Time Waits for Nothing

-- By JenniferAnderson - 15 Feb 2012

Intro

During one of the class’ discussions on Lawyerland, I wrote down “within the legal realm, time is one of the most important realms of legal media.”

That might be a good way to put a point in an aide-memoire in the classroom, but as the articulated predicate for an essay, it needs editing. It does not, for example, literally mean anything. Why didn't you think through the idea it represented, and re-express that idea precisely?

This assertion rings true in many areas within the legal field.

"Within the legal realm, time is one of the most important realms of legal media" rings true in many areas of the legal field? You can't have edited that paragraph with anything like ruthlessness, can you?

Statute of limitations limit the time in which you can file a claim in court. The memories of witnesses change over time. People either die or become hard to find if enough time elapses. The type of information that lawyers can uncover and develop is also limited by time. Time (or at least our conception of time) places constraints on how lawyers and people in society operate. I have come to ponder what is the reasoning behind these constraints? Are they beneficial to society? Or, in a twisted way, do they serve as a hindrance to the ways in which society develops?

Or, in a straightforward way, do you have any alternative to the decay of witnesses' memories or the tendency of people to die "if enough time elapses"? Does death, in a twisted way, serve as a hindrance to the way society develops? What is the reasoning behind death and is it beneficial to society?

Are you kidding?

In Light of My Law School Experience

As I step back and realize that I am almost halfway through my second semester of my first year of law school, I see that time will impact the activities I chose to participate, how committed I will be to these activities, and how I will begin to structure the rest of my legal experience.

Participate in. I don't understand what idea this sentence was intended to express. What is the outline here?

Deadlines for internships and assignments will constrain the amount of time and focus that I will be able to allocate to other things. Some conscious decisions of time will have to be reached if I am to achieve some sort of professional, personal, and academic balance. In a similar way, the legal realm is structured around time. Time determines how the lawyer will proceed with the case and what kind of outcome they can expect to result from their work.

"The lawyer" is a she or a he, not a they. What have you said here, other than that in the physical universes, time transpires forward, uniformly?

What does One Gain and Lose

A plausible argument is that time is definitive. Day turns into night, seasons change, and our bodies age; these are all markers of time passing and changing.

And what is another plausible argument? Is this not tautology?

Time as a concept that is often taken for granted; how society tends to conceptualize time can often be more complicated. On the one hand, it does lead to perceived practical outcomes; people are more focused, work with more of a sense of urgency, and work becomes more efficient. On the other hand, it constrains what an individual can focus on. Sometimes precision has to be sacrificed because of the sense of urgency that is placed on something. Also, what can be focused on becomes much more limited. In order to achieve one, the other has to be discarded. Without a doubt, people who have come before questioned what their times mean, organized their time in light of the different constraints that exist, and impacted how people in the present reflect upon their time. How can one be sure that the conceptualization of time that present day society operates under is the correct one?

What does this last question mean? Is there some other "conceptualization of time" in which we don't have deadlines because every day lasts as long as we want it to? Is it the theory of general relativity or the forty-hour workweek you are reconsidering?

Thoughts Moving Forward

Time, and the constraints that it creates, does create a sense of order. Time forces people to structure their lives in a way that maximizes outcomes. However, time does create hard boundaries. In a sense, it can become an obstacle to doing what one wants to accomplish. It would be difficult to think of a world where time and deadlines didn’t drive people to read enough for an exam, submit a paper by a certain time, or meet with someone about sensitive information as soon as possible. Since it is essential, and it has impacted the ways in which people realize their everyday experiences, it is important to acknowledge how time is impacting how people view themselves, how people live their daily lives, and how members in society interact with one another.

That last turgid sentence is a conclusion?

I think the way to begin here is to express an idea, simply, in a sentence, that you believe to be novel, and to outline the steps it would take to explain the idea fully, and to permit the reader to explore some of its implications. You might then want to do a little reading. There's a fair amount of philosophy about time, no shortage of physics, some neuropsychology, plenty of literature. You might look at my comments on JasonPykeFirstPaper for some suggestions.

I think it would be sensible to plan, whatever you do with this draft, to make your second paper something about law. This essay may well turn out to be a capable exploration of a topic in metaphysics, but it will help both of us in the longer run if, in addition to my grasp of your skills as a philosophical writer, I can speak with some authority about your capacities and development as a lawyer.