Cry Me A Bucket Finis -- Fish Vs. Segal

Over the past couple of weeks I've posted here and here about David Segal's NYT piece criticizing legal education. The thrust of my comments were not so much to challenge the goals Segal prescribed for legal education but his means. In other words, who should pay for skills training? Law students or law firms?

In yesterday's NYT Stanley Fish went deeper and argued here that Segal's implicit vocational-school model of legal education was misguided. Instead, by describing his own class at Yale law school, Fish tried to demonstrate that a lawyer's bag of tricks is of little value (and, I would add, actually quite dangerous) unless he or she understands the goals or purposes of the law in a particular society. Here's how Fish puts it:

That understanding is what law schools offer (among other things). Law schools ask and answer the question, “What’s the game here?”; the ins and outs of the game you learn later, as in any profession. The complaint reported by David Segal in his Times article is that law firms must teach their new hires tricks of the trade they never learned in their contracts, torts and (God forbid) jurisprudence classes. But learning the tricks would not amount to much and might well be impossible for someone who did not know — in a deep sense of know — what the trade is and why it is important to practice it.

I'm very pleased that my law school forces students to address the "What's the game here?" question. We certainly suggest some answers or sets of answers that are plausibly true in the Western Christian tradition, although it's ultimately up to the student which understanding of the "game" will guide her practice of law.

In short, there's no conflict among a firm analytical grounding in the law, the acquisition of certain legal skills, and the understanding of what should be the goal of the law in the American civil polity. Anyone considering the study of law should investigate thoroughly whether his prospective law school achieves all three ends.

Check Mike Schutt's Redeeming Law blog here for a short video that will provide a framework for answering these questions before starting one's legal education.

Journal of Christian Legal Thought

Issue number 3 of the first volume of the Journal of Christian Legal Thought can be found here. Rather than promote myself, I'll let friend and colleague Mike Schutt do it for me here. (Seriously, you'll find lots of really good stuff on his Redeeming Law blog.)

God and Investment Banking

Colleague Mike Schutt linked to this blog by John Terrill.  Consider the following assertion (quoting Lloyd Blankfein): “Investment banking can be God’s work.”  A fair number of folks would agree with the this sentiment with but one minor emendation: change “God’s” to “devil’s.”  Terrill would, I think, agree with both versions.  Investment banking can serve divine or diabolical ends; it’s what you do with it that matters.  Or, better yet, who you are, that directs the telos of any human endeavor, whether investment banking or social work.

This is undoubtedly true (which is to say, I agree with myself).  Humble sinners tend to do less evil than arrogant ones.  However, we should not ignore the structural question: What should be the place of contract in the world?  I most recently addressed the justification of contract law here but the scope of legally enforceable agreements is a normative one.

Just because we can commodify something and give an agreement related to it legal sanction doesn’t mean that we should.  The existence and scope of contract law is a political issue and, as we have with patenting life forms, our (read “American”) political impulse is to extend legal protection as far as possible.  The question is not socialism or capitalism; the benefits of private ordering have, I think, won the day.  Instead, the contemporary question is whether we should add legal sanctions to social ones.  Whether the law should add its coercive cachet to the sorts of financial instruments whose trade enriched and enriches our investment bankers.

“You Can’t Take It With You”

Went Friday night to the Regent University production of Kaufman and Hart’s 1936 comedy, “You Can’t Take It With You.”  As usual, Regent’s acting and production values were top notch:  Does any theater company design better sets?

The experience was enjoyable but only mildly humorous because, I think, the theme is definitely dated.  The play describes the collision between members of the wildly eccentric Vanderhof family, who live to have fun regardless of social expectations, and the uptight, straight-laced Kirbys, who live to work and live up to the standards of their class.  It’s a comedy so in the end, of course, the Kirbys come around and go the free-spirited, bohemian route.

A valuable lesson (or at least diversion) in Depression-era 1936 but out of place in the nothing-but-fun second decade of the twenty-first century.  (See Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.)  The data from Chris Smith's Souls in Transition shows that today’s emerging adults (and, I suspect, most Americans who came of age in the 1960s and thereafter), live for little more than fun with commitment to work seen as a means to socializing, not an end in itself.  YCTIWY opens a window to a past that barely exists in America except in memory; the play hasn‘t aged well.

Missing from both YCTIWY and today is a notion of vocation.  My colleague Mike Schutt has written an excellent book about this Christian teaching in Redeeming Law (see here).  His blog is a good place to learn more about how the Christian tradition frames work and play in light of a Sabbath shalom (promised and delivered) in Christ.  Living either for only work or play misses the bigger picture: one is a calling of God; the other pictures the feast of the Lamb and his people to which we can look forward.  Both are oriented toward something more than ourselves and social expectations.

Props to Mike Schutt and Redeeming Law

A book's that's definitely worth the read. No fluff; lots of substance: Redeeming Law:http://networkedblogs.com/p19706346