Interdependence

I don't know how TBP has time to write so much, but I'm glad he does because a lot of it is very provocative. For example, last Thursday he wrote:

I always chuckle at the global frustration with America over our unwillingness to sign onto global organizations that have any real power over the United States.... .... I'd love to sit people down and explain, "look, it's nothing against these organizations, but we're a federalist republic." By that, I mean that we simply cannot join any group that has power over the nation without them being from within the nation. We are Constitutionally prohibited from doing so. The second we allowed such power, we are denying the voters the representative democracy guaranteed to them within the U.S. Constitution.

The reason this really grabbed me is that it's so closely related to the whole "we are all interdependent" thing that is leading me toward law (explained below). As I read it, TPB's reasoning sounds good, but only in theory. Setting aside for a moment NAFTA (1), it seems absurd to say that the U.S. Constitution prohibits the U.S. from signing international treaties or joining international bodies with real power. If the U.S. is such a representative democracy, then if the majority of voters support these treaties and organizations (i.e., the World Court or the Kyoto environmental protocol), then the U.S. government has a constitutional obligation to sign or participate in them. (2) But aside from the issue of constitutionality, it's also absurd to assert or imply that the U.S. has the right or even the ability to conduct its domestic or foreign affairs however it sees fit, even when U.S. conduct conflicts with international opinion or law.(3)
We may be the world's only superpower, we may have vast resources, a huge economy, the most and biggest guns; however, none of these things changes the fact that our actions have consequences. When we refuse to sign international environmental protection agreements because they might be expensive (Kyoto), we continue destroying the environment for everyone on the planet. Do we have a right to do that? Is such arrogance and selfish disregard for the planet guaranteed by the Constitution?

The point is, the individual ethos of America is a nice ideal, but it has real and unbreakable limits, both on the micro and macro level. Whether we like it or not, the U.S. is a member of a global community; we can't change that fact. If we continue trying to pretend otherwise, we will, eventually, pay the price. Unfortunately, the rest of the world might pay even more. In light of our interdependence, do we really want to interpret the Constitution as preventing us from participating in international treaties or organizations?

Footnotes:
(1) NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, seems to directly contradict TPB's claim that the U.S. can't join "any group that has power over the nation without them being from within the nation." See in particular Chapter 11, which apparently allows for secret, closed-door hearings in which corporations (foreign and domestic) can force the U.S. to pay damages to corporate interests that are "harmed" (even in theory) by such things as U.S. environmental protections. The transcript of the Bill Moyers PBS special on this topic from last February explains in more detail; however, what NAFTA suggests is that the U.S. government ignores the supposed Constitutional prohibition against joining groups that have power over the nation when that power serves the interests of business. At least that's what it looks like to me.
(2) Perhaps the fact that American voters seem largely excluded from these decisions is a comment on the efficacy of our representative democracy. How different is our system from the E.U.'s "patriarchical think tank form of government," really?
(3) The issue of the Bush Administration's creation of an entirely new species of being—the "enemy combatant"—flouts not only international, but U.S. law as well. What does our Constitution say about calling people different things in order to put them outside of all law? By what authority are people being deprived of internationally agreed-upon rights?

Posted 11:43 AM | Comments (1) | general politics

Links & Blogrolls

Thanks to Alice W. for the mention, and for clarifying the question of the "hornbook" (what an awful name—anybody know the etymology?). Also, mad props to the following blogs for adding this site to their blogrolls: Sua Sponte (according to which AI is a "fellow traveller" blog), Two Tears In A Bucket (which calls AI a "political blog"), and Unbillable Hours (which puts AI on its list of "links of legal or public policy interest"). All of these sites have become daily reads for me in recent weeks and I highly recommend them—not just as terrific reads, but also as excellent sources of information on law school and law practice.

And while I'm at this, thanks to the kind lawyers who have offered advice outside of blogspace on the merits of law school. Your perspectives and tips have helped a great deal in giving me a better idea of whether law and I can ever be friends.

