Law in Contemporary Society

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GraceKrasnermanFirstEssay 5 - 04 Jun 2016 - Main.EbenMoglen
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  Politics and personal feelings sent the twenty-year-old immigrant boy to jail. The reason the phrase “Under God” is included in the Pledge of Allegiance is, unsurprisingly, also politics. President Dwight D. Eisenhower inserted those words in an act in 1954 to rally patriotism during the Cold War. More specifically, Eisenhower enacted the law as an effort to unite Americans against the evil atheist threat of Communism: upon signing the bill, he issued a statement asserting that the addition of this phrase “reaffirm[s] the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource."1 Now, the Pledge and other patriotic declarations are meant to unite Americans against the threat of terrorism. Fear is a wonderful political tool. The Supreme Court used the issue of the Newdow’s legal standing to avoid making an explicit decision of the constitutionality of the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge. Three justices, however, wrote concurrences in which they argued the phrase was part of the nation’s history, resting their opinions on the notion of ceremonial deism. They argued that the insertion of the phrase “Under God” is not religious, but rather ceremonial, and that this drill is so prevalent and commonplace that it has lost its religious connotation. However, this issue illustrates how individual liberties and constitutional protections are not objective guarantees, and are instead subject to the judges’ and other governmental interests’ political stances, and even to their personal feelings.
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1 Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words "Under God" in the Pledge to the Flag.," June 14, 1954. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
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1 Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words "Under God" in the Pledge to the Flag.," June 14, 1954. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.

Why isn't this a link above? Writing for the web means making things easy for readers.


The draft as rewritten has now three subjects, conflated: something drawn from Larry Joseph, as metaphor, an argument about the presence of God in the "pledge of allegiance," and a theme about a supposed failure of the rule of law where judges have political stances and personal feelings. The last is the real subject, I think, despite the space given to the others; the route to improvement is focus.

Judges are human. One possibility is that rules could be administered by machine if they were designed right. Another is that justice is a human activity, for which frail human beings doing their best are required, in which the judge's own effort to attain justice, ripened by long experience, is our best hope for the achievement of what otherwise would elude us, no matter how mechanically we succeeded to rendering it.

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"Truthful, Not Factual"

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"Liberty and Justice For All?"

 
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-- By GraceKrasnerman - 19 Feb 2016
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-- By GraceKrasnerman - 18 April 2016
 
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Law as Secondary to Social Influences

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Law as Secondary to Sociopolitical Influences

 
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Lawyerland provides a third dimension to the standard two-dimensional view taught at the overwhelming majority of American law schools. Someone in the grips of a purely academic view of the law – a judge, for example – has a predilection towards a systematic perception of the law. The judge, or the stereotypical law professor, academic, or bright-eyed 1L, believes in the law as functioning logically and justly. In contrast, the disillusioned lawyer, whom Robinson epitomizes (which Joseph claims to be truthful, if not factual), sees the law as only secondary to social influences on a case.
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Lawrence Joseph's Lawyerland provides a third dimension to the standard two-dimensional view taught at the overwhelming majority of American law schools. Someone in the grips of a purely academic view of the law – a judge, for example – has a predilection towards a systematic perception of the law. The judge, or the stereotypical law professor, academic, or bright-eyed 1L, espouses the view that the law functions logically and justly. In contrast, the disillusioned lawyer, whom Robinson epitomizes, sees the law as only secondary to sociopolitical influences. The twenty-year-old son of immigrants that the Manhattan D.A. indicts for crimes he most likely did not commit, such as attempted murder in the second degree, does not go to jail because he broke the law. He went to jail because the D.A. sought revenge, and because his father would not pay his bail. Law does not govern the outcome of this case, even though we are indoctrinated from birth that it does. Robinson knows that it does not, so he maneuvers within the convoluted legal matrix as he has to, not as he might once have hoped to. Law schools teach an overly idealistic, academic perspective of the law. We learn “facts” in law school, but we do not learn “truths”. This distorted education is not unique to law school, but rather permeates American schools and social culture.
 
