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| | | 1. In which the law and law-studentry are discussed | |
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< | | | | First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson.
Second, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | | | Life is not synonymous with citizenship. The word “citizen” means a person of the United States. The question before us is, whether the class of lives described by petitioners are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not. On the contrary, they are a class of potential citizens subordinate to those beings who have entered into the polity of the United States. Although lives, therefore, they are a class of lives worthy of protection only as potential citizens.
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< | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who, regarding the student’s newfound studentry, asks him: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol for some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains—a Spaniard who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so deftly that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | >
> | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who, regarding the student’s newfound studentry, asks: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol to some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains—a Spaniard artist who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so deftly that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | | | “Yes,” says the law student. “The law can be in that regard very much like Goya.” | |
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< | 2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death | >
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> | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man offers the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | | | | |
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< | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | >
> | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a Supreme Court case that he would later read for “ConLaw,” Brown v. Board. After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask a question in reference to another thing they already knew. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | | | | |
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> | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. Those, he thinks, are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | | | 3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry |
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