| | |
|
ChangingSocietyUsingWordsTalk 6 - 25 Mar 2009 - Main.ScottThurman
|
| | We've tentatively defined lawyering as "making something change in society using words." I think about this a lot, both in and out of class. Obviously, there are many ways to make change in society using words; this is something not only good lawyers, but also good journalists and novelists do. For me, that raises the question: what can lawyers contribute to making social change that novelists and journalists can't? Does our usefulness lie in our knowledge of, and proximity to, structures of power?
I bring this up because the groundwork for many of the prominent social reforms of the last century seems to have been laid by other kinds of writers -- Rachel Carson and Upton Sinclair, for instance. In the realm of foreign policy, simply by showing people what was really going on, journalists helped turn American public opinion decisively against the Vietnam War. This seems to have impacted Vietnam policy, and foreign policy in general, far more effectively than lawyers ever could have. | | | -- AaronShepard - 24 Mar 2009
| |
>
> | I too am fascinated by the difference between lawyers and others who change the world through words. But in pursuit of crystallizing that difference, we may be over-simplifying these careers in unhelpful ways.
Mike, I think you're very close by saying that lawyers' relationships to "structures of power" define the occupation vis-a-vis writers, journalists, etc. But such a close relationship may not be advantageous. While all language is to some extent a product of the various machines of power, law seems to be to be trapped by its very proximity to authority. Law is the state speaking. Indeed, many legal battles are waged over what exactly a word or a phrase means; the battleground consists of a history of how that word has been formulated by various interests: lobbyists, legislatures, and advocates thinking only of their clients. The language of law is comprised and compromised by these pressures.
When we speak, as Alfian does, of lawyers being “risk averse,” I think we touch upon the essentially conservative nature of language-as-power. Here, then, is the essential paradox of the law – the law directly intersects with people, adjudicates their problems. This intimacy, this raw coercive power, gives law the immediacy and the urgency that Uchechi uses to differentiate law from journalism. But along the axis of pure creativity, law is much more restricted than journalism. Unlike investigative journalism, law is limited in what sort of problems it can handle, and as a threshold issue (i.e. the problems of standing and political question) the law is simply unable to deal with a lot. Yet law is even more restricted – our very ability to frame our clients’ arguments is limited by the parameters of a highly specific language that has been shaped and warped by generations of lawyers and legislators. At the heart of the language of law are the same energies – industry, the government, the ruling classes – that we are opposing. Simply said, lawyers are not as free to use language as others.
Ultimately, I think that effective advocacy has to move over multiple channels, and meditation on what law can or can’t do in relation to journalism risks othering one of the occupations and reducing our own abilities to think creatively and work towards change.
-- ScottThurman - 25 Mar 2009 |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |