Victim of Formality

There are of course two major reasons given for why one is in law school:

1. “I didn’t know what else to do with my degree… took the LSAT… why not?… certainly beats working.”
2. “I have a science background and am highly interested in intellectual-property law.”

The first answer, by far the more common, implies a lot about the probable background of the speaker. It takes a certain amount of effort on [some]one’s part in order to be so whimsical. The ritualized mutual interrogation which served to pass the drunken hours between first-week classes bore this out.

“You’re from where? Is that the [fancy] neighbourhood overlooking C.O.P.?”
“No, you’re thinking of S’s. I’m from the other one.”

For my part, whatever ease is to be gained by being amongst one’s intellectual equals (at least until the marks come in) is tempered by the constant awareness that they are, for the most part, and in a broad sense, at least one’s social equals.

I suppose my latest attack of bourgeois class consciousness (pace Lukács, on several counts) was primed by my trip to Winnipeg at the end of summer. As I get older, I appreciate how much I am the product of my wider family—I guess all those educational toys worked. Anyway, palavering over some boxed white with my grandmother we discussed her reading list:

1. The Winnipeg Free Press
2. The Globe and Mail
3. The National Post (“But only because the Aspers have been so kind to the city.”)
4. The Economist
5. The New Yorker
6. The Guardian Weekly (which, as you know, reprints some content from Le Monde)
7. The New York Times online, specifically for the TimesSelect columnists (“But not for Friedman!”)

Throw in some Lewis Lapham, a sprinkling of Marxist book critics, and substitute lemonde.fr for the paper Guardian and I’m not far off. We also covered our respective disappointment with The Walrus, later rehashed with Tina. (Perhaps it would be apropos to mention that, in Toronto, after I had poked fun at the whole idea of a Walrus Arctic Expedition my aunt informed me she’d already signed up?) Later on that week another aunt arrived from Germany, by way of Montréal, and we spent some time trying to figure out the pronunciation of the Economist’s British-affairs column.

But back to Law School. As I’ve come to appreciate since the first week, a common set of referents, and The Economist serves as well as anything else, certainly has its advantages. Passing the time, for one thing (after we had spent a class watching 2/3 of A Beautiful Mind, even before they started complaining that we’d spent a class watching a Ron Howard film, people felt the need to hold forth on Nash equillibria). Intuitively knowing my audience may also be one reason I’ve been able to cultivate a reputation as a class clown (though it’s probably just as much down to technical skill, as evinced by my in-class comment on the lingering presence of the community standards test with respect to consent to “deviant” sexual practices: “It’s hard to apply a harm-based test when there’s a whip involved.”)

Unfortunately, it’s not all Game Theory, Mozart, and “les scènes élevées en grec.” There’s also money, sexism, and certain lack of self-awareness that a more parochial student might attribute to those who haven’t had the benefit of extended inculcation in the lesser psychoanalysts (when I went to a Centre for Feminist Legal Studies talk I had to explain the Feminist to someone).

Humour actually provides a good example of the problems. Friday was the Guile debate, wherein law students, beers in hand, fill the auditorium and cheer on their colleagues in attempting to prove some proposition: in this case, “be it resolved Justice is blind.” I need only remind you that Justice is oft depicted as a topless woman wearing a blindfold to adumbrate the course of the next 2 hours. The high point was when A. stood up and, in so many words, said she wasn’t going to tell dick jokes, and that this whole exercise was patriarchal and problematic. The low point was when a drunken speaker handed the microphone to a homeless man collecting empties, who then, to entirely dissociated cheers, urged the students present to work toward the betterment of those less fortunate.

I don’t mean to suggest there aren’t good people here. I just wonder about their ability to effect change given the properly de-politicizing strictures of “professionalism”. I wonder what long term effects our ineluctable camaraderie will have when applied to an already homogenous group. And, concomitantly, I wonder what I’ll be like in a couple years after I’ve completed what, more every day, seems less like an academic institution and more like a finishing school (except you’re expected to take French after hours). Would I be willing to use the word “patriarchal” in front of 300 drunk students?

Then again, maybe the above is just an overreaction. Maybe, I thought to myself back in first week, overhearing the genuinely academic conversation of the nearby grad students, law school is about more than just consolidating one’s position in society. Maybe I was not simply taking up my appointed position as a scion of the State Nobility. Or, if so (as that’s an awfully hard thing to disprove), maybe I can be said to like law in some meaningfully independent sense. And so what if my friend is dating someone from JRR/Glenview/LP? We’re good people. And so what if my acquaintances’ tastes have shifted from veggie subs to lobster fresh off the plane? Isn’t that just getting older? It’s not like this is some sort of vast, well-shod, conspiracy.

So I tried not to think about it, as I waited for the first of many free burgers, and the imminent arrival of my 2nd year buddy…

“Wait a minute… weren’t you the Bishop of UAAC?”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Law, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.