Law in Contemporary Society

View   r17  >  r16  ...
SarahChanFirstEssay 17 - 25 May 2025 - Main.SarahChan
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstEssay"

If Only I Were Taller

Changed:
<
<		-- By SarahChan - 11 Apr 2025
>
>		-- By SarahChan - 25 May 2025
 

To Be a Muse

Line: 12 to 12
 

Early Resistance

Changed:
<
<		I consider myself lucky. Not because I possess transcendent beauty, but because my smaller build and facial features were read by a culture that prized the delicacy of East Asian femininity while harboring a quiet obsession with Eurocentric ideals. In China, I seemed to invite the same question: “Are you half white?” When I answered no, teachers, the nurse, a friend’s parent, or even strangers would surgically deconstruct my appearance. Double eyelids: good. High nose bridge: even better. Long, black hair: excellent. I was told that my future is bright—with looks alone, I could be an actress, Miss Hong Kong, or some rich man’s wife.
>
>		I consider myself lucky. Not because I possess transcendent beauty, but because my smaller build and facial features were read by a culture that prized the delicacy of East Asian femininity while harboring a quiet obsession with Eurocentric ideals. In China, I seemed to invite a familiar question: “Are you half white?” When I answered no, teachers, the nurse, a friend’s parent, or even strangers would surgically deconstruct my appearance. Double eyelids: good. High nose bridge: even better. Long, black hair: excellent. I was told that my future is bright—with looks alone, I could be an actress, Miss Hong Kong, or some rich man’s wife.
 How could I complain? The world was at my feet. Still, I resisted—silently, with shame, but in ways that felt deeply real. I never owned a doll. I always chose the blue over the pink lunch box. I avoided my passion for the arts; music, dance, interior design, fashion, and literature felt all too predictable. Instead, I ran. Hard. My varsity bag and letterman jacket were testaments to my defiance. I naively believed that an A transcript and Brown admission would change how people saw me. Instead, I was met with: “If you were just a few inches taller, then the world would really be at your feet.”
Line: 28 to 28
 

Being Heard is a Privilege

Changed:
<
<		My recent reflections on freedom and responsibility came into sharper focus as I 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 as a protective measure against years of fear and 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 recent reflections on freedom and responsibility came into sharper focus as I 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. committed murder to protect themselves against years of fear and abuse. 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. These cases reveal a systemic legal failure to address lived experiences that do not fit neatly within formalistic structures. It is in these passing moments of clarity that I feel most defeated.
 
Changed:
<
<		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 hear. Ford’s case reveals a systemic legal failure to address lived experiences that do not fit neatly within formalistic structures.
>
>

Reimagining Freedom

 
Changed:
<
<

Defiance as a Knot

>
>		As I revisit these words after my conversation with Eben, I am less afraid. My previous reflection on where I stood in this messy process of unlearning and discovering what lawyering meant to me was premature.
 
Changed:
<
<		It is in these passing moments of clarity that I feel most defeated. As I move between my own words and the drop-down menu of job applications, I watch myself select “Transactional.” I am not sure why—maybe it’s the anxiety that comes with speaking, maybe it’s because English is my second language and grammar never arrives without effort, or maybe it’s because I fear carrying someone else’s weight. But maybe, I am just making excuses.
>
>		My academic journey began with a misplaced idea of liberation. I clung to the East’s scripted success and tied knots—stubbornly, but with great care—to show myself I still had a hand in shaping something. I didn’t realize that by working with Sanctuary for Families, applying to a prosecution externship, and questioning how provocation defenses fail to reflect gendered realities of violence, I was already unknotting what once felt like defiance. My true fear lay in taking the first step toward an exit sign; one that is there but not yet touched by light.
 
Changed:
<
<		My academic journey began with a misplaced idea of liberation. I clung to the East’s scripted success—obedience dressed as ambition, achievement mistaken for agency. Growing up, I tied knots—stubbornly, but with great care—to show myself I still had a hand in shaping something. Now, with both bound by my own doing, I am learning how much harder it is to unknot what once felt like defiance.
>
>		I resisted freedom because its vastness felt both nebulous and crushing. I did not want to confront the unknown. For years, I internalized and moved through my struggles alone. Yet, the resistance was always structured—mimicking power and following paths trodden by men. It is easy to forget that, at a place like Columbia Law, where buzz animates the high-gloss gateway to corporate success, imagining an alternative future requires proactivity—but the action may be as simple as reaching out for guidance.
 
Changed:
<
<		In this messy process, I am beginning to notice the small openings I could occupy. My work with Sanctuary for Families (drafting petitions for Orders of Protection) has given me greater confidence that I am enough to help. I recently applied for the domestic violence prosecution externship to grapple with how the system responds to—and often fails—intimate, cumulative harm. I recognize these are small steps, but they are real, and mine. Navigating law school, I will keep an open mind and attuned senses—to hear what the law overlooks, and to see where it tends to silence. I am giving myself permission to imagine another future. And, someday, in knowing that possibility, I may finally find the courage to choose it.
>
>		I have come to understand that freedom is not always a grand rupture. It can be piecemeal and shared. Eben was the first person to point me in the right direction. My research on faculty, course offerings, guest speakers, non-profit organizations, jury consultants, and trauma-informed counselors have lifted parts of the invisible burden I weighed on myself. Sending emails makes me hopeful. Hopeful that through conversations with people who forged their own paths, I too can carve out a meaningful space within the legal field to best address domestic violence and lived trauma. In the remaining two years, may the exit sign steadily grow brighter and lead me toward courage.

Now, I will sign off as Eben has each class—with music. My pick is Billy Joel's "Vienna."

 
The draft is clear and effective, sometimes moving. I think Anita Ford is either given one sentence too few or didn't need to be there at all, and there are one or two other places where a little editorial hard-heartedness should be exercised. But I think the most important route to improvement is to head back into the center of the mystery: Why is freedom a foreign concept when it is also the one you have been seeking all the way along? To resent the world's shaping of the female role for you, to occupy yourself with forms of physical training and discipline designed to make escape possible, to prepare your mind for the need for freedom, to be receptive to the signals in the environment indicating the direction, and then also to be fearful, or—in the usual spasm of high-school exstentialism—sure that people mostly are unsuccessful in resisting the burden of it: how very human, don't you think?

Revision 17r17 - 25 May 2025 - 22:40:56 - SarahChan
Revision 16r16 - 28 Apr 2025 - 13:22:34 - EbenMoglen

Navigation

Webs Webs

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.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM