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MiRiFirstPaper 5 - 12 Apr 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | Our worldview and how it orders the world that we live in will determine the way we view our role in the world and thus how we will approach and use the law as future lawyers. In the context of the law, the current dominant worldview would have dangerous consequences. After all, turning other human beings into standing reserves is what allows us to strip them of their humanity and turn them into one-dimensional beings. The victims of a crime would be a statistic or the alleged criminals will be seen as nothing more than guilty murderers. However, when we look past the labels and their limitations on the individual, we can form a more profound appreciation that would command a more compassionate and nuanced treatment of our fellow human beings. | |
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< | As future lawyers, the law can provide us with a powerful means of achieving a more authentic existence in the world when we choose to use it to aid in the bringing forth of our fellow man. We can detach ourselves from the world and its social injustices by choosing the client that we see as nothing more than standing reserves – resources with deep pockets that we can dip into with high billable hours, while ignoring the harm and damages such a client may cause others. Or, we can instead choose to see beyond the exploitative properties. We can choose to represent the client that we see as a multi-faceted individual and engage in a process that recreates, redeems, restore, and rejuvenates for the purpose of achieving justice. Thus, we can choose to look at our future careers as lawyers as not something that we merely do, but something that will define our essence and relation to the world as genuine aids of bringing forth. We can aid in the actualization of the manifold potentials of greatness around us. | | | \ No newline at end of file | |
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> | As future lawyers, the law can provide us with a powerful means of achieving a more authentic existence in the world when we choose to use it to aid in the bringing forth of our fellow man. We can detach ourselves from the world and its social injustices by choosing the client that we see as nothing more than standing reserves – resources with deep pockets that we can dip into with high billable hours, while ignoring the harm and damages such a client may cause others. Or, we can instead choose to see beyond the exploitative properties. We can choose to represent the client that we see as a multi-faceted individual and engage in a process that recreates, redeems, restore, and rejuvenates for the purpose of achieving justice.
This sounds more like a
spa treatment than actual law practice.
Thus, we can choose to look at our future careers as lawyers as not something that we merely do, but something that will define our essence and relation to the world as genuine aids of bringing forth. We can aid in the actualization of the manifold potentials of greatness around us.
I'm not sure I see the
need for Heidegger here: the idea might as easily be expressed out of
Kant or out of Aristotle. Indeed, one can do without the
name-dropping altogether, and say simply that it's fundamental to our
legal ethics that the client must be treated as a source of ends, not
a means.
This has the distinct advantage of not relying on a man in an SS
uniform for advice about how to live. It also allows us to express
the difference between the client and others in the lawyer's
worldview, which is not directly captured by the general expressions
of those not contemplating the lawyer's particular situation.
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