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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | The status quo of the criminal legal system results in the application of force in a manner that disregards individual impact. However, as Cohen describes, a lawyer can use “patter” to effect favorable judicial opinions by distracting from adverse precedents and facts, while also introducing human values by “sleight-of-hand.” Cohen does not define “patter,” but just as a magician must determine the form of patter best suited to her own style, lawyers too must determine how best to distract the court from the inclusion of human impact and moral concerns. Perhaps this entails uttering transcendental nonsense to give “justification” for a new interpretation, or maybe it involves spectacle, such as Clarence Darrow’s famous exchange with William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial. Regardless of the specifics, here, the lawyer is using her creativity, legal knowledge, and institutional power to disrupt the system's status quo of operation.
Transferring power within the system | |
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< | During my second year teaching, I learned about a P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions from the school district, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by informing and organizing those most affected by the district’s decisions. As one aspect of their approach, P.S. 305 sought out teachers, like myself, to equip us with the necessary tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to others and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the community lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering). Here, the lawyer uses her role within the system to work outside the system’s status quo, while also aiming to transfer her institutional power. | >
> | During my second year teaching, I learned about P.S. 305, a local organization using community organizing strategies to build a movement of students, parents, teachers, and community members demanding for better schools in their neighborhoods. In an educational system driven by top-down decisions from the school district, P.S. 305 aimed to transfer power by informing and organizing those most affected by the district’s decisions. As one aspect of their approach, P.S. 305 sought out teachers, like myself, to equip us with the necessary tools to become stronger advocates so that we could then reach out to others and repeat the same cycle. Similarly, under the community lawyering model, lawyers shift power by providing tactical support for community-based initiatives, seeking to pass on information, rather than acting as gatekeepers of knowledge. (Purvi & Chuck: Community Lawyering). Here, the lawyer uses her role within the system to work outside the system’s status quo, while also aiming to transfer her institutional power. | | | Epilogue
Thinking back on my experience in the classroom, it is easier for me to now see the role I played within the broader system. However, in the day-to-day of teaching long days, I lived in the present. Although planning for future lessons involved reflection of past classes, I rarely allowed for absence. I didn’t fully step back and look at the system performing in front of me to better visualize where I was situated within it. As a lawyer, I imagine I will be faced with similar time constraints and mental and physical exhaustion. Yet, this time, I aim to remember the necessity of absence, so that I approach each client interaction and legal proceeding with an awareness of my word’s implicit connection to coercion and a vision for how I can work to transfer that power. |
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