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Law in Contemporary Society
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My thinking phase: I am writing this here to preserve some thoughts though I do not plan on including all of them in my first (or final) draft.
- What is the best way to use my license to shape the creeds, habits, mythologies, rituals of the institutions I belong to? How do we want to shape our institutional boundaries? "Society isn’t what any particular person does; instead, society sets limits on what a person might do." I wrote that down after hearing it one day and think it applies.
- Arnold's framework and CLS. What are some practical easy changes I think would be great and would require little maneuvering to implement?
1. Orientation should include a curriculum about CLS, its history, its alums, its struggles, its triumps... Everyone knows it is a "top law school" but all of our students should be able to describe why. 2. Putting the period from 12:10-1:10 on everyone's schedule as "Lunch." It is really wonderful that none of us have class at that time and that there is always something going on. Calling it lunch on our schedules wouldn't change a thing, but would demarcate a communal time for us to refer to.
3. The academic rules http://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/rules/jd-rules/letter-grades seem to allow anyone to take a class pass/fail whenever they want. Dean MGK has explained that when the administration asked students about making the first year p/f they did not like the idea. Why don't we educate the incoming 1Ls about this option, give them the pros and cons, and let them make individual decisions?
4. Every 1L class should, at bare minimum, have a midterm assignment. Even the most busy professors can give an hour at lunch to break down an assignment and give some insight as to what his/her expectations are.
5. Columbia gear. I am proud to be at CLS. I want to share that sense of pride with people in the legal profession, potential new students, my peers, people at the gym, etc. I want to rock some great tees, sweats, and hats. It has proven almost impossible to get this done over the past few months.
6. Pictures of students in class. One of my biggest regrets from last semester (really!) is that I did not ask the entire class and professor to take a picture together towards the end of the semester. Let's give a photo company the responsibility to do this. Students can purchase a picture for a few bucks if they want, and CLS can have a great archive of every class.
7. Deck the hall. We do not have money for any large scale work. Why not get some prints from the CLS archives and decorate with those?
8. An advisory board of students involved with different facets of the school who report to Dean Schizer on a monthly basis.
9. There are already some nice 1L rituals in place (student/faculty dinner for example). I do not yet know enough about the 3 year trajectory for events like that is, but let's at least tie together what we have in a cohesive way and give it some thematic muster.
[Nona -- I think you have captured some of the most important/necessary institutional changes above. My question is this: Many students have a sense of what changes we need (with varying biases and preferences), but isn't the problem that we haven't opened our eyes to the vast and endless seas before us (using Saint-Exupéry's image). It seems to me that the above changes are the planks and nuts that can be used to build the boat. But unless we yearn (as you say) for the immense, would these changes have any tangible effect on what distances we take our boat? The A-student (whatever that may mean), the B-student, etc. must all determine that these grades are meaningless for purposes in which they are used. Unless they understand the fallacy of it (by aspiring for the endless), wouldn't the reformed institution just create new meaningless standards?
-- MohitGourisaria - 23 Feb 2010 ]
- Institutions and Burcu. When I was a freshman, I lived in a dorm with a girl from Turkey named Burcu. Burcu remains one of the wisest and most special people I have ever met. We shared many stories and hours of conversation that forever changed me. Unfortunately, she goes months at a time without a telephone or email so I cannot get in touch with her to get/confirm some of the details of this story. When Burcu was 15 or 16 the mayor of Ankara, Turkey, presented her with the key to the city for her work with street children. Burcu had always been troubled by the high number of street children who did not go to school, did not work, and were involved in petty crime/problematic behaviors. She wrote a letter to the Mayor about her view on solving the problem: a free summer camp that would be anchored by a curriculum rich in Turkish history. She reasoned that if they could inspire these young children with pride for their city and their country's past, their attitudes would change. The Mayor loved the idea and came up with the money, campgrounds and teachers for a few hundred kids. He held a big ceremony for the camp's opening. An hour or so later, after the politicians and press had left, young Burcu was suddenly in charge with no curriculum or oversight. She found her footing and worked with the teachers to come up with a successful program, which she repeated the next summer. Afterward, there was a significant decrease in the number of kids who hung out in the streets.
- Antione de Saint Exupéry said "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." This class makes me yearn for the vast and endless sea. How do I build the ship?
- Is there individual prerogative in law enforcement? What I want is to be the anti-Mike Nifong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong. How do I get there?
- There are no more seesaws at parks in the United States. We have let people litigate them out of existence. Our legal system over-insures the consequences of individual choice (in the non-Arnoldian sense) and creates collective inertia. As I was writing this in Lenfest, I went into the cafe to get a banana. The employee offered me another one for free because she was about to toss the food. Dining services won't donate it because of the potential liability for giving it to a food bank or homeless people. This is not the first time I have encountered this answer when asking why food is being tossed. Law should not be used as a barrier to a hungry person getting free food.
- "betabilitarian"- this is a term Eben referred to in office hours today. If I understood the brief discussion correctly, we cannot measure our choices against a normative standard. The only choice we have is to place our bets and play. What degree of risk am I/are we willing to assume? That degree of risk defines the boundaries of my/our winnings (and losses).
- How can I avoid being complicit in the problems with my legal education? A big part of me wants to commit to taking the last two years of law school on a P/F basis so I can overload on classes without overloading on stress. I went to Jewish day school my whole life and a constant theme was "lishma"-- roughly, the idea of learning for its own sake. I am sure that taking more classes and being able to focus on them so that I can learn best (rather than test best) would be ideal for me. I am not sure I have the courage to implement it.
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