Recently, when Brian Murphy took a break from a symposium on world peace, he spoke with Staff Editor Joan Taylor about how his work as a civil lawyer is constantly supported by the higher laws of Christian Science.
FOR OVER A YEAR, Brian Murphy's commute to work was in the passenger seat of an armored SUV, accompanied by escort vehicles—front and back. As the convoy sped through the streets of Iraq, Murphy was for most of those trips looking down at his lap—reading from his open copy of Science and Health. As he tells it, the truths he was taking in at 50 miles an hour were his constant protection. When his living quarters moved from a hotel in downtown Baghdad to a trailer in the Green Zone, he held to those truths deeply, especially when his high-security mode of travel did a 180-degree turn and he had to pedal to work at the former Republican Guard palace—on a bicycle.
Murphy's duties as a US government lawyer in Iraq from 2003–2005 involved civil law, much of that time advocating for displaced Iraqis. He negotiated to get land back that had been confiscated by the former Baathist regime, including handling claims from Kurds who had been evicted from their homes in the north. "I believe the world deserves legal systems that protect them," he says, and that career goal has taken him to such far parts of the globe as Bulgaria and Rwanda, before Iraq. "I try to support the rule of law whenever I can, which always includes support for the higher laws of our Father-Mother God."