Posted 11:17 PM | Comments (1) | law school

Why Law Makes Sense

I was just thinking what my family and friends will think when I tell them I'm headed toward law, something I'm reserving for the future—either once I know my final LSAT score or once I'm accepted at a school. My guess is that they'll be skeptical, hesitant to support the decision, even all-out against it. They'll feel that way, I imagine, because of their preconceived notions of the animal known as "lawyer," and because when they compare that animal to the animal known as "me," the two will seem very different to them. Obviously, the two animals seem pretty different to me, too. I have never been someone who cared about making a great deal of money; I have never been interested in living in cities; I have never wanted to wear coats and ties and slacks and nice shoes; I have always mocked self-important "professionals" and business people, and I have never once aspired to be one (although aspiring to be an academic means aspiring to be a self-important professional, I think most people—my family and friends, especially—take a more romantic view of what an English professor is or does); and I have always made a point of my refusal to sacrifice my values and principles to society, to a job or profession, or to society's idea of "success" or "the good life." In short, I've just never been associated with the kinds of things many people associate with law and lawyers. (1)

But there is a way in which law makes perfect sense for me, in terms of the path I've followed for the last, oh, ten years or so. That path has been, for lack of a better way of framing it, from isolation or independence to community or interdependence. Growing up in the wild west of Wyoming ("like no place else!") I led a somewhat isolated life. I thought very little about politics, social policy, global issues. The problems of the world were far from me, and I was surround by people who lived by a somewhat libertarian ethos that could be summed up as "You can do whatever you want, just as long as it doesn't infringe on my ability or freedom to do whatever I want." But then I moved to CA and started meeting all kinds of people and seeing different parts of the country (and world) and how different people lived; I began to realize how my isolation was an illusion. My girlfriend at that time was a big part of that realization: she helped teach me about the value of community and mentoring and concern for other people. Grad school only deepened that shift, in a serious way, teaching me how little we, as individuals, can accomplish, and how we are all inherently interdependent. In choosing law I'm choosing to head toward society, rather than away from it. I'm choosing to immerse myself in the problems of the world, rather than retreating from them, and I'm choosing to make helping other people and improving society (or at least trying to do so) a central part of my life.

This is how I see this choice: I could continue as an English grad and live my life in the strange, pseudo-isolation of academia, on the periphery, the theoretical margins. Or I could choose to head into the world of work in writing or editing/publishing, which would also be somewhat isolated to the extent that I'd be working at some journal or newspaper or press with a specific and limited scope with only indirect effects on peoples' lives via whatever we were publishing. Or I could choose to dedicate myself to a bigger picture, to a more direct engagement with the wider circle of potential challenges and problems that I might find in the practice of law related to public interest or public policy issues. And while my friends and family have always seen me as something of a "rugged" individual (watch me flatter myself!), an iconoclast, what I have become in the last decade is more like a "rugged" socialist. I hope I can remain something of an iconoclast, but I don't want to pretend I can remain an isolated individual. So the choice to head for law is the choice to head for society, for the social, to work not just for me or for my own small goals or achievements, but for the greater good of us all. (2)

(Tangent: The radio is playing "Flake" by Jack Johnson. I love this song. Does that mean anything?)

This could all just be a rationalization. I understand that. Today I was whining about the fact that I couldn't be more happy about anything than I am about the fact that today is Friday and I don't have to teach for two whole days, even though I know I have a pile of work hanging over my head that I should be doing right now. So basically I was bitching about how teaching is such a full-time, all-the-time job (something I complain about all the time), and my girlfriend pointed out that her sister—a lawyer—leads a similar life. Just about every Friday at 5 p.m. she leaves her firm knowing she has work that must be done before Monday. So she knows she has to go to the office on Saturday or Sunday, or stay late Friday, or whatever, to get that work done. So if I'm looking for something that gives me more real time off, law really isn't it. (See this post at Unbillable Hours for an example, but also this followup, which is a bit more encouraging.)

I knew that. Which suggests I could be trying to rationalize this choice to pursue law. In some ways it's obvious to me it's not a perfect career path for me. But what is "perfect"? The mantra of the moment: "Put yourself in the way of good." I hope by pursuing law I'm doing just that.

Footnotes:
(1) Are these traits "many people associate with lawyers"? I don't know, but I think they're probably traits my friends and family associate with lawyers. The animal known as "lawyer" occupies such a contradictory position in our culture. On the one hand, it is highly respected, perennially ranked on the level of "doctor" and considered one of the premier professions within our society. On the other hand, this animal is known as a greedy, unprincipled beast who will stop at nothing to make a buck, changing colors like a chameleon in order to win cases and large monetary awards. But aside from those extremes, I think many people attribute to this animal a level of dedication to profession, of single-mindedness, of somewhat ruthless pursuit of achievement or success, that my friends and family generally dismiss. I think.
(2) Realizing, of course, that law school and the practice of law requires you to specialize, to various degrees, in some small area. I'm coming to terms with the fact that there aren't a lot of professions these days that allow you to make a difference on a large scale, but at least I hope to make a difference in whatever small area I finally find myself in, and I think law will allow me to do that more than many other things.

