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.

Though ostensibly an advertisement for my favorite TV show (Obama’s too!), this post actually means to extend outside of the world of TV drama. There are many areas in our personal and professional lives where we distill people/groups/concepts into circumscribed categories so that we can avoid having to deal with their complexity. What do we lose and/or gain in doing so? How do we stop?

-- TomaLivshiz - 08 Feb 2012

You drew an excellent and inspiring analogy to one of my favorite shows which forced me to think, and edit the questions you posed above. I don't know that distilling people/groups/concepts into circumscribed categories is necessarily a bad practice that we should try to stop, however we should pay attention to what we lose and gain by this practice. I feel like the reason we make these categorizations is animal nature. We are wired (pun intended) to rapidly classify unknown objects into known categories, in order to understand how to deal with them. For instance, we naturally need to figure out whether an approaching person is a friend or foe - a threat we need to protect against, or a companion we can allow into our territory.

I don't think we can or should try to change these initial categorizations of people/groups/concepts; but perhaps by paying attention to our individual patterns in how we categorize different people/groups/concepts we will gain insight into how and why we make our initial categorizations, whether they are accurate, and how helpful or detrimental they end up being to us. For instance one might realize they are too quick to categorize somebody who wears an “I voted for Bush” pin as evil, and thus miss out on communicating with and understanding somebody from a different political view and additionally miss the chance to figure out how to argue with and communicate with that person. Or on the other hand one might realize that by making such an instant categorization he/she is shields his/herself from having a pointless, blood-pressure raising interaction with a person of opposite views. Or another example of a beneficial instant categorization is Robinson's quick judgment of the Federal Prosecutor who asked him to stop being so vulgar, which allowed him to not waste time trying to explain his viewpoint to the man who probably wouldn't listen anyway.

The above reasoning is why I edited the questions at the end of your post. I agree we should try to look at what we lose from our quick categorizations, but I think it's also important to look at what we gain. In posing the question “How do we stop?”, I believe you already came to the conclusion that those categorizations are wrong. I think this is similar to what Professor Moglen said last week in class about it being easier to come to a conclusion before fully thinking about it (see Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court decision), which is something that I do often and I am trying to correct. So before determining the practice of rapid categorization is wrong, maybe we should look at the empirical evidence of what happens to us before we make our categorizations and the empirical consequences of those categorizations (similar to Felix Cohen's suggestion of how we should treat judicial decisions) to determine whether it is something we want to stop in the first place. Thoughts?

-- SkylarPolansky - 08 Feb 2012

I have been rewarding myself with an episode from Season 2 of The Wire every night before bed, and I just happen to have watched this very episode the other night. Both of your assessments are thought provoking. As Skylar points out, we have developed categorizations and social constructs in order to deal with the complexities of day-to-day life and the overwhelming amount of information we are bombarded with in modern society. It would be exceedingly difficult (and perhaps unwise) to be prematurely dismissive of the value of these categories and the purpose they serve in allowing us to engage interpersonally, respond to social cues, govern our own behavior, and – perhaps most importantly in the legal profession - influence others. I also agree with Skylar that acknowledgment and critical analysis of our own assumptions, stereotypes and categorizations is extremely important. The more self-aware and self-critical we are, the better we are able to recognize when we may be oversimplifying or undervaluing a complex individual or situation. I think the process of recognizing, analyzing and responding to/manipulating these categorizations is something that Robinson has developed a knack for. While he acknowledges the stereotypes prevalent in the world around him, he also recognizes the inherent inadequacies of these categorizations with regards to capturing the multi-faceted essence of the actual person. The kid is not only a ‘criminal’ –as branded by the state – but is a complex individual with a family, a future and a capacity for good as well as evil. Robinson doesn’t pass moral judgment on his clients because he recognizes that they are more than the sum of their parts and cannot be defined/confined by their actions. It is not his business to assume the role of a philosopher king, but simply to represent his client, and to use the skills he has acquired to work the legal ‘system’ to his advantage. While Robinson may critique prevailing social constructs, and refuse to ascribe to them himself, he accepts the reality that they DO exist and has learned to use them to his advantage. He may choose to play up or manipulate existing social constructs and categorizations when it serves his purpose, and he may also fight against/attempt to redefine these categorizations when necessary. The point is that Robinson is AWARE of the existence of these embedded societal assumptions and people’s conceptions of/reactions to them. This valuable capability gives him an advantage in the legal profession, as he is able to use his insight in order to strategically manipulate and play off of the systemic social, legal and interpersonal realities that govern human behavior and action.

-- MeaganBurrows - 08 Feb 2012