Read Part One
“I want to make sure that I don’t educate monsters!”
That was a warning to educators in 2014 by Georgetown University Professor, and Holocaust expert, Michael Berenbaum. He pointed out that at the Wannsee Conference (where the Holocaust death camps were formalized in 1942), “all 15 participants had university degrees. Eight had doctorates. Seven were lawyers.”
Berenbaum said it’s the responsibility of educators to avoid creating “monsters” with “all the genius of modern technology, all the capacity for creative thought, and no moral core.”
Apparently his warning fell on deaf ears, since so many of the current protesters spouting anti-Semitism under the guise of supporting Palestinians over Israel come from the universities.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve observed within my profession those without any apparent “moral core” are increasing in number. They seem incapable of understanding that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it.
As Berenbaum correctly deduces, the problem with the profession originates in the nature of legal education – and that begins with who is selected to attend law school. For the best law schools (and by ‘best’ I mean supposedly ‘prestigious’) admission is very competitive. For second tier schools (meaning not ‘prestigious’) admission can be a matter of affording the exorbitant tuition.
And what distinguishes a school as “prestigious”? In some circumstances it’s the pretentiousness of its students and alumni. Harvard is supposedly the “pre-eminent” law school in the U.S. If you doubt that, just ask any lawyer who went there.
Actually you probably won’t have to ask, since they’ll likely tell you within the first few minutes of talking to them. We have an ambulance chaser in Central Florida who displays “Harvard Law Graduate” in bold letters on billboards – apparently suggesting his superior abilities compared to competitors.
Because winning is what it’s all about. Competition to get into law school, and once there competing for class standing, based on grades, consumes many of the students. That’s because of how grading is accomplished in law school. It’s strictly on what is commonly known as a ‘curve’. The highest score on an exam gets a ‘A’, with grades distributed down from there.
Being “at the top of your law school class” is supposed to be a ticket a big time legal career. In my opinion, and experience, that’s a dubious goal.
The competition between law students can be cutthroat. Some will hide books from the law library shelves they are using for research to keep other students in their class, who have the same assignment, from being able to access them. (I experienced it.)
Compounding the competition, the indoctrination that has been occurring in undergrad universities over the past generation is being carried into law schools. Students are “coming to the law” with distorted preconceptions of it’s purpose.
Instead of seeing the law as a structure to give impartial order to society and protect the rights of individuals against injury from other citizens, and tyranny by the government, they see it as a weapon to pursue their own agenda — political or financial.
Once they get to law school, too often they are instructed by professors with an agenda. Here is one example — though I’m not suggesting she is typical of all law professors.
Those of us who lived through the ‘60s know that turbulent time spawned individuals whose goal was to destroy our capitalist system. Some chose violence to accomplish that goal.
One such group was the ‘Weather Underground’, whose accomplishments included several of them blowing themselves up while making bombs they intended to place in public buildings.. Others members followed in the footsteps of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin by participating in armed robberies. (Stalin came to prominence in the Bolshiviks before the Russian revolution, by robbing banks to finance them.)
A founding member of the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, a self-avowed communist.
After turning herself in from being on the FBI most wanted list, and getting off with a plea to a misdemeanor, Dohrn taught at the Northwester University school of law from 1991 to 2013. It’s not a stretch to speculate that what she taught her students about the law had less to do with maintaining an “ordered society” and more to do with pushing her agenda — particularly when you consider that Dohrn, and her husband William Ayers (another member of the Weather Undergound, and close friend of Barack Obama) were the legal of guardians Chesa Boudin.
Boudin was the infant son of two other members of the Weather Underground who went to prison. As an adult, Boudin was elected District Attorney of San Francisco — then got recalled by the citizenry when they got fed up with his refusal to prosecute criminals. But what else should we expect?
Dohrn is at the far end of the spectrum of radicals teaching in law schools. But as a law professor I encountered others who incorporate progressive’ politics into their curriculum. I described it here. Political bias in academia is not a myth created by the “far right”.
