| | |
|
SarahChanFirstEssay 5 - 18 Feb 2025 - Main.SarahChan
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Law School and its Obsession with Speech | |
<
< | This course is presented as an extended exercise in active listening. Moglen’s rationale for introducing music into the classroom is more straightforward than one might expect: to break from the traditional structure of legal education. | >
> | This course is presented as an extended exercise in active listening. Moglen’s rationale for introducing music into the classroom is more straightforward than I expected: to break from the traditional structure of legal education. | | | Law school conditions students to prioritize performance over presence. There is a hyper-fixation on what one says and how one says it. While the statement “No one remembers a bad cold call” is debatable, it holds more truth when framed as people are too absorbed in themselves to concentrate on others. This is why students dwell more on their own performance and perceived failures.
I am equally guilty. During a classmate's cold call, my thoughts are: What would I have answered? Did I grasp this week’s material? How can I anticipate the next question and craft a satisfactory response? My attention is fractured by a subconscious preoccupation with the self. | |
<
< | This preoccupation spills into legal practice. It makes coffee chats easy. A single question is enough to prompt a long-winded response. In these moments, it becomes clear that many lawyers are not simply answering but performing—filling the space with words out of habit. Similarly, Supreme Court justices repeat the same idea for pages. Every argument is clarified, recast, and expanded to preempt objections. Opinions are more about signaling intellectual rigor, thoroughness, and control over the narrative than effective, truthful communication. The result is often a dense and sprawling text where underlying normative concerns are buried by layers of rationalization. | >
> | This preoccupation spills into legal practice. It makes coffee chats easy. A single question is enough to prompt a long-winded response. These moments suggest that many lawyers are not simply answering but performing—they are filling the space with words out of habit. Similarly, Supreme Court justices repeat the same idea for pages. Every argument is clarified, recast, and expanded to preempt objections. Opinions are more about signaling intellectual rigor, thoroughness, and control over the narrative than effective, truthful communication. The result is often a dense and sprawling text where underlying normative concerns are buried by layers of rationalization. | | | Picasso and the Bad Man | | | This is why active listening extends beyond spoken words. Clients lie. Not always out of deception, but out of shame or an inability to fully articulate their experiences. Trauma distorts memory. Fear shapes narratives. A lawyer who listens only to what is explicitly stated will miss the deeper reality at play. | |
<
< | [might cut/start a new section?] | >
> | [start a new section?] | | | | |
<
< | I recently read the New York Times article “What it Means to Kill.” The author ponders how many of the 12,000 women incarcerated in the U.S. killed in self-defense after enduring years of abuse. Anita Ford, sentenced to life imprisonment, exemplifies this dilemma. Her case highlights how legal narratives reduce human experience to rigid categories: victim or perpetrator, justified or unjustified. While the law is designed to recognize immediate danger, it struggles to account for the slow, cumulative violence of coercion and control. There was no room for Ford’s reality. | >
> | I recently read the New York Times article “Who Gets to Kill in Self-Defense?.” The author ponders how many of the 12,000 women incarcerated in the U.S. killed in self-defense after enduring years of abuse. Anita Ford, sentenced to life imprisonment, exemplifies this dilemma. Her case highlights how legal narratives reduce human experience to rigid categories: victim or perpetrator, justified or unjustified. While the law is designed to recognize immediate danger, it struggles to account for the slow, cumulative violence of coercion and control in the private sphere. There was no room for Ford’s reality. | | | My takeaway is that law is not merely about what is argued—it is about who has the privilege to speak and who does not. The deeper truth often lies in what the law refuses to acknowledge. Ford’s case reveals a systemic legal failure to address lived experiences that do not fit neatly within formalistic structures. |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |