The Lawyer as Healer: Martin Buber's I-Thou Relationship, Mediation and the Future of Law

Introduction

For several years, I’ve written and spoken that the next legal system is restorative, transformative and healing.

Below, I draw from Martin Buber’s I-thou philosophy to support this vision and how it may look.

In also draw on mediation as an important component of this vision.

Modern legal systems are largely built upon categorisation. Parties become plaintiffs and defendants. Witnesses become sources of evidence. Files become matters. Human suffering becomes damages. Relationships become rights and obligations.

These abstractions are necessary. Without them, law could not function with consistency or fairness.

Yet something profound can be lost.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965), in his seminal work I and Thou (1923), argued that human beings live within two fundamentally different ways of encountering the world. These are the I-It relationship and the I-Thou relationship.i

While we might say that legal practice necessarily operates within an I-It framework of analysis, procedure and precedent, justice itself may require something more. Buber's philosophy suggests that genuine healing, whether between individuals, communities or nations (and I would expand that to the Earth and all her creatures, but I’ll address that in later musings and will stick to human beings for now), begins when another person (or being, in my expanded vision) ceases to be merely an object of legal process and becomes a living subject worthy of encounter.

For lawyers, mediators and judges, this insight has revolutionary implications.

Buber's Two Ways of Being

Buber argued that every human relationship falls into one of two categories.

The I-It Relationship

In the I-It world we analyse, measure, classify and use. The other becomes an object.

This is not inherently wrong: science depends upon it, medicine depends upon it and administration depends upon it.

Law also depends upon it. Lawyers must analyse evidence, classify conduct, calculate damages, assess probabilities and interpret statutes.

These may all be seen as necessary I-It activities.

However, when human beings are reduced entirely to legal objects, something essential disappears. The client becomes a file and their opponent becomes an obstacle. The witness becomes a credibility assessment. The child becomes a custody dispute. The neighbour becomes a nuisance claim. The refugee becomes an immigration case. The prisoner becomes a sentence.

In sum, the person may disappear behind the legal category.

The I-Thou Relationship

In contrast, Buber described the I-Thou relationship as one of genuine presence.

The other is not analysed before being encountered. They are not reduced to utility.

They are not primarily judged. They are not an object. They are a "Thou."

To meet another as Thou is to recognise an irreducible, core, essential mystery.

It is to acknowledge that no description ever exhausts the person standing before us.

In every authentic I-Thou meeting, both people are transformed. Neither remains exactly as they were.

For Buber, every genuine encounter becomes a glimpse of the Divine because God (or the Source of all or Ultimate, Unconditional Love) is encountered not only in worship but also in authentic human relationship.

Why Law Naturally Slips into I-It

Legal education trains students to think analytically. And, so, cases become authorities, facts become evidence, problems become legal questions.

The discipline rewards emotional distance because objectivity is seen as a safeguard against bias. And, of course, these habits are professionally necessary.

Yet they do carry an inherent hidden danger: over time lawyers may unconsciously begin seeing people primarily through legal categories.

Instead of asking ‘what happened to this person’ they ask ‘what cause of action exists’

Instead of asking, ‘Who is this human being?’ they ask ‘what evidence supports this version?’.

The legal imagination slowly shifts from encounter to classification.

The profession can become extraordinarily intelligent while simultaneously becoming emotionally impoverished. In recent years, we have included emotional intelligence development into our mediation training programs. Mediation is regarded as a high emotional intelligence capacity.ii

Naturally, the legal profession attracts and produces highly intellectually intelligent individuals. Yet, those individuals, as is the case across many ‘heady’ professions, are not necessarily highly emotionally intelligent. This is something each of us could and, I would say, should work on and, moreover see it as lifelong learning.

Seeing the Client as Thou

Although Buber never taught about legal practice, I imagine that he might challenge lawyers to begin not with the case but with the person. A client is never simply someone seeking legal relief. They are often anxious, afraid, angry, confused, grieving, or some of and, often, all of the aforegoing. Many arrive carrying years of unresolved pain before the legal dispute even began.

A lawyer who encounters only the legal problem may solve the dispute while leaving the deeper human suffering untouched.

An I-Thou lawyer first asks, ‘What is happening in the life of this person?’ and then, ‘What legal remedy is appropriate?’

This changes legal consulting. Listening becomes an act of presence rather than information gathering.

Just as one of the core skills of the mediator is to be present to the moment and flexible, this is also a core skill of the problem solving lawyer and is also one of the key components of emotional intelligence.

Advice shifts from paternalism to collaboration and representation becomes accompaniment rather than management.

A number of years ago at a conference on Non-Adversarial Justice at UNISA, I spoke about three was to render assistance: doing for, doing with and being with. Collaboration may straddle the latter two and is the highest way in which clients can exercise their agency. This is good for everyone. I’ll see if I can dig out that paper and expand upon it in future writing.