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Robinson talks about the twenty-year-old son of immigrants who breaks into the apartment of an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This D.A. then gets this boy arrested, as to be expected. Unfortunately for this boy, this D.A.’s brother-in-law is high up in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, who assigns one of the best prosecutors in his office to the case. Because of the D.A.’s personal feelings of revenge and hate, the prosecutor alleges “attempted murder in the second degree, attempted robbery in the first degree, [reckless endangerment] in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, criminal trespass in the first degree. Plus . . . a slew of boilerplate offenses for concealing a deadly weapon” (Joseph, 10). The boy’s only genuine offense was burglary, with the ignorant mistake of not knowing whom he was attempting to rob. The outcome of this case did not depend on any rules or law, but rather on specific people and their relations. Robinson does not look to any casebooks or penal codes to formulate a plan of action, but rather to the people involved. The law becomes secondary to the desires of those meant to implement the law.
 
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How Legal Orthodoxy Does Not Prepare Lawyers

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The Pledge of Allegiance: One Nation "Under God"

 
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One of the most prevalent norms that the majority of Americans adhere to is the affirmation of the existence of a monotheistic God, regardless of their personal religious backgrounds or beliefs. Every morning, millions of children across the nation pledge themselves to the United States, “one Nation under God . . . with liberty and justice for all.” Saying the phrase “Under God” every morning does not appear to be particularly dangerous to the individual, but it exhibits an indirect coercive effect on the students and the teachers that recite it, therefore enforcing religious ideology. Although the Pledge is principally a patriotic exercise, it is undeniably tinged with religious implications that send a message of government approval of monotheism. The First Amendment prohibits the government from passing legislation that supports the establishment of religion, and that favors one religion over another. The purpose of the Establishment Clause is to separate church and state, which allows individuals to decide their own religion, if any. However, the Pledge of Allegiance proselytizes children into a monotheistic conception of God, specifically the Judeo-Christian tradition predominant in the United States.
 
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Joseph demonstrates what Felix Cohen discusses in “Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach”, that law cannot be seen as an isolated entity untainted by politics or social context. However, this perspective is noticeably absent from most law schools, or at least from the one I have had the most exposure to. Robinson bemoans the public’s view of the law as idealistic and exaggerated. As a criminal defense lawyer, he comes closer to the regular, realistic application of law than do corporate lawyers or law students. Judicial opinion comprise most of our legal education, while social forces out of most defendants’ control dominates their processing in the legal system. When one of Joseph’s lawyers talk about the law, they do not do so with references to previous case opinions or judicial dissents, but rather with what they see on a day-to-day basis. If the usual three-year law school curriculum is considered legal orthodoxy, the correct standard of legal education, then Lawyerland is an antithetical view of the law.
 
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"Under God" as a Violation of the Establishment Clause

 
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Not only are children told that there does exist a higher power, but also that there is just one higher power. How are children born into Buddhist or atheist traditions, for example, supposed to react to this? How can those raised in families that believe in monotheism form their individual religious beliefs, if the government and school systems also endorse the existence of a God? The Constitution declares that church and state are separated in this country, as it also stipulates that everyone is entitled to due process of law and fair trials. However, as Joseph demonstrates, these ideals do not translate into reality. The problem lies in trusting that they do. To not believe that America prizes individual liberty and justice can be deemed unpatriotic. It is not safe to be unpatriotic in the 21st century. Even protesting the inclusion of the phrase “Under God”, and not the Pledge itself, is unpatriotic. In the case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 524 U.S. 1 (2004), when Michael Newdow brought suit against the school district his children attended, claiming the requirement for schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance daily violates the Establishment Clause of the United States, most liberal advocacy groups whose purpose is to protect individual liberties, such as the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), did not help him because of the issue’s highly political and divisive nature. Right after the 9/11 attacks, patriotism – and the duty of fostering it – reached a zenith. Supreme Court Justice Stevens classified the Pledge as a patriotic exercise, which was especially important in the years following the attacks.
 
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Lawyerland as an Antithesis to Standard Legal Education

 
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The writing style of the book is antithetical to how casebooks are written. The language is not precise or polite, as are judicial opinions and typical academic excerpts found in the large volumes so many students lug around all day. In torts class, for example, professors teach their students case law in a formal, chronological order. From those cases, students learn the enumerated elements of a tort, specifications, exceptions, and so on. However, this twenty year old sentenced to Riker’s Island only committed one tort, yet he was indicted on several counts. Students do not learn this aspect of the law in class. Joseph’s design of Lawyerland is antithetical as well. In his “Note to the Reader”, Joseph claims that “Lawyerland is truthful rather than factual”, in that it is “a work of nonfiction. . . [but] the names, circumstances, and characteristics of the persons and places portrayed have been changed” (Joseph, Note). In contrast, casebooks revolve around facts – the facts of a case, of a statute, etc. But are they truthful?
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The Excuse of Patriotism Justifies Infringing Individual Liberties

