Robinson & Brown

I do not believe that determining whether his methods were right or wrong is a useful exercise. I think that we have spent too much time focusing on the violence. The overall message is to continue to fight for something. I think that Thoreau’s emphasis on Brown’s decision to fight despite not getting any monetary reward for it and without it affecting him directly gets at where we would come in.

In trying to piece together the readings and figuring out what they mean to me, I realized that Brown and Robinson are similar. First, Robinson and Brown prepared or readied themselves to take action. It was not a hasty knee-jerk reaction. Robinson fought in the Vietnam War, went to law school, worked at the prosecutors office, SEC, and then became a private defense attorney. Similarly, Brown prepared himself by learning through experience. He got familiar with the military and war. And although he chose not to engage in it (unless for liberty) it was important for him to understand the costs, and not just the pecuniary costs, of “firing a single bullet.” He prepared himself in other ways—eating and living a certain way and recruiting specific people (among other things).

Second, both of these men tried to get in touch with, as Robinson puts it, the thang, or as Thoreau writes living a life of exposure.

With respect to us, I think that the point to take here is that we have options. We can sit and be naïve—let the world continue and only get up when everyone else has—or we can do something about what we see is unjust. The “what” we do is very particular to who we are and what we can do as individuals. We would need to make informed choices that make sure that our steps help us to develop and mature as attorneys. The problem is that too many of us are way too far from “the thang” and live a life not fully exposed and as a result have a harder time seeing injustices.

It is much easier to sit back and judge than to do something. I think Wylie put it best when he said that he said he was cynical but not a cynic. I think that we are critics but not critical. We can point to methods we think are right or wrong without looking at the message or at least offering an alternative. Instead we are content with the contribution of criticism instead of actually trying to wrestle with the concepts that make us uneasy.

In our discussion of Brown we focused too much on the violence used instead of talking about the importance of taking action and dealing with resistance or the non-action of others. I think that focusing on when to stop does not make sense when (for the most part) we have not started. Thus I would not ask what but I’d ask would you (try to) do something if today 20 million+ people were slaves?

-- LissetteDuran - 01 Mar 2012

I wish I saw this before writing my last post in DecidingInThePresent 2 minutes ago but I just wanted to say that I love the distinction you made in the last sentence between "would you" and "what would you" - sums up really well what Eben wants us to focus on and what a bunch of people, myself included have been focusing on, at least until today. I totally agree with you that the "would you" is much more important right now than "what would you" and I totally get why Eben wants us to focus on the former and not the latter, at least at this point. I feel, and maybe other people would agree, that it seemed in class like Eben was completely disregarding, and perhaps even disparaging, the second question. If I may criticize Eben for a moment (oh what the hell, all my chips are on the table already as it is), I think it might have been more productive to acknowledge that "what would you do" is a legitimate and difficult question (which I still think it's reasonable to say) but that it's not the question we should be focusing on at the moment and that we should put it aside until we've sufficiently answered the "would you" question for ourselves. I think that would have allowed people, including myself, to more easily shift our focus back to the real issue. Just my 2 cents and again, I loved your post!

-- JosephItkis - 02 Mar 2012

I like your comparison of Robinson and Brown – I thought of this as well when doing the readings. I think that together they serve as a good foil to Wiley, who identifies himself as cynical but not as a ‘cynic’ and states, “how can you be a lawyer and not be cynical? But not a cynic – cynics don’t give a damn about the rules”. At the risk of being slightly reductionist, I think this framework presents a useful spectrum upon which Wiley, Robinson and Brown, in their engagement with social and legal institutions, can be positioned.

Wiley is very self-perceptive, acknowledging that his life is governed by the pursuit of money and that he and his fellow attorneys have essential split and sold their souls for the job. When he states that “you can make a million dollars a year by pretending to know what you’re doing, and being able to sit through interminable meetings without developing any serious maladies”, he is clearly being cynical – offering up a rather bleak and realist view of the art of practicing law. However, he has come to terms with his own practice and life – he recognizes it for what it is but has no real desire to affect change or critically engage, as he is comfortable in the life he has fashioned for himself within the institutional moors. He is not a ‘cynic’ – his cynicism and critique of his profession do not define him, subsume him, or influence his day-to-day behavior in any way.

On the other hand, Robinson, and Brown – to a greater extent - breach the land of the cynical and move towards becoming cynics. Unlike Wiley, they are not inert observers, passing judgment on the legal community from the comfort of a bistro chair, while drinking expensive Chilean merlot and espresso. They have consciously refused to “commit acts of violence against [themselves] and acts of violence against others” in the name of becoming another suit chasing the next buck. Robinson has fashioned his own practice in a way that suits him, and refuses to be enslaved by his profession. Both men have taken their criticism or cynicism and applied it to practice and life, and in doing so have fashioned identities as 'cynics'.

I do not think Robinson goes as far as Brown, however, in refusing to ‘give a damn about the rules’. This is where their paths diverge. Robinson still recognizes that other people ascribe to, depend on and orient their behavior in a way that conforms to institutional rules. This makes knowledge of the rules valuable to Robinson, as they serve to indicate the actions that others may take and the institutional confines operating on individual behaviors. While Robinson may not always follow the rules himself, he still plays the game, because abandoning them completely would inhibit his ability to use them as leverage in manipulating others and working the wheels of the system. Brown has adapted his cynicism to become a cynic in every sense of the word. He not only refuses to conform to the rules himself, but advocates direct action against them. I think Lissette is on to something in highlighting how these different approaches are instructional and can serve to guide us in our personal decisions regarding how we choose to interact with the legal system. As Lissette rightly points out, it is awfully easy to criticize the legal profession from a cushy leather chair on the 50th floor of a downtown firm office (or, for that matter, from a significantly less cushy desk chair in JG). Brown is a cynic, because, as Eben said, he can’t find a way not to see the elephant when it is in the room at the dinner party, while Wiley, merely making the occasional cynical observation from the comfort of his armchair, can. While the Wiley, Robinson, and Brown approaches are not necessarily so discrete, it may still be useful to look to each individual to draw out the components of engagement and personality (if any) that inspire us and to adapt those approaches for our own purposes.

-- MeaganBurrows - 03 Mar 2012