Posted 11:09 PM | law school

LSAT Study Tip 'o the Day

Do not, ever, attempt to contemplate LSAT questions when you're so tired you're having trouble seeing straight. Logical reasoning what? Strengthen or weaken the argument how? The correct answer is the one that makes the statement incorrect? I understand this... when my brain's not in a coma!

Also, do not pay a kajillion freaking dollars (1) for an LSAT classroom review course unless you are just completely, and I mean absolutely 100% clueless about this test and don't even know where to begin. The online review courses might be worth the cash—esp. if they give you access to the library of all released LSATs from the last few years, which I think they do. Really the only theoretical advantage of the classroom courses is that you can talk to a real live instructor once or twice a week, and from my experience that's not worth much more than an hour spent watching paint dry. (2) Ok, but then, another advantage of the classroom course is that it actually forces you to study for a few hours a week, which is really what I thought was worth paying for, but now I'm not so sure.

Anyway, it certainly seems unwise to invest the money in such a course before you've even taken a practice test to see how much help you really need. But then, who would be stupid enough to do a dumb thing like that?

Yeah.

Footnotes:
(1) This figure is most likely an exaggeration. — ed.
(2) Exhaustion sometimes leads to delerium, which can lead to, well, exaggeration again. —ed.

Posted 09:52 PM | law school

A Real Vision

Dave Weinberger has done something I've thought about many times but have never actually gotten around to: He's written The Speech I Want To Hear, a fictional speech by a fictional presidential candidate that describes the kinds of things Weinberger wishes politicians were talking about. Besides just being a great exercise, the speech contains some real big-picture vision for the future. For example, Weinberger writes:

We will raise the quality of the natural environment not just for our own people but for every person who breathes the earth's air, eats its fruit, or drinks its water. Our goal is, at the end of 20 years, to be confident that the world will sustain us and our children's children's children.

Doesn't that sound great? Think about it for a minute: How many of us can say we're confident that the world will sustain us and our children's children's children? I certainly can't, and the research I've read is pretty conclusive—if we continue current practices and trends, our children's children's children might not be able to survive on our planet. So why isn't this a major U.S. priority?

Now think about this: Instead of taking up nearly the entire world's time and energy debating whether the U.S. should go kill more people (attack Iraq), what if our president was leading the global community to create sustainable ways of living so that there's something left on our planet worth fighting for even years from now? Wouldn't that make you more proud to be an American?

Final question: Could you compose a 5-minute speech outlining your ideal vision for the future? I'm not sure I could do it with the kind of political spin necessary to win support for it, but it seems like we'd all be better voters and citizens if we'd run through an exercise like this every couple of years. Kind of an Imagineering thing. (See Item 6. And no, that's got absolutely zero to do with juggernaut Disney.)

Final final (and unrelated) question: Is Weinberger serious when he says David Chase, creator of the too-good-to-be-true show, "The Sopranos," should kill Tony Soprano?!?

Posted 09:31 AM | general politics

Support for Free Speech

I really want to avoid turning this into a big lefty rant soapbox, but this is almost too scary to believe:

Support for the First Amendment has eroded significantly since Sept. 11 and nearly half of Americans now think the constitutional amendment on free speech goes too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a new poll.

What are these people thinking? Oh, wait, here's a partial explanation:

Seven in 10 respondents agreed newspapers should publish freely, a slight drop from 2001. Those less likely to support newspaper rights included people without a college education, Republicans, and evangelicals, the survey found.

During the Reagan years I remember bumper stickers that said "Vote Republican, it's easier than thinking." Apparently it's true.

Contrast the above article with Bob Herbert's editorial, Secrecy Is Our Enemy, which discusses a recent decision by udge Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that said "it was unlawful for the Bush administration to conduct deportation hearings in secret whenever the government asserted that the people involved might be linked to terrorism." Herbert writes:

The opinion was a reflection of true patriotism, a 21st-century echo of a pair of comments made by John Adams nearly two centuries ago. "Liberty," said Adams, "cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

And in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1816, Adams said, "Power must never be trusted without a check."

Herbert's position has been proven true by history time and again. Here again we see the American ignorance of history—an ignorance carefully cultivated by a culture of individualism and immediate gratification—sprouting the seeds of a very scary future.

Later: Jason Rylander offers a less freaked out take on the news that people are becoming less supportive of the First Amendment. Very good point. Still, it's pretty sobering that people who are dissatisfied with how the media work in our country would even consider restricting the first amendment rather than simply demanding media reform. The two are very different things.

