I think I may have gotten to the bottom of why I hate law school. I'm not going to say for sure, though, because it seems like every time I think I've gotten to the "bottom of something" things somehow get deeper.
Of all things, though, I don't know why I'm ready to write about this. I guess maybe I need to explain to myself why I hate what I'm doing and try to turn it into something positive (no pun intended).
I took a class on the philosophy of law this year (otherwise known as "Jurisprudence"). During this course I ran across, yet again, the name Jacques Derrida. The guy keeps appearing in my life. I wish his stuff weren't so interesting, I want to just forget about him. Curiosity won again and I found myself on a rabbit trail trying to understand the guy, again, and ended up finding the following gem(s) in an article about his work on the law:
Surprisingly, in "Force of Law;' Derrida comes very close to setting up a full-scale theory of justice and an accompanying account of law....Derrida's ultimate goal is laudable: to set forth a concept of justice that demands a tireless, impossible, and incalculable vigilance to ensure that justice is done to the other....
Several important themes emerge in Derrida's "Force of Law," but the following points are essential: (i) deconstruction is not politically nihilistic-to the contrary, it recognizes an unceasing call to do justice to the other at all costs; (ii) there is a distinction between law and justice, such that justice is not deconstructable, yet law can be deconstructed; (iii) deconstruction reminds us that law can never reach a stage of complete justice, since justice is transcendent and never wholly imminent...
[The author goes on to name a couple of other points]
Justice is deemed an "experience that we are not able to experience" and involves an experience of aporia. Although these comments seem cryptic, Derrida's main point is that justice, properly understood, should not be confused with positive law....[Furthermore, t]he call to justice reveals a responsibility without limit, a sort of bottomless duty to the other. [And, i]n contrast to justice, "law" is a system of determinate rules....
Derrida's understanding of law follows Pascal (who in turn was following Montaigne) in the notion that the legal system is not founded on reason or justice, but upon an act of interpretive violence. Montaigne recognized that law is "nomos" (convention), and hence it derives from custom and cannot be justified on deep moral principles. Of any particular law, it can be asked, "What is the authority for this law?: and then again "What is the authority for this authority?" By tracing the chain of authority backwards, we must eventually acknowledge that the law is not "based" on anything beyond arbitrary custom backed by state violence. Because there is no rational point of origin for the law, it is self-grounding.
[Here Derrida and I split for a moment:]
...people begin to believe that the law is grounded in a higher order (God, reason, natural law), instead of realizing that the law is largely a fictional creation which self-perpetuates (in the sense that laws get their authority from other laws, in a circular system of self-referencing support).
[And here I rejoin him:]
So there is a tendency to collapse justice into positive law, which results in a sort of naive legal positivism: the view that there is no justice over and apart from the rights and remedies available on the existing legal system. In order to combat this position, Derrida adamantly insists that justice cannot be collapsed into law. So we can never say, in good conscience, that "the law is [fully] just [emphasis mine]...The mystical foundation lies beyond the parameters of the legal system. Justice is located in this 'beyond,' since justice cannot become fully present in the existing legal system....
In "Force of Law"...Derrida seems to be laying the groundwork for an approach to jurisprudence which insists upon an almost dialectical struggle between law and justice....
But, and here is the main point, the law can be changed so that its foundations more clearly reflect the demands of justice. Justice must be vigilant toward law, it must interrogate and haunt the law.
All of the above from: Litowitz, Douglas, Derrida on Law and Justice, 8 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 325 (1995).
Derrida saw law and justice as two different things, and viewed the construction of law as having a distinct duty to be ever on a trajectory toward the better reflection of justice. Though it may never be fully attained, the duty that law owes justice also demands perpetual perseverance.
I guess I resonate with this because I realize that I have far more of a passion for justice than I do the law. The law is often so ineffective, even if it's necessary. Justice is a mirage on paper and in the courts, and I hate that.
But here's the thing, Paul totally talks about this--albeit indirectly. He talks about how: "now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (I Cor. 13:12). I truly believe that the "justice" we see and even that which we aspire to is only a dim reflection of true justice, we're trying to mirror something that we can't fully imitate without another salient ingredient. And even then, it's not justice at its full potential.
That said, it's not lost on my that this reference to a dim mirror is embedded in the famous "love chapter." I think that (I'm risking sounding like a West Coast hippy here) the only thing that can keep the law moving forward toward that undeconstructible notion of justice is, actually, love.
Because it's only love that sees each situation individually. The law necessarily can't. You make a law and you exclude--necessarily. But the law is still a necessary structure--and love has to take some form in order to be imparted and, God-willing, well-expressed--because it's like a language.
