Law in Contemporary Society

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ElyseSchneiderThirdPaper 4 - 06 Aug 2009 - Main.EbenMoglen
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 Law School is not the only party to blame. It is up to us as law students to demand that we be taught in a way that is hands-on, that makes us aware of the issues facing our legal system, and that prepares us to be a generation of change.
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  • Here as in the other two essays, you are asking for realist conclusions but basing the rhetoric on non-realist arguments. You think that if law school were different now (or even that if law school had been different forty years ago) politicians primarily sensitive to the demands of voters who haven't been to law school, and police who haven't been to law school, and prosecutors and judges who see the system everyday and know exactly how it works, and contractors and unions who benefit from the trillions of dollars we have spent on confinement would all have agreed not to encarcerate more people? Or that the legislators in statehouses would have stood shoulder to shoulder and prevented it while constantly being challenged by people who wanted their jobs and were willing to pander to the voters' greed for punishment of other peoples' wayward children? And realists are supposed to agree with you about that?

  • What the essay wants is for people to pay attention to the realities of criminal justice, and in particular for law students to visit jails. This seems to me like a fine idea, and maybe even something to make an essay out of. But beginning by assuming the responsibility of proving that our present mess results in significant part from law students' not visiting enough jails is an unnecessary burden, it seems to me. It's always a good idea to protest the unreality of our public dialog about criminal justice, but it's also necessary to keep firmly in mind, as your first essay was designed to explore, just how deep the constituency for unrealism is.
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Revision 4r4 - 06 Aug 2009 - 18:35:52 - EbenMoglen
Revision 3r3 - 08 Jul 2009 - 16:11:39 - ElyseSchneider
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