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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34926 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I feel like it should be utterly self-evident why a class of aspiring lawyers should be capable of listening to the words of a party they oppose with enough respect to let them give their whole argument in peace, and then responding in kind, without resorting to shouting them down or implicitly threatening their safety.

And that's before accounting for the fact that it's a Federal Judge doing the speaking.

Literally the whole point of having a legal system is to allow civil dispute resolution where each party is heard and the winning party determined according to set rules which usually don't account for "we'll be really angry at you if you don't decide in our favor."

This is largely the reason why Judges sitting on the Bench are kept completely separate from the public, don't walk through the public hallways, and generally have their personal information kept confidential and not publicly available. Because miscreants would use implied or explicit threats to get them to change their rulings.

Of course we've got law grads who are full attorneys throwing molotovs and attending active riots (HOPEFULLY in observer capacity) so I dunno, seems like this is just going to get worse when these guys graduate.

I'll say, I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.

And finally, I flip my lid over the "counter-protesting is free speech" and justifying the heckler's veto logic. Free speech implies reciprocal obligations. You don't shout over somebody else when they're given a platform then claim that because you're louder your speech means more.

Or more simply put, knowingly interfering with another person's speech (especially when they have a willing audience) implicitly forfeits whatever claim you had to being permitted to speak freely. If you're in a court hearing and you loudly scream every time the other attorney is presenting arguments... you don't win the case by default, surprisingly enough.

Not the first time The Federalist Society has caused a kerfuffle at Stanford:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/federalist-society-stanford.html

In a sense, I have to applaud those FedSoc students for continuing to position themselves outside the local Overton Window.

I'll say, I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.

They'll have their people on the bar committees and as a result the tactics WILL work.

Sort of?

Gonna get them cut off from the most lucrative legal careers outside of pure grift positions, if so.

Judges still have the ability to exercise contempt powers within their own courtrooms, at least.

Gonna get them cut off from the most lucrative legal careers outside of pure grift positions, if so.

Not even a little bit. The vast majority of BigLaw attorneys (by definition the most lucrative legal career) never see the inside of a courtroom. Sure the Litigation practice group does, but M&A, T&E, IP, etc. never actually go in front of a judge, and a 4th year T&E associate makes just as much money as a 4th year Lit associate.

Why would Biglaw hire them as associates in the first place? They ostensibly DO NOT want the ones who are prone to acting out against authority and becoming actively disruptive to get their way.

They'll be the judges too, after a short while.

I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.

Stanford Law students are perfectly capable of seeing and responding to incentives; it's probably what they're best at. When put into a different institutional environment, they'll conform to fit it very easily, better than the vast majority of the public would.

It's not really accurate to call this a riot, even, if you mean a riot to be some kind of small-d democratic outburst against institutional constraints. This was not only allowed but encouraged by the Stanford bureaucracy. If this was bad for their careers, they'd do the exact opposite.

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