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| | | What draws me to the law is perhaps an awareness that organisms such as myself are dependent on the law. We require order, codes, in order to navigate a world which otherwise remains to us incomprehensible and frightening. Healthy organisms can exist without the law; they have a natural affinity which enables them to distinguish between situations where it's alright to (for example) snort a bump of cocaine, versus the rules which are incontrovertible and violations of which merit extralegal censure if no formal remedy is available. I cling to the law because justice does not present itself to me. Roberto Saviano (in Gomorrah, tr. Virginia Jewiss) explains: "The law has fixed codes, but justice doesn't. Justice is something else, an abstract principle that involves everyone, that is tolerable depending on how it is interpreted to absolve or condemn every human being..." | |
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< | To put it plainly, then, what I seek in the law (if you will pardon my contradicting you, Professor Moglen) is not justice, and it is not a hatred of injustice. It is the search for an alternative, something which will allow me to justify my deformities and expand at my fullest capacity. Law is the vehicle by which I and lifeforms like myself preserve our self-conception in the face of a world for which we were not made. If this sounds like excessive self-pity or theatrical self-deprecation, those charges are not unfounded. But allow the “George Menz” in whose voice you read this essay to be a character and not a flesh-and-blood person whose hand you might shake, who registered for your class, who is going to need to find a job in two years, who eats and sleeps and (occasionally) dreams. That George is not a rhetorical fiction; he is not easily summarized, codified, or predicted. The one speaking to you now is another George, a George in words, a George whom the other George feels like at times but of whom he’s also sometimes ashamed, like a family black sheep or an embarrassing friend one just can’t seem to shake. | >
> | To put it plainly, then, what I seek in the law (if you will pardon my contradicting you, Professor Moglen) is not justice, and it is not a hatred of injustice. It is the search for an alternative, something which will allow me to justify my shortcomings and expand at my fullest capacity. Law is the vehicle by which I and lifeforms like myself preserve our self-conception in the face of a world for which we were not made. | | | | |
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< | Actually, I’m not sure which George is writing this. Maybe both of us are here, along with some others, Georges whose times have not yet come. | >
> | What Now?
To which you respond, understandably: Okay, good for you, what then? Lawyers do not defend the law in the abstract but in the concrete. Their practice requires them to acquire some domain-specific knowledge which gives them both a market advantage and an edge in practical terms over their competitors. I will admit that at the moment there is not one area of law that I feel I would like to dedicate myself to completely. I will say, however, that this seems like a high bar to clear. I do not feel insecure in law school because I do not know in which field of law I want to specialize. I feel insecure, when I do feel insecure, because I feel incompetent: that is to say, I feel like I have the wrong end of the stick on a grand scale. Then again, this is the position I think I have occupied through my childhood, my youth, my entire life. Optimistically, I would say: I will figure it out. Otherwise, I will survive, as long as anyone else can. | | |
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