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PietroSignoracci-SecondPaper 5 - 11 May 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
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How To Be A Good Lawyer, Pt. 2 | | | -- PietroSignoracci - 12 Apr 2008 | |
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- Let's begin with a little list of things you got wrong:
- Thurgood Marshall never said a good lawyer was one who knows exactly what she wants and exactly how to get it. I said I learned from him that to change the world you need those two things.
- He never said that either; I said I learned it from him. I made up that expression of the lesson.
- Lewis Harris and Martha Tharaud have the same practice: she does now the work he trained her to do, and in speaking of his work she's explaining the value of her own. Your supposed ability to discriminate between them rests on pure fantasy about fiction.
- When Tharaud says Lewis Harris was a good lawyer because he made a positive material difference in the lives of many people, she's not saying that's the only way to be a good lawyer. You intruded that piece of illogic on your own.
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< | Pietro,
It may be because I enjoy Tharaud that I found your paper disagreeable. To combat that, I read it again to make sure it wasn't my own bias, but something about your argument, that I disagreed with before I commented. | >
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- So this essay depends on a logically deficient comparison of two things, both of which you've either misread or misunderstood. The rest is just high-pressure blather.
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< | For someone with a very different analysis of Tharaud, I found your arguments unconvincing. I think that is because often your claims are more dramatic than the evidence you give in support. For example, you argue that "In each and every lawsuit in which Tharaud takes part, one can see her seeking reparations for the transgressions she endured." In fact, we really only have insight into one lawsuit and, other than the correlation between her own anger towards a unfair system and her success in suing those who perpetuate the system, I don’t think you provide evidence that, in her actions, there is vengeance rather than empathy or that, even if there were, such motivation is necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think, for example, we would look at MLK’s actions in a less favorable light if he were partially motivated by sticking it to the racist whites upholding segregation. | >
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- The present situation is a good illustration of the way cognitive dissonance suppression ensures that editing doesn't work unless it is brutally honest. Your colleagues tried to tell you what I am telling you, but because they are your colleagues they tried to be nice about it. In the nicest possible way they told you this was pompous nonsense based on mis- and over-reading, and, in the nicest possible way, you ignored, dismissed, and bullshitted them back. So now I'm chalking it up where the message can't be missed. For those who want to know "why does he have to be such a pain in the ass?"--this is why.
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< | I think this paper would benefit a great deal from revision that paid close attention to the support provided for each claim being made. | >
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- The route to improvement here is to stop writing the same essay each time. Toss this draft and write me an essay on another subject that demonstrates the ability to make careful legal judgments based on a close reading of legal and factual sources. Use rigorous logic and unimpassioned rhetorical restraint.
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< | -- AdamCarlis - 14 Apr 2008 | | | | |
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< | While I'm also not sure I'd read in all of that vindictiveness, I (as expected) would like to reiterate that you need people like her. Not everyone can go run for Congress or donate huge sums of money or run awareness campaigns. Someone has to do the nitty gritty work, too. I'm not sure I like the normative judgment that that work isn't worth doing or is being done for the wrong reasons. There's a reason why Tharaud is a lawyer and not a politician.
-- KateVershov - 14 Apr 2008
Admittedly, the evidence supporting my statements is scant, but we are working with a selective sampling of information. Far less sufficient, I think, is textual evidence negating any of my claims--clearly not the best measure of solid reasoning, but I would like to know what portions of the text stand in opposition to my assertions. I find none, and none have been provided in the responses. I also admit that I am operating under the assumptions that having vengeance as one's motivation is necessarily a bad thing (or is at least worse than not having vengeance as one's motivation, which also does not imply that much good in the way of results cannot come from bad motivations) and that we would look less favorably on an MLK who was motivated by sticking it to the racist whites than on another MLK.
Kate, I'm not sure that I understand fully either the distinction you are drawing between lawyers and politicians or the reason why Tharaud is one and not the other. But I don't think that I would (or did) go so far as to say that Tharaud's work is worthless; I only suggested (declared, perhaps) that it could be more worthwhile. I apologize if I did so dramatically and thereby made the call for (normative) improvement seem like a complete (normative) condemnation.
-- PietroSignoracci - 14 Apr 2008 | | | |
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