Seeing the Opponent as Thou

Perhaps Buber's greatest challenge to legal practice concerns opponents. The adversarial system often encourages depersonalisation. Disputing parties in litigation are often, and necessarily, cast as enemies of each other.

Opposing legal teams may become obstacles to be overcome. Every concession appears to be weakness. Every victory becomes conquest.

I imagine Buber would reject this worldview. In the I-Thou view, the opposing party remains fully human regardless of legal fault. Recognising someone's humanity does not require abandoning accountability. Just as we teach in mediation, validation is not the same as agreement, and, so we can validate the other and still put forth our own view. It is precisely validation of the other that may open up a path or a bridge to collaboration and agreement.

One may firmly oppose conduct while refusing to reduce the person to that conduct. This distinction, as we know, lies at the heart of restorative justice.iii

It also must lie at the heart of ethical advocacy.

Mediation as an I-Thou Practice

Few legal processes embody Buber's philosophy more naturally than mediation.

Effective mediation begins where legal argument alone reaches its limits.

The mediator creates conditions in which people may encounter one another differently.

Though the dispute remains, the facts remain, the law remains, the parties may begin seeing one another not merely as legal opponents but as fellow human beings carrying fears, hopes, histories and needs.

Settlement often emerges not because the legal positions change dramatically but because the relationship changes.

Once the other ceases to be merely "It," new possibilities become imaginable.

Justice Beyond Winning

Modern legal culture frequently measures success through outcomes:

Asking who won, who lost, how much was recovered, how quickly was judgment obtained may be limited.

Buber might invite other questions: who did we become in the process, did he process deepen dignity, did it restore relationship where possible (this is important in co-parenting paradigms in divorce), were the vulnerable protected, was humanity preserved?

Justice measured solely by outcomes risks becoming efficient but spiritually hollow.

Justice grounded in I-Thou seeks not only correct decisions but transformed relationships wherever transformation remains possible.

The Lawyer as Healer

Historically, lawyers were sometimes described as healers of society in much the same way physicians heal the body. Conflict was seen as a social wound. Injustice was regarded as communal illness.

Law exists not simply to determine winners but to restore social order.

Buber’s philosophy may help now to deepen this ancient vision.

The lawyer heals not merely through lega2l expertise but through the quality of presence they bring into human conflict.

An I-Thou lawyer recognises that every consultation, negotiation, mediation and courtroom appearance is also a human encounter.

Even when vigorous advocacy is required, dignity need never be abandoned.

Indeed, the lawyer's greatest gift may not always be legal brilliance.

It may be the rare ability to help people feel genuinely seen in moments when they feel most afraid, most vulnerable and most alone.

The Ethical Transformation of Legal Practice

Buber's philosophy does not require lawyers to abandon precedent, evidence or procedural fairness.

Rather, it asks that technical excellence be held within a deeper ethic of relationship.

Competence without encounter risks becoming mechanical. Compassion without competence risks becoming ineffective. The mature lawyer embodies both.

Such practitioners are intellectually rigorous while remaining profoundly human. They understand that every legal matter represents not merely a dispute but a fragment of someone's life.

Conclusion

Martin Buber reminds us that the deepest crises of humanity arise whenever people cease encountering one another as persons and begin treating one another merely as objects.

Law, by necessity, must classify. Justice, however, must also recognise.

The future of legal practice may therefore depend not simply upon better legislation or more efficient courts, but upon lawyers who cultivate the courage to meet clients, opponents, judges and communities as "Thou." When this occurs, law becomes more than a profession.

It becomes a vocation.

Mediation has a powerful role to play in this, and lawyers have a powerful role to play in recognizing this in mediation and realising that mediation is not an obstacle to legal practice but is an alternative forum where they can advocate for their clients in a way that may be restorative, transformative and healing.

The lawyer ceases to be merely a technician of rules and becomes, once again, a healer of relationships, a guardian of human dignity and a participant in the ongoing work of repairing the moral fabric of society.

In Buber's vision, justice is never fully realised through procedure alone. It is realised whenever one human being truly encounters another.iv

By Sheena St Clair Jonker

Email: sheena@adr-networksa.co.za (to add your thoughts or to enquire about speaking engagements

To find a mediator or join our panel: panel@adr-networksa.co.za

For training: training@adr-networksa.co.za

i The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965), in his seminal work I and Thou (1923), argued that human beings live within two fundamentally different ways of encountering the world. These are the I-It relationship and the I-Thou relationship.

ii For more on this, see ‘Peace at work’, John For2d

iii For more, seek out the work of Howard Zehr iv For more on this, seek out the work of Lon Fuller, Howard Zehr, Joseph Folger and Baruch Bush, Thomas Shafferiv, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, and the therapeutic jurisprudence movement as well as the Integrative Law Movement.