| | Robinson’s declaration reminded me of this scene from the television show The Wire. For those of you who have not seen the show, the witness, Omar Little, is testifying to the fact that he saw the defendant, “muscle” for a local drug operation, shoot and kill an innocent person. The attorney—a man whom Robinson would describe as a criminal lawyer in both senses—represents this particular drug outfit in all of their legal matters.
Omar’s words “I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase” are another articulation of one of the themes in Lawyerland: the attempt to sort people into “good” and “evil” can be an exercise in reductionism. The belief in such dichotomies undermines society’s ability to analyze the social forces at work within it. Recognizing this, The Wire tries to challenge conventional categorizations of good and evil surrounding crime. Watching the show you will empathize with the drug-dealing murderer, hate the commissioner of the police department and feel an overwhelming ambivalence towards most of the main characters. Each hero is, at times, an antihero. Each character is good, evil, both and neither. | | | Columbia trains its students how to man | |
>
> | - | | | I appreciate the edits above. There is undoubtedly much to be gained -- both in legal practice and in society more broadly -- from effective use of categories. If we are to be successful legal practitioners, it will behoove us to be able to identify and anticipate the frameworks employed by the judges before whom we argue, and to tailor our work accordingly. Indeed, as Eben has mentioned, a course in human psychology might prove more helpful in our legal careers than would some of the other courses which we are told to take.
Perhaps the reason that I was more concerned about what we lose in categorization is best expressed in Courts on Trial. Scholars of Legal Magic do not have the good fortune of physicists and mathematicians of being able to use an idealized model in order to make groups of cases/legal matters/fact patterns. Efforts to do so in jurisprudence and legal theory have little predictive power; they are so out of touch with reality that they are quickly made obsolete by a unique fact or witness (which most facts and witnesses are). As Frank points out, in attempting to create prognostic models, legal magicians take the the F factor for granted, when in fact, it is often determinative. Judicial discretion, it seems, will often find home in the interstices between clear fact patterns. My fear is that because of the comfort which I find in categories, I will be blind to the stray fact, the integral detail, the game changer. To be a good lawyer, one must be vigilantly creative--to simultaneously see the "categories" and see past them. Like many of us, I am not sure that our legal education is giving us the tools to do that. Will I leave law school with a lobotomized imagination and, in its place, the second restatement of contracts? | |
<
< | Here is where my concerns converge with those expressed by Skylar and Jared: our education leads us to think that law and the legal profession are monoliths, buttressing a system which is kind to the rich and just to the poor. Both of you brought up the salient point that the training we receive is towards a questionable end. We are really not from evil. Only, we probably cannot place responsibility on Columbia alone; that might be too easy. Of course, our teachers and administrators sculpt our academic trajectories and help us to design our professional goals. But, we too -- some of us complacent and others eager -- seek a role in the system we find so contemptible in the classroom and the remuneration which accompanies it. I admit that I am in this category; though I tell myself the my career will be unique, that I will merge my interests in social justice with my desires to live comfortably, I do not always do so with confidence. So, if we want the administration to do things differently, we cannot give them reason to keep thinking that they are meeting the needs/wants of their students. We need to cease being an audience, and become actors. Maybe as we continue to refine/edit our thoughts on these message boards (especially the "Law School as a Training For Hierarchy") we can come up with specific things we want changed. | >
> | Here is where my concerns converge with those expressed by Skylar and Jared: our education leads us to think that law and the legal profession are monoliths, buttressing a system which is kind to the rich and just to the poor. Both of you brought up the salient point that the training we receive is in pursuit of a questionable end. We are really not far from evil. Only, we probably cannot place responsibility on Columbia alone; that might be too easy. Of course, our teachers and administrators sculpt our academic trajectories and help us to design our professional goals. But, we too -- some of us complacent and others eager -- seek a role in the system we find so contemptible in the classroom and the remuneration which accompanies it. I admit that I am in this category; though I tell myself the my career will be unique, that I will merge my interests in social justice with my desires to live comfortably, I do not always do so with confidence. So, if we want the administration to do things differently, we cannot give them reason to keep thinking that they are meeting the needs/wants of their students. We need to cease being an audience, and become actors. Maybe as we continue to refine/edit our thoughts on these message boards (especially the "Law School as a Training For Hierarchy") we can come up with specific things we want changed. |
|