Why Law? - "Theory" and "Practicality"

Favelas: "Practicality" in the Peripheries of "Theory"

Compared to the theory of the cities, the favelas represent “practicality.” This practicality is rooted in survival: those building upon the cluster of houses on the hills do not do so with a lofty theory of what the area should look like; rather, the expansion of favelas is rooted in the need for survival – the most fundamental form of practicality.

Compare the Cathedral of Brasilia, a representation of what Brazil imagined their capital should look like, to Rocinha, the largest hill favela in Rio. The perfect symmetry of the cathedral, paired with its pristine uniformity of white, theorizes what the imaginative city of Brasilia was meant to represent: a nation priding itself on its modernity and order. There is no such uniformity of color or symmetry in Rocinha. Every house is painted in different hues of color. There is no calculated symmetry. The cluster of houses is highly practical – it best serves the immediate needs of those driven away by the theory of order.

From the Favelas to Law School

The essay is about uncertainty, which it discusses in an uncertain structure. Clearer focus and sequence would help. A moment of doubt about what questions to ask should concentrate attention on the process by which we form our questions. Your past experience shows you the perils of accepting others' questions as one's own. It also shows how new questions are asked, but it leaves that knowledge implicit.

Cities are works of imagination. At the outer edge of all of them, since Mesapotamia at least if not almost all the way back to the end of the Ice Age, are the "provisional" zones, where the imagined structures of order give way to the improvisations of those whose presence in the ecology is more recent, more adventitious, less "authorized" or architected, than what has preceded them. Further reflection on "practicality" as opposed to "theory" in relation to the history of the city, any city, might be fruitful for you.

Armory and Favelas: Asking Questions

-- By SimonYang - 20 Feb 2025

Armory Raises Questions and Concerns

The concept that law students might not know how or which questions to ask initially felt foreign to me. However, the deafening silence in a room full of aspiring lawyers when asked about how Armory, a chimney boy, acquired legal representation swiftly opened my eyes to this reality. Above all, I was frustratingly alarmed that I had never even thought to ask that question. If I was completely oblivious to such an obvious question, how am I supposed to ask the "important" questions as a law student? Can I undergo a metamorphosis during these three years to evolve and learn which questions to ask?

Back to the Fundamentals – Why Law?

I reflected on why my lack of curiosity about Armory bothered me so much. To answer this, I had to revisit my painstakingly naive response to the question that every law student faces from the moment they consider a career in law: why law? I simply wanted to learn about a subject that is highly practical, applicable to everyone's lives, and one that I can use to effect tangible change and impact in my immediate communities. If my fundamental curiosity for law was rooted in my quest to study something practical, how was it that I had never once stopped to question how this chimney boy found his way into a courtroom?

Perhaps the claustrophobic and hectic environment of 1L year deafened me to the "important" questions deeply buried within me. The immediate need to focus on rules and holdings to arm myself against numerous fact patterns and policy questions may not permit me to even conjure such inquiries. But even without these pressures, I am scared that, even in an environment devoid of such adversities, I would still not be able to develop the skill to ask the right questions.

In college, I majored in economics because of the same fixation on learning something practical and applicable. I naively thought that understanding economics would provide the level of practicality I craved. Yet, I realized far too quickly that my economics classes relied heavily on assumptions that did not align with the real world. I then turned to law with the same naive hopes. But now, as the curious case of Armory still haunts me, I fear that my initial answer to "why law" is getting lost amidst the waves of exams and networking events.

Favelas and the Need for Practicality

To explain and possibly overcome this fear, I thought it might be necessary to first understand the origins of my fixation on practicality. Before economics and law, my interest lay in linguistic studies coupled with history. My Spanish studies quickly led me to inquire more about Latin American history, which then piqued my interest in Brazilian history. Naturally, I pursued Portuguese, and to expedite the process, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro. The first thing I noticed in Rio was not the weather, the beaches, or the mountains, but the colorful array of houses clustered around the hills surrounding the city. Despite my fascination with the favelas, my friends in Rio quickly advised me to stay away from them. They warned me that these favelas were infested with criminal activities, drug trafficking, and consequent police raids.

I soon found myself researching the history of favelas, their origins in failed governmental promises of housing to Afro-Brazilians who served in the Canudos War, their ongoing battle against a national fixation on urban modernization, the irony of the nation drawing from their cultures all the while enforcing an invisible border between the favelas and the city. Working at a non-profit that worked to shift the media narrative for favelas, I got to interact with community leaders from favelas, heard their stories, and appreciated the society they had proudly constructed for themselves when those of the city continued to shun their existence. I further convinced myself that the study of cultural history and the dissemination of such information to the public could eventually foster a better public understanding of the favelas.

Bolsonaro’s rise to power soon shattered my hopes. As bullets rained down from helicopters; as heavily armed vehicles began trampling on the narrow streets of favelas; as more people around me warned me to stay away from favelas – I began to question what use history and advocacy was in the face of an authoritarian man who too easily brought hell upon thousands of people.

Perhaps deep down, this experience planted in me the seeds of craving something practical. Something that could not be dismantled so easily. Economics did not end up satisfying that for me. I now face the question of whether the law can. What scares me, however, is that this question that is so fundamental to what I seek out of my law school experience – had remained forgotten since the beginning of 1L year. Had it not been for the curious case of Armory, I am afraid this fundamental question of mine – “Why law?” – may not have truly surfaced again.

Questions Onwards

The question for me now then is: how do I navigate my law school experience and achieve the metamorphosis that will help me answer my question of practicality in an educational system inevitably designed for me to gloss over this objective? How must I approach my classes differently to know which questions to ask about this metamorphosis I seek? With the question of Armory still looming over me, I do not yet have an answer to all these questions. While I still fear that may never be able to know how to ask the right questions, I now know to always revisit my initial answer to why law – and to constantly think about law as I initially imagined it: a force in everyone’s daily lives not fenced-in and simplified by the rules and fact patterns.

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