Law in Contemporary Society

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WhatILearnedFromJoeStack 6 - 04 Mar 2010 - Main.AndrewCascini
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 As Eben so quietly pointed out in class, it is easy to damn Joe Stack. Flying an airplane into a building and killing someone is wrong. Was Joe Stack a bad person? That is an easy question to answer and does not lead to anything that I don't already know. A better question is: What does Joe Stack teach me about being a lawyer?

Who was Joe Stack? He was an engineer. Joe Stack was also person who saw injustice and tried to correct it as an engineer would, at least originally. He tried to hack the system. Similarly, John Brown attempted to make change by using his skills as a surveyor and quartermaster. Martin Luther King preached to organize, motivate, and persuade people. David Walker sewed pamphlets into the suits he tailored. All these people used their profession in a creative way to try to correct what they perceived as injustice.

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 I've been having a bit of a tough time with the story of Joe Stack. On the one hand - he's a tragic figure, one who I think we all can agree (as Eben told us) should have been afforded a lawyer. But what really is the lesson here? Is it that we should go work for ourselves in far-flung places to help troubled individuals on a case by case basis? That was not a rhetorical question. I am sincerely confused here. Michael - your reference to Brown v Board helps a bit. But I don't know that the tax system works in that mold - how can helping individuals subvert it slowly lead to across-the-board change? I know our government is unfair; I realize that American life is unfair (and I realize that income inequality leads to all sorts of societal ills), and that once in a while people crack under the pressure of it. People need guidance and support; a lawyer could have helped him work through the system to reach a more comfortable and desirable outcome. Maybe I just need to conceptualize a better road map for how a million Joe Stacks could actually change something.

-- JessicaCohen - 27 Feb 2010

Added:
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>		"We quote an American prison psychiatrist who goes so far as to say he’s never seen a serious act of violence that wasn’t provoked by loss of face or humiliation, and so on."

I grabbed that from the article that you posted, Jess. I thought it was interesting because Eben said something about this in relation to suicide bombers; I can't remember precisely what it was, but it was something about how psychologists who studied the psyches of failed suicide bombers found that almost all of them revealed that their humiliation was an impetus for their actions. I think we can see a lot of humiliation in the suicide note of Joseph Stack as well.

-- AndrewCascini - 04 Mar 2010


Revision 6r6 - 04 Mar 2010 - 05:37:18 - AndrewCascini
Revision 5r5 - 28 Feb 2010 - 22:06:48 - DRussellKraft
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