Posted 09:24 AM | general politics

Nathan Newman's Labor Links

Nathan Newman's "roundup of Labor Day 'deepthink" articles, ongoing news, and resources" kicks ass. There's an amazing amount of information packed into his post. Newman does a regular (though less extensive) roundup of labor links which makes a very stimulating (in an activist sense) regular read. Check it out. [and thanks to Two Tears in a Bucket for pointing me to Newman a couple of weeks back]

Posted 11:36 AM | general politics

Happy Labor Day! Solidarity!

Today the majority of us don't have to go to work thanks to the efforts of labor unions and trade organizations in the late 19th century. This simple fact is more significant than it seems—it stands as a vivid reminder of the power the labor movement once had in our country. Today, most of us just think of this as the last great three-day-weekend of summer, and so it is. But it's also a time to stop and think about your job and what it means to you and to society and the world. And just as important, it should be a time to think about what we all could do to make the world a better place through our labors, whatever they may be, and one long-proven way to do just that is to support unions and the labor movement. Unions won us this day off, the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, OSHA, and countless other social structures we all benefit from every day. These days, as part of its mandate to improve the lives of workers everywhere, the labor movement is working on social justice issues such as Living Wage campaigns, domestic partner benefits (so those you love can have medical insurance), and trying to save the few worker protections that remain after 20 years of pro-business and anti-labor politics. Now, in this slight depression and amid the ongoing corporate scandals of Enron, et. al., there has never been a better time to support the labor movement. As the New York Times reports today, workers in the U.S. are angry and worried, which helps explain why "half of workers who don't already have a union say they would join a union tomorrow if given a chance." Sounds like great Labor Day news to me.

As part of their Online Labor Day Festival 2002, the AFL-CIO provides a great Timeline of Labor History for a quick overview of where we've been, and a list of links to more specialized sites on the history of labor in the U.S. For an interesting contrast, read the brief history of Labor Day from the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL), then read this brief history from the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour on PBS. In what has become the classic way to blur and obscure important historical events, the DOL focuses on the individuals responsible for starting Labor Day, while the Newshour site puts the birth of this holiday in its real context—the massive labor unrest of the late 19th century, and specifically the Pullman strike. As the Newshour history reports, Labor Day was seen as a way to appease the nation's angry workers:

In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike.

Did the DOL consciously omit all mention of strikes and violent government repression of the labor movement from their history of Labor Day, or was this an innocent omission? You tell me.*

I'll leave this topic for now with parting words from Billy Bragg, who (following a long tradition) sings:

There is power in the factory, power in the land, Power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand. There is power in a union.

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with worker's blood,
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for.
From the cities and the farmlands, to the trenches full of mud,
War has always been the bosses' way, sir.

The Union forever, defending our rights,
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite.
With our brothers and our sisters from many far-off lands,
There is power in a Union.

Now I long for the morning that they realize
Brutality and unjust laws cannot defeat us.
But who'll defend the workers who cannot organize
When the bosses send their lackeys out to cheat us?

Money speaks for money, the Devi for his own,
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child:
There is power in a Union.

The Union forever, defending our rights,
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite.
With our brothers and our sisters from many far-off lands,
There is power in a Union.
— from "Talking with the Taxman About Poetry"

Footnote:
* The DOL's focus on the individuals involved in the creation of Labor Day demonstrates one of the reasons Americans have such a poor sense of history. If everything that has happened in the past is reduced to accounts of individual achievement, history becomes atomized and fragmented, leaving us with no continuous or coherent sense of development or our place in the social and cultural fabric of our world. Such ways of telling history also imply that individual achievement is all that's important, when the truth is more often that the great events of history have been the result of collective action. Regardless of how it came about, the tendency for historians (especially popular histories) to focus on individuals rather than big-pictures and collectivities, has paved the way for the politics of personality that we see today where we have a few individuals on our global radar—George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Arafat and Sharon, etc.—who seem to be responsible for everything that happens in our world. Of course these individuals have certain amounts of individual power, but the actions connected with their names are less the result of their individual actions than the actions of massive numbers of people (including you and me as voters and tax payers) who support them in various ways. Yet, so long as we remain in the thrall of the individual, we can continue to ignore that bigger picture of our own participation in local, national, and global events, and we can conveniently forget the role of regular people like us in the history of what made the world as it is today.

Posted 11:27 AM | general politics

Is the Law Economy that bad?

I don't know how I missed this before, but A Mad Tea-Party links to a story at law.com that says:

Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison is offering to pay some first-year associates as much as $3,000 per month not to show up for work until January 2004.

Is it that bad everywhere? Or maybe that's not so bad. If a firm is liquid enough to pay people that much not to go to work, the firm must still be getting quite a lot of business, it would seem. Still, it's kind of sobering little anecdote. I suppose this means that law grads in 2002-2004 will face tougher-than-ever job searches? I wonder what it will be like in 2005. (Keeping in mind, of course, that I'm not planning to work for a big firm, but still...)

Posted 09:36 AM | Comments (1) | law school

CSS Resources

Memo to self (and ayone interested in updating your pages to use styles): glish.com and The Layout Reservoir are both great places to get example stylesheets and other tips.

Posted 01:18 PM | meta-blogging

Can "the People" Speak?

James Ridgeway's most recent installment of Mondo Washington says Uncle Sam's a Bigger Bully than Saddam. Some interesting ideas to add to the "attacking Iraq is a bad idea at this juncture" column. Ridgeway ends the feature with a connection between the threat of war with Iraq and the upcoming Labor Day holiday:

"They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people." —Eugene Debs, Socialist candidate for president, June 16, 1918. The speech led to Debs's being stripped of his citizenship and sent to jail for 10 years.

MoveOn.org is doing some great work to make sure Debs' words remain true. By trying to make the voices of the people heard, MoveOn hopes to stop the war so that we'll be able to say "some wars have been averted by the people." Wouldn't that be nice?

Eric Alterman also makes a clear and concise argument against attacking Iraq right now. This was brought to my attention by Jason Rylander, whose blog is definitely a daily read. Rylander chooses his links carefully, quotes from them provocatively, and comments on them with insight and level-headed balance. Highly recommended.

Posted 09:17 AM | general politics

Spinning

Along with the new workload of the fall semester, and after nearly a year of complete physical sloth (no real exercise), I've started taking spinning classes. They're brutal.

Spinning came along and became the big new exercise activity during the years I was leading bike trips for a living. (Its popularity seems to have dissipated into pilates and tae-bo and I don't know what else.) At first I scoffed. People would come on our trips and say, "I haven't biked much before, but I've been taking spinning classes so I should be fine." These were almost always urban women, often from New York. (A high percentage of our guests were from major U.S. cities, and New Yorkers seemed more eager than most to take our trips. Of course, the demographics varied by trip and by destination. For example, our Maine trips generally got more people from CA and the midwest, while our "western" trips (Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming) got more east-coasters. It makes sense. Still, it was rare to have a trip without at least a small New York contingent. But I digress....) The most memorable was a woman who was convinced by her husband to take one our highest-mileage trips—Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks. It's a nine-day trip, with one century (hundred-mile day), several other 80-90-mile days, and lots of big (by Backroads standards) climbs. As I was fitting her on her bike I asked her if she was ready to ride several hundred miles that week, and she gave me the extreme spinning response: "Actually, I've never ridden a bike that moved before, but I've taken a lot of spinning classes and my spinning instructor thought I'd do fine."

You've got to be kidding me! I thought. You've never ridden a real bike and you want to go out and ride 60 miles today!? Including a big (approx. 1000') climb to start, and then a 20 mile downhill on winding mountain roads? It sounded like a recipe for disaster to me. But as I'm fond of saying, I've been wrong before.

The woman seemed at first like she was going to be miserable. She could hardly stay on her bike and couldn't seem to figure out the gears (spinning bikes don't have gears or brakes, just tension knobs). But she gradually got the hang of it while circling the parking lot, and although she was nervous, she headed off to conquer the real road. Her first couple of days were a bit rough as she got used to things and got over the new fears that came with actually moving when she pedalled and seeing the pavement fly by beneath her. But by Day 3 she was kicking ass and having a great time. She was both fast and strong, so she could cruise on the flats and hammer on the hills. On the century she just wanted to keep going after she'd done her 110 miles. She still braked way too much on downhills, which always seemed like such a waste of good gravity to me, but I bet she figured she got a better workout if she didn't allow downhills to give her too much momentum for whatever came next. Whatever; she had a great time and had so much energy it was amazing.

Anyway, that extreme spinning Backroads guest made a spinning believer out of me, so when I decided I needed some sort of organized exercise to give me the discipline to get into shape again, spinning it was.So far I've been to two classes, and after about 25-30 minutes, I've been completely wiped out both times. We're talking zero energy, tank completely empty, having nothing left to give. And that's exactly what I was looking for so that's fine. What's weird is that I haven't really felt sore afterward. How can I work that hard and not be working any new muscles to the point of soreness? Am I doing something wrong?

Posted 08:59 AM | life generally