 
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Although difficult to reconcile on the most superficial level, truth is actually different than fact. Something is only true if our beliefs correspond with reality. Bertrand Russell espoused this correspondence theory of truth: that something is true depending on how it relates to the external world, and whether it corresponds with that world. Truthful statements, which Joseph claims to be making, correspond to the actual state of affairs; Russell would understand and embrace Joseph's stance that Lawyerland truthful, not factual. We can then say that Joseph ascribes to Russell’s philosophy and believes his book to describe how lawyers actually act, in contrast to how they are “supposed to” act, a semi-normative theory of law taught by schools around the country. Law schools teach an overly idealistic, academic view of the law, which Joseph attacks as untruthful. After spending months of diligently memorizing the facts of cases and statutes, it is initially hard to grasp that these revered facts we learn in law school are “untruths”. They are necessary and do possess their own merit, but the absence of truth cripples these future lawyers-in-training. Through Lawyerland, then, Joseph advocates for a reform of the legal education, away from “facts” and towards “truths”.

In the first place, it is due to Larry Joseph to point out that the ridiculous idea of using his poetry to teach law school was mine, not his at all. I think it tickles his fancy that this set of poems, which has for him a very other purpose entirely, could be read and taught this way. But he's a fine poet, and he knows that poems are. They are not the property of poets.

So I don't think that making a book report about Lawyerland as pedagogical material, while fair comment just as anything else would be, is good criticism, in the sense of getting at any author's intention. I have an intention, I admit. Someone could write something about it, if she or he got past the misdirection in place to prevent anyone from noticing I am there, twisting the light beams, distorting the picture for my own purposes.

One could use "After Apple Picking" in a pomology course, to be sure, and "Mending Wall" on a Property exam. (The latter I know to be possible: I did it once.) I'm not so sure Robert Frost would have been as gracious as Larry has been about it. But if anyone is to take the fall for it in critical-essay-land, he should not be the one.

Now, if the next draft, in addition to letting him off the hook, were also to get past asking what he has written (and, for the moment, also as gently as possible ignoring what he means by it) to get instead to what you feel when you read it, we would really be cooking with gas.

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Politics and personal feelings sent the twenty-year-old immigrant boy to jail. The reason the phrase “Under God” is included in the Pledge of Allegiance is, unsurprisingly, also politics. President Dwight D. Eisenhower inserted those words in an act in 1954 to rally patriotism during the Cold War. More specifically, Eisenhower enacted the law as an effort to unite Americans against the evil atheist threat of Communism: upon signing the bill, he issued a statement asserting that the addition of this phrase “reaffirm[s] the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource."1 Now, the Pledge and other patriotic declarations are meant to unite Americans against the threat of terrorism. Fear is a wonderful political tool. The Supreme Court used the issue of the Newdow’s legal standing to avoid making an explicit decision of the constitutionality of the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge. Three justices, however, wrote concurrences in which they argued the phrase was part of the nation’s history, resting their opinions on the notion of ceremonial deism. They argued that the insertion of the phrase “Under God” is not religious, but rather ceremonial, and that this drill is so prevalent and commonplace that it has lost its religious connotation. However, this issue illustrates how individual liberties and constitutional protections are not objective guarantees, and are instead subject to the judges’ and other governmental interests’ political stances, and even to their personal feelings.
 
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1 Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words "Under God" in the Pledge to the Flag.," June 14, 1954. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
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GraceKrasnermanFirstEssay 3 - 05 Mar 2016 - Main.EbenMoglen
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Law as Secondary to Social Influences

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Lawyerland provides a third dimension to the standard two-dimensional view taught at the overwhelming majority of American law schools. Someone in the grips of a purely academic view of the law – a judge, for example – has a predilection towards a systematic perception of the law. The judge, or the stereotypical law professor, academic, or bright-eyed 1L, believes in the law as functioning logically and justly. In contrast, the disillusioned lawyer, whom Robinson epitomizes (which Joseph claims to be truthful, if not factual), sees the law as only secondary to social influences on a case.

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Lawyerland provides a third dimension to the standard two-dimensional view taught at the overwhelming majority of American law schools. Someone in the grips of a purely academic view of the law – a judge, for example – has a predilection towards a systematic perception of the law. The judge, or the stereotypical law professor, academic, or bright-eyed 1L, believes in the law as functioning logically and justly. In contrast, the disillusioned lawyer, whom Robinson epitomizes (which Joseph claims to be truthful, if not factual), sees the law as only secondary to social influences on a case.
 
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Robinson talks about the twenty-year-old son of immigrants who breaks into the apartment of an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This D.A. then gets this boy arrested, as to be expected. Unfortunately for this boy, this D.A.’s brother-in-law is high up in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, who assigns one of the best prosecutors in his office to the case. Because of the D.A.’s personal feelings of revenge and hate, the prosecutor alleges “attempted murder in the second degree, attempted robbery in the first degree, [reckless endangerment] in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, criminal trespass in the first degree. Plus . . . a slew of boilerplate offenses for concealing a deadly weapon” (Joseph, 10). The boy’s only genuine offense was burglary, with the ignorant mistake of not knowing whom he was attempting to rob. The outcome of this case did not depend on any rules or law, but rather on specific people and their relations. Robinson does not look to any casebooks or penal codes to formulate a plan of action, but rather to the people involved. The law becomes secondary to the desires of those meant to implement the law.

>
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Robinson talks about the twenty-year-old son of immigrants who breaks into the apartment of an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This D.A. then gets this boy arrested, as to be expected. Unfortunately for this boy, this D.A.’s brother-in-law is high up in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, who assigns one of the best prosecutors in his office to the case. Because of the D.A.’s personal feelings of revenge and hate, the prosecutor alleges “attempted murder in the second degree, attempted robbery in the first degree, [reckless endangerment] in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, criminal trespass in the first degree. Plus . . . a slew of boilerplate offenses for concealing a deadly weapon” (Joseph, 10). The boy’s only genuine offense was burglary, with the ignorant mistake of not knowing whom he was attempting to rob. The outcome of this case did not depend on any rules or law, but rather on specific people and their relations. Robinson does not look to any casebooks or penal codes to formulate a plan of action, but rather to the people involved. The law becomes secondary to the desires of those meant to implement the law.
 

How Legal Orthodoxy Does Not Prepare Lawyers

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Joseph demonstrates what Felix Cohen discusses in “Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach”, that law cannot be seen as an isolated entity untainted by politics or social context. However, this perspective is noticeably absent from most law schools, or at least from the one I have had the most exposure to. Robinson bemoans the public’s view of the law as idealistic and exaggerated. As a criminal defense lawyer, he comes closer to the regular, realistic application of law than do corporate lawyers or law students. Judicial opinion comprise most of our legal education, while social forces out of most defendants’ control dominates their processing in the legal system. When one of Joseph’s lawyers talk about the law, they do not do so with references to previous case opinions or judicial dissents, but rather with what they see on a day-to-day basis. If the usual three-year law school curriculum is considered legal orthodoxy, the correct standard of legal education, then Lawyerland is an antithetical view of the law.

>
>
Joseph demonstrates what Felix Cohen discusses in “Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach”, that law cannot be seen as an isolated entity untainted by politics or social context. However, this perspective is noticeably absent from most law schools, or at least from the one I have had the most exposure to. Robinson bemoans the public’s view of the law as idealistic and exaggerated. As a criminal defense lawyer, he comes closer to the regular, realistic application of law than do corporate lawyers or law students. Judicial opinion comprise most of our legal education, while social forces out of most defendants’ control dominates their processing in the legal system. When one of Joseph’s lawyers talk about the law, they do not do so with references to previous case opinions or judicial dissents, but rather with what they see on a day-to-day basis. If the usual three-year law school curriculum is considered legal orthodoxy, the correct standard of legal education, then Lawyerland is an antithetical view of the law.
 

Lawyerland as an Antithesis to Standard Legal Education

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The writing style of the book is antithetical to how casebooks are written. The language is not precise or polite, as are judicial opinions and typical academic excerpts found in the large volumes so many students lug around all day. In torts class, for example, professors teach their students case law in a formal, chronological order. From those cases, students learn the enumerated elements of a tort, specifications, exceptions, and so on. However, this twenty year old sentenced to Riker’s Island only committed one tort, yet he was indicted on several counts. Students do not learn this aspect of the law in class. Joseph’s design of Lawyerland is antithetical as well. In his “Note to the Reader”, Joseph claims that “Lawyerland is truthful rather than factual”, in that it is “a work of nonfiction. . . [but] the names, circumstances, and characteristics of the persons and places portrayed have been changed” (Joseph, Note). In contrast, casebooks revolve around facts – the facts of a case, of a statute, etc. But are they truthful?

