A few days ago, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern put out a call on twitter to academics to find out how they would teach law going forward in light of the current Supreme Court state of Affairs. He posed his inquiry in a relatively fair and neutral way.
That the question was asked suggests a bias in the answer, but given the needless upheaval created this term, it was hardly an inappropriate question. But Mike Sacks, who not too long ago was a law student whose claim to fame was attending every Supreme Court oral argument for his blawg, First One First Street, and has since gone on to not practice law, but become a writer and “visiting scholar” at Duke, said the words out loud.
Mike’s expectations were not dashed, as the reliably progressive legal academics bemoaned the death of law at the altar of malevolent power. Not to be outsnarked, Mike chided the unduly passionate with his it’s “always been all power and no law,” which has how it may appear to non-lawyers. There is, of course, the premise that as wrong as the Supreme Court may be (which is hardly a new phenomenon for any of us), it’s not because they are evil but because they hold a different view than we (I?) do. Hey, if they can still find dog hits to be probable cause, how can you not disagree?
But what and whether progressive academics or their snarkier and more cynical fellow travelers believe that the Supreme Court is no longer a legitimate branch of government, there is another question raised by MJS and Mike Sacks. If so, then what?
If there is no law, then why go to law school to waste three years of your life learning a subject that doesn’t exist? Why go on to practice law if it’s a sham? Why bother to teach law if there’s nothing to teach other than how a majority of evil people are engaged in a policy power play to get their way. And if there is no law, why bother to represent clients when there is no possibility of winning because the game is rigged?
If it’s true that there is no law and just power, then the only rational response is to take up arms and seize power back. If law doesn’t exist, then learning law is nuts, practicing law is nuttier and teaching law is nuttiest.
But of course. we do win. Not all the time. Not nearly as much as we should. Not enough. But sometimes. We win in trial courts and appellate courts. Sometimes we even win in the Supreme Court. Even this Supreme Court.
The cynicism and nihilism reflected by those academics who choose to condemn the Supreme Court and the law as dead has grown and become a fairly common refrain. Whether they truly believe it or just say so to get their social media pals to validate their feelings is unclear, but they are doing as much as they can to teach the public to disdain the law and courts as illegitimate. Are they teaching their students this as well?
Not having attended law school for more than 40 years, I have no clue what’s being taught these days. Some law students say that they feel that they’re receiving a sound education, although it’s unclear how they would know since they have nothing to compare it to. Are they being taught to be lawyers with the skill and will to fight for their clients or are they being indoctrinated into being warriors for social justice? Are they being trained to argue before the Supreme Court or to despise the justices as paragons of evil?
DICK. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
There is more than one way to kill all the lawyers, but perhaps the most effective and least bloody way is to stop teaching students to be lawyers in law school so they came out the other end incapable of being lawyers because they were taught there is no point to it as there is no law, only power. Is that what they plan to do?
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