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ChangingSocietyUsingWordsTalk 7 - 26 Mar 2009 - Main.LeslieHannay
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| | We've tentatively defined lawyering as "making something change in society using words." I think about this a lot, both in and out of class. Obviously, there are many ways to make change in society using words; this is something not only good lawyers, but also good journalists and novelists do. For me, that raises the question: what can lawyers contribute to making social change that novelists and journalists can't? Does our usefulness lie in our knowledge of, and proximity to, structures of power?
I bring this up because the groundwork for many of the prominent social reforms of the last century seems to have been laid by other kinds of writers -- Rachel Carson and Upton Sinclair, for instance. In the realm of foreign policy, simply by showing people what was really going on, journalists helped turn American public opinion decisively against the Vietnam War. This seems to have impacted Vietnam policy, and foreign policy in general, far more effectively than lawyers ever could have. | | | Ultimately, I think that effective advocacy has to move over multiple channels, and meditation on what law can or can’t do in relation to journalism risks othering one of the occupations and reducing our own abilities to think creatively and work towards change.
-- ScottThurman - 25 Mar 2009 | |
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> | It’s an interesting point, Scott, that in using language, lawyers aren’t as free as others. I would point to this as the very source of the power that lawyers wield. When lawyers speak, their legitimacy is based in the idea that they are constrained by the law to be precise, and to have some established principle, precedent, doctrine, (the state, as you rightly say) to back up their claims. That’s why anyone listens to lawyers (when and if they do) at all.
I am not clear on where the axis of pure creativity comes in – are we talking about addressing the ills of society? Lawyers, especially when attempting to shove the machinery of state an inch or two in the direction of positive change, must be at their most creative. One example that springs to mind is the somewhat recent, successful resurrection of the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 (one of our country’s oldest pieces of legislation) to prosecute, in the United States, citizens of other countries for human rights abuses against their own people.
The immediate result of Upton Sinclair’s novel was public outcry, but the important, lasting result was the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 (passed by the government with the cooperation of industry, the ruling classes). What was opposed was a behavior: the institutionalized exploitation of the working class. The mechanism for change moved, as you say, “over multiple channels.” Would Sinclair’s contribution have been such a success without its legal consequences? It is important, I think, for us to understand the nature of this tool that we are learning to use, in its limitations as well as its potential, so that we can work effectively with those other worthy occupations to advance our aims.
-- LeslieHannay - 26 Mar 2009 |
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