>
>
The writing style of the book is antithetical to how casebooks are written. The language is not precise or polite, as are judicial opinions and typical academic excerpts found in the large volumes so many students lug around all day. In torts class, for example, professors teach their students case law in a formal, chronological order. From those cases, students learn the enumerated elements of a tort, specifications, exceptions, and so on. However, this twenty year old sentenced to Riker’s Island only committed one tort, yet he was indicted on several counts. Students do not learn this aspect of the law in class. Joseph’s design of Lawyerland is antithetical as well. In his “Note to the Reader”, Joseph claims that “Lawyerland is truthful rather than factual”, in that it is “a work of nonfiction. . . [but] the names, circumstances, and characteristics of the persons and places portrayed have been changed” (Joseph, Note). In contrast, casebooks revolve around facts – the facts of a case, of a statute, etc. But are they truthful?
 
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Although difficult to reconcile on the most superficial level, truth is actually different than fact. Something is only true if our beliefs correspond with reality. Bertrand Russell espoused this correspondence theory of truth: that something is true depending on how it relates to the external world, and whether it corresponds with that world. Truthful statements, which Joseph claims to be making, correspond to the actual state of affairs; Russell would understand and embrace Joseph's stance that Lawyerland truthful, not factual. We can then say that Joseph ascribes to Russell’s philosophy and believes his book to describe how lawyers actually act, in contrast to how they are “supposed to” act, a semi-normative theory of law taught by schools around the country. Law schools teach an overly idealistic, academic view of the law, which Joseph attacks as untruthful. After spending months of diligently memorizing the facts of cases and statutes, it is initially hard to grasp that these revered facts we learn in law school are “untruths”. They are necessary and do possess their own merit, but the absence of truth cripples these future lawyers-in-training. Through Lawyerland, then, Joseph advocates for a reform of the legal education, away from “facts” and towards “truths”.

>
>
Although difficult to reconcile on the most superficial level, truth is actually different than fact. Something is only true if our beliefs correspond with reality. Bertrand Russell espoused this correspondence theory of truth: that something is true depending on how it relates to the external world, and whether it corresponds with that world. Truthful statements, which Joseph claims to be making, correspond to the actual state of affairs; Russell would understand and embrace Joseph's stance that Lawyerland truthful, not factual. We can then say that Joseph ascribes to Russell’s philosophy and believes his book to describe how lawyers actually act, in contrast to how they are “supposed to” act, a semi-normative theory of law taught by schools around the country. Law schools teach an overly idealistic, academic view of the law, which Joseph attacks as untruthful. After spending months of diligently memorizing the facts of cases and statutes, it is initially hard to grasp that these revered facts we learn in law school are “untruths”. They are necessary and do possess their own merit, but the absence of truth cripples these future lawyers-in-training. Through Lawyerland, then, Joseph advocates for a reform of the legal education, away from “facts” and towards “truths”.
 
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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In the first place, it is due to Larry Joseph to point out that the ridiculous idea of using his poetry to teach law school was mine, not his at all. I think it tickles his fancy that this set of poems, which has for him a very other purpose entirely, could be read and taught this way. But he's a fine poet, and he knows that poems are. They are not the property of poets.

So I don't think that making a book report about Lawyerland as pedagogical material, while fair comment just as anything else would be, is good criticism, in the sense of getting at any author's intention. I have an intention, I admit. Someone could write something about it, if she or he got past the misdirection in place to prevent anyone from noticing I am there, twisting the light beams, distorting the picture for my own purposes.

One could use "After Apple Picking" in a pomology course, to be sure, and "Mending Wall" on a Property exam. (The latter I know to be possible: I did it once.) I'm not so sure Robert Frost would have been as gracious as Larry has been about it. But if anyone is to take the fall for it in critical-essay-land, he should not be the one.

Now, if the next draft, in addition to letting him off the hook, were also to get past asking what he has written (and, for the moment, also as gently as possible ignoring what he means by it) to get instead to what you feel when you read it, we would really be cooking with gas.

