosecutor Phil Mueller explains how prosecutors serve the emotional needs of victims of violent crimes. Our third guest, Jennifer Haverkamp , desc...

From time immemorial, lawyers and law firms have provided free legal services to clients who could not afford to pay. What motivates them to do so? What are the rewards of pro bono service? What makes pro bono legal services different from other forms of volunteer work? What types of pro bono work can be done by lawyers who are not litigators? These are just a few of the questions we asked Emily C...

Higher Callings is pleased to offer this unedited version of our interview of Jennifer Haverkamp, the Graham Family Director of the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan. Jennifer has had a long and distinguished career in international diplomacy aimed at mitigating worldwide environmental harms, including the reduction of climate change. This unedited version of our conver...

Climate change is an existential crisis. It can't be solved by one country or a few countries, but only through worldwide cooperation and commitment. Outside of the glare of the political spotlight, American diplomats work tirelessly to negotiate international agreements to reduce carbon emissions and avoid the worst-case scenarios. One such diplomat is Jennifer Haverkamp. Working for the Sta...

The trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd featured a team of prosecutors who exemplified professionalism. Phil Mueller, knows something about the professionalism of prosecutors. As a state prosecutor for 26 years, not only did he try dozens of felony cases, but he played an important role in training prosecutors across the state, and literally wrote the book on the ethical principl...

Phil Mueller, a highly successful graduate of an ivy league law school, followed a long and meandering path until he finally found his calling. A decade after his law school graduation,  he left a promising career as a civil litigator in a prominent Boston law firm to join his college friend who had just been elected District Attorney for Schenectady County, New York. Phil worked in the D.A.'...

David Hoffman is the founder of the Boston Law Collaborative and teaches mediation and dispute resolution at Harvard Law School. Influenced by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s, David entered Harvard Law School with the goal of advancing social change. After a clerkship with then-Judge and later-Justice Stephen Breyer, David joined a...