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Law in Contemporary Society
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Backstabber Elegy-- By MeherGeorge - 18 Feb 2025 (Further edited on March 5th)Mr. and Mrs. VanceI read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy when I was sixteen years old; my adolescent self would be shocked to know the same thoughtful author who described the plight of Appalachia's economically insecure would become the proud Vice President to a vapid trust fund child. It would have been utterly inconceivable to my sixteen-year old self that someone whose mother suffered from drug addiction in an impoverished Ohio steel town could sign his name onto a ticket that represented anything other than understanding, let alone its polar opposite. Vance's perceptiveness about the rotting effect of despair and its cyclical downwards force could not have been a figment of my imagination. I won't accept that J.D. Vance held a hard-earned Yale Law degree in his hands and prayed one day to rename the Gulf of Mexico and fire thousands of National Park Service employees. What did Usha Vance, who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and edited the Yale Law Journal, think about Trump's birthright citizenship order? I guess I should instead ask what her twenty-something year old self would think. Anti-intellectualism in the United States and a politician's drive to take advantage of it has run rampant since our nation's conception, but has it always looked this awkward? I can't help but feel betrayed; this is not the "legal elite" I'm apparently dying to become absorbed by.Losing your VoiceMany of us were told to go to law school because we had strong opinions. Mainstream media, discourse (name your medium of culture) told us lawyers like to argue. Lawyers are hot-headed, fiery, bursting with passion for their craft, their clients, and perhaps life itself. Spend time within the walls of law school though and you're told to neutralize yourself, as much as you can, to preserve the full breadth of your professional network. You never know who will be on the hiring committee of the next firm you work for, they say. You're told to join the Federalist Society for their stellar outline bank and clerkship options even if you disagree with their ideals; the omitted part is that they'll call your bluff if you're not a "believable" member. Really though, what does it say about a group if it must be a hoax when a woman of color joins? I tell myself dialing down my intensity for mixers and coffee chats is a temporary affliction, resolved by spewing my real thoughts to my boyfriend over the phone. I can't believe she likened Lina Khan to an inexperienced kid. Khan's doing something right to win the disgust of some rich lawyer who thinks San Francisco is dirty. Each mixer gives me new material for my weekly stand-up routine; all I need is a few new out of touch comments to complain about. Of course, my complaining turns the spotlight away from me and what the hell I'm doing there in those rooms. I clearly can't bear the real question, which is whether this is what it feels like to lose your voice.Plastic Bag PassportIt usually takes something or someone to see through the clouds of my own angst. I was in line to purchase my usual cup of yogurt, and I rattled off something about enjoying the Lina Khan lunch event to my friend who works at the cafeteria. We have good rapport, and I often muse about my day with him. His eyes hardened, and he asked if he could tell me something. He has been carrying his passport on his person every day since Trump came into office; the kicker is he's a naturalized citizen who has been in this country for over thirty years, and he now carries his passport in a plastic grocery bag in his pant pocket. He brought over his grocery bag and insisted I open the document to look at his passport photo, as though I wouldn't take his word for it. I assured him American citizenship immunizes him from ICE's cruelty. When that didn't seem to relax him, I added that he works in a building chock-full of lawyers. He told me I was lucky to be born here; I told him he had the same rights, that is unless he wanted to run for President. Eventually, he walked back to the cash register, but I continued to sit there in disbelief. Trump's dog whistling had worked so insidiously that non-white American citizens bring their documents with them when they leave the house. My law school angst dried up in an nanosecond; I didn't need a J.D. to comfort my friend; I just had to know the law and know it was was on his side. Imagine what a J.D. can do. The plastic bag passport event made me miss my younger self less. Sure, she had yet to grow anxious after seeing her father in a hospital gown. Sure, in her mind, American men would vote for American women, whether it was their names or rights on the ballot. She could read more than five pages without checking her phone, and she read for pleasure after long days outside. There was much to admire about her, but the truth is she wasn't very useful. Studying law is about becoming useful. Who you're useful to and what you're useful for is a different matter. Growing up in the United States means serious individualism indoctrination; I was taught to think of myself as a marketable product, a discrete entity, but lawyering is about representation. That's what Mr. and Mrs. Backstabber Elegy's opportunism misses; they're representing themselves. If you're the right-hand man to someone you called a reprehensible idiot and privately likened to Hitler, you aren't representing anyone but yourself and certainly not any cause but your own self-aggrandizement. I don't intend to venture into backstabber elegy land, so it would be wise to stop representing myself and think about lawyering in relation to others. Who do I want to represent and why?You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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