 
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"Truthful, Not Factual"

-- By GraceKrasnerman - 19 Feb 2016

Law as Secondary to Social Influences

Lawyerland provides a third dimension to the standard two-dimensional view taught at the overwhelming majority of American law schools. Someone in the grips of a purely academic view of the law – a judge, for example – has a predilection towards a systematic perception of the law. The judge, or the stereotypical law professor, academic, or bright-eyed 1L, believes in the law as functioning logically and justly. In contrast, the disillusioned lawyer, whom Robinson epitomizes (which Joseph claims to be truthful, if not factual), sees the law as only secondary to social influences on a case.

Robinson talks about the twenty-year-old son of immigrants who breaks into the apartment of an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This D.A. then gets this boy arrested, as to be expected. Unfortunately for this boy, this D.A.’s brother-in-law is high up in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, who assigns one of the best prosecutors in his office to the case. Because of the D.A.’s personal feelings of revenge and hate, the prosecutor alleges “attempted murder in the second degree, attempted robbery in the first degree, [reckless endangerment] in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, criminal trespass in the first degree. Plus . . . a slew of boilerplate offenses for concealing a deadly weapon” (Joseph, 10). The boy’s only genuine offense was burglary, with the ignorant mistake of not knowing whom he was attempting to rob. The outcome of this case did not depend on any rules or law, but rather on specific people and their relations. Robinson does not look to any casebooks or penal codes to formulate a plan of action, but rather to the people involved. The law becomes secondary to the desires of those meant to implement the law.

How Legal Orthodoxy Does Not Prepare Lawyers

Joseph demonstrates what Felix Cohen discusses in “Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach”, that law cannot be seen as an isolated entity untainted by politics or social context. However, this perspective is noticeably absent from most law schools, or at least from the one I have had the most exposure to. Robinson bemoans the public’s view of the law as idealistic and exaggerated. As a criminal defense lawyer, he comes closer to the regular, realistic application of law than do corporate lawyers or law students. Judicial opinion comprise most of our legal education, while social forces out of most defendants’ control dominates their processing in the legal system. When one of Joseph’s lawyers talk about the law, they do not do so with references to previous case opinions or judicial dissents, but rather with what they see on a day-to-day basis. If the usual three-year law school curriculum is considered legal orthodoxy, the correct standard of legal education, then Lawyerland is an antithetical view of the law.

Lawyerland as an Antithesis to Standard Legal Education

The writing style of the book is antithetical to how casebooks are written. The language is not precise or polite, as are judicial opinions and typical academic excerpts found in the large volumes so many students lug around all day. In torts class, for example, professors teach their students case law in a formal, chronological order. From those cases, students learn the enumerated elements of a tort, specifications, exceptions, and so on. However, this twenty year old sentenced to Riker’s Island only committed one tort, yet he was indicted on several counts. Students do not learn this aspect of the law in class. Joseph’s design of Lawyerland is antithetical as well. In his “Note to the Reader”, Joseph claims that “Lawyerland is truthful rather than factual”, in that it is “a work of nonfiction. . . [but] the names, circumstances, and characteristics of the persons and places portrayed have been changed” (Joseph, Note). In contrast, casebooks revolve around facts – the facts of a case, of a statute, etc. But are they truthful?

Although difficult to reconcile on the most superficial level, truth is actually different than fact. Something is only true if our beliefs correspond with reality. Bertrand Russell espoused this correspondence theory of truth: that something is true depending on how it relates to the external world, and whether it corresponds with that world. Truthful statements, which Joseph claims to be making, correspond to the actual state of affairs; Russell would understand and embrace Joseph's stance that Lawyerland truthful, not factual. We can then say that Joseph ascribes to Russell’s philosophy and believes his book to describe how lawyers actually act, in contrast to how they are “supposed to” act, a semi-normative theory of law taught by schools around the country. Law schools teach an overly idealistic, academic view of the law, which Joseph attacks as untruthful. After spending months of diligently memorizing the facts of cases and statutes, it is initially hard to grasp that these revered facts we learn in law school are “untruths”. They are necessary and do possess their own merit, but the absence of truth cripples these future lawyers-in-training. Through Lawyerland, then, Joseph advocates for a reform of the legal education, away from “facts” and towards “truths”.


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