So what you have are law students indoctrinated as undergrads being taught by law professors who further that indoctrination in a highly competitive environment. That produces practitioners for whom winning is primary, without regard to the morality of it – whether politically or financially.
Others coming out of a highly competitive system, in which they are taught to use the law to further their own agenda, go into private practice in pursuit of wealth. How that impacts society by raising business costs and insurance premiums, while corrupting society by undermining public faith in the court system, does not seem to even cross their minds.
The idea that law school is even a necessary antecedent to being a lawyer is a relatively new concept. Abraham Lincoln, who when he was a practicing lawyer was pretty damn good at it, never attended law school — or any college for that matter. Yet his understanding of the Constitution as it pertained to the legality of the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, is very sophisticated.
Among the founding fathers were prominent lawyers of their time who never attended law school — including the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. So it’s possible to learn, and become proficient at, the law without attending law school.
The Daily Post article by Rachel Suh demonstrates that you don’t need a degree from an accredited law school to understand legal concepts – if you take the time to actually learn them – and it shows the understanding of the moral ideal that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. While having a working understanding of the relevant law, she also has the moral advantage of not having attended law school.
Unfortunately too many critics of the legal profession who profess a moral superiority over the role of lawyers in the legal system lack Ms. Suh’s apparent ability to comprehend how the law works. I wrote about that here.
I’d be interested to see how well Ms. Suh would do on a bar exam if given the necessary study materials to prepare. But no state will probably even let her sit for a bar exam, because she has not graduated from an “accredited” law school.
And who “accredits” law schools? The American Bar Association (ABA) — a voluntary organization I haven’t belonged to for decades. I quit my membership when they became too politicized .
Politicization of the ABA is no doubt a factor in why law schools have become so politicized — and the partisanship that has infected the legal profession. Unfortunately, law schools today are too often producing “monsters” with “all the capacity for creative thought, and no moral core.”
Alright — I’ve described the problem. Is there a solution? I believe so. But it’s not to be found in the rantings of the most vocal critics of the legal profession.
Animosity toward lawyers is evident from some who have appeared here in the Daily Post. The present problem with the legal profession is not what those to whom I responded would have you believe.
Among their fantasies (one involving gold fringe on American flags in courtrooms) they claim lawyers, as a profession, are forbidden by a mythical “13th Amendment” which prohibits “titles of nobility”. They say that by using the appellation “Esquire” (Esq.) lawyers, by their very existence, violate that non-existent Amendment.
Aside from the fact only some lawyers use “Esq.” associated with their names, it’s not ‘official’, or in any way required, to be used. Anyone who subscribes to that basis for an assault on lawyers should simply be mocked – and ignored.
Others critics of the profession even subscribe to the final solution of the lawyer problem advocated by ‘Dick the Butcher’ in William Shakespeare’s Henry VI — to “kill all the lawyers”. Those inspired by that quote don’t understand its context.
‘Dick the Butcher’ was an ally of the rebel Jack Cade who advocated what amounted to anarchy. The statement was a realization that anarchy can only exist in the absence of lawyers, so they needed to be killed. In reality, the quote is tribute to the need for lawyers in a society based on “law, not men”.
The legal profession is supposed to be is a “calling” to the law. For me, it was like being called to the ministry of a secular religion. It requires being educated in the principles that have evolved through human experience which enable organized society to function. Whether that education is acquired through an non-doctrinaire law school education or by ‘reading the law’ on your own as Abraham Lincoln did is irrelevant.
One of those guiding principles is to not subvert the spirit of the law — to refrain from pursuing a legal action simply because you can without first asking if you should.
Lawyers are supposed to adhere to those principles regardless of personal opinions or financial incentive. We even take an oath to do so.
The only solution to what has become the “rule of lawyers” is to enforce the spirit of that oath. To pay fealty to traditional legal principles before personal ambition — whether that ambition is political or financial.
Only when (if?) the profession cleans up its own act, can we expect the schools which train lawyers to clean up theirs. Until the schools do that, the problem will perpetuate itself like a cancer feeding on its host.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.