I love the law. This is not a new love, nor one I acted upon--I wasn’t pre-law, for example. When the O.J. Simpson trial happened, which was when I was around five, I watched the whole thing. Looking back now, I’m mildly surprised that my mother encouraged this, but she is against censorship and apparently I was interested. According to my parents, I would walk from one end of the room to the other, imitating the lawyers by pontificating “On the one hand…” and then, upon reaching the other end of the room “On the other hand…” I don’t really remember anything about the whole thing besides the fact that I really liked the idea of being the judge, and was crushed when I was informed that to be a judge, you had to be a lawyer first. I was clearly not impressed by that fact, even then, which proves that, even if I am nothing else, I am at least consist.
Law school sounds like an absolute blast. I don’t think many people realize what a radical and precious growing document our constitution really is. It doesn’t promise that to be American is to be perfect; it only promises to give us a chance. Even just the first amendment gives us this amazing array of rights: we can believe in what we like, we can print it and share it with other people, we can be in groups of as many people as we like, and we can send petitions to our government. Most Americans forget how much freedom that gives us. But even when writing it, those privileged white men decided to make room for changes, for a world that looks very little like it did then. Can you think of any politicians who would do the same now?
And therein lies the rub: American law, as a set of ideals to live up to, is a thing to admire and to be proud of. But that set of ideals have been prostituted to suit selfish needs: the law has been pimped out by the lawyers.
Okay, there are good lawyers out there. There’s the ACLU, there’s ABFFE (American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression). There’s overworked, but still idealistic, ADA’s and PD’s out there. But there are also the lawyers that make my skin crawl, people who use loopholes and trickery to win victories that should never be won and make loads of money while doing it.
What I’d really like, is to be a lawyer without having to deal with other lawyers. But even then, one would have to attempt to help people when they are at their worst: when they are losing their homes, or making huge mistakes, or watching love die. I suppose what I’d really like is to be able to skip the whole step of practicing law and be allowed to study it, and then make rulings on it. Basically, I just want to skip being a lawyer altogether.
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