Which is another reason why I think Derrida may have been more of an authority on the issue than many give him credit for. Most of the man's work was on the linguistic bent--his foray into jurisprudence was slightly out of the norm for him, but I actually think that the relationship that law has to justice is highly analogous to the relationship between meaning (in the broader sense) and language.
Anyway, this cavernous gap between law and justice, I think, is one of the deeper reasons that I find law school highly unfulfilling. It's hard to read case after case in which the outcome is perfectly--sometimes shockingly--legal and so much of the time a world away from "just." It's hard to not get disillusioned and frankly, it just gets harder to care.
I don't know what I want to do with this degree when I'm done. I don't have any idea what God's doing with my life, and that's become clearer than anything in the last month. But I do know that it's not the law that I'm passionate about, at all. I've always had a passion for justice, truth, understanding...tout ça...so where this is going?
WHO KNOWS?
Of all things, though, I don't know why I'm ready to write about this. I guess maybe I need to explain to myself why I hate what I'm doing and try to turn it into something positive (no pun intended).
I took a class on the philosophy of law this year (otherwise known as "Jurisprudence"). During this course I ran across, yet again, the name Jacques Derrida. The guy keeps appearing in my life. I wish his stuff weren't so interesting, I want to just forget about him. Curiosity won again and I found myself on a rabbit trail trying to understand the guy, again, and ended up finding the following gem(s) in an article about his work on the law:
Surprisingly, in "Force of Law;' Derrida comes very close to setting up a full-scale theory of justice and an accompanying account of law....Derrida's ultimate goal is laudable: to set forth a concept of justice that demands a tireless, impossible, and incalculable vigilance to ensure that justice is done to the other....
Several important themes emerge in Derrida's "Force of Law," but the following points are essential: (i) deconstruction is not politically nihilistic-to the contrary, it recognizes an unceasing call to do justice to the other at all costs; (ii) there is a distinction between law and justice, such that justice is not deconstructable, yet law can be deconstructed; (iii) deconstruction reminds us that law can never reach a stage of complete justice, since justice is transcendent and never wholly imminent...
[The author goes on to name a couple of other points]
Justice is deemed an "experience that we are not able to experience" and involves an experience of aporia. Although these comments seem cryptic, Derrida's main point is that justice, properly understood, should not be confused with positive law....[Furthermore, t]he call to justice reveals a responsibility without limit, a sort of bottomless duty to the other. [And, i]n contrast to justice, "law" is a system of determinate rules....
Derrida's understanding of law follows Pascal (who in turn was following Montaigne) in the notion that the legal system is not founded on reason or justice, but upon an act of interpretive violence. Montaigne recognized that law is "nomos" (convention), and hence it derives from custom and cannot be justified on deep moral principles. Of any particular law, it can be asked, "What is the authority for this law?: and then again "What is the authority for this authority?" By tracing the chain of authority backwards, we must eventually acknowledge that the law is not "based" on anything beyond arbitrary custom backed by state violence. Because there is no rational point of origin for the law, it is self-grounding.
[Here Derrida and I split for a moment:]
...people begin to believe that the law is grounded in a higher order (God, reason, natural law), instead of realizing that the law is largely a fictional creation which self-perpetuates (in the sense that laws get their authority from other laws, in a circular system of self-referencing support).
[And here I rejoin him:]
So there is a tendency to collapse justice into positive law, which results in a sort of naive legal positivism: the view that there is no justice over and apart from the rights and remedies available on the existing legal system. In order to combat this position, Derrida adamantly insists that justice cannot be collapsed into law. So we can never say, in good conscience, that "the law is [fully] just [emphasis mine]...The mystical foundation lies beyond the parameters of the legal system. Justice is located in this 'beyond,' since justice cannot become fully present in the existing legal system....
In "Force of Law"...Derrida seems to be laying the groundwork for an approach to jurisprudence which insists upon an almost dialectical struggle between law and justice....
But, and here is the main point, the law can be changed so that its foundations more clearly reflect the demands of justice. Justice must be vigilant toward law, it must interrogate and haunt the law.
All of the above from: Litowitz, Douglas, Derrida on Law and Justice, 8 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 325 (1995).
Derrida saw law and justice as two different things, and viewed the construction of law as having a distinct duty to be ever on a trajectory toward the better reflection of justice. Though it may never be fully attained, the duty that law owes justice also demands perpetual perseverance.
I guess I resonate with this because I realize that I have far more of a passion for justice than I do the law. The law is often so ineffective, even if it's necessary. Justice is a mirage on paper and in the courts, and I hate that.
But here's the thing, Paul totally talks about this--albeit indirectly. He talks about how: "now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (I Cor. 13:12). I truly believe that the "justice" we see and even that which we aspire to is only a dim reflection of true justice, we're trying to mirror something that we can't fully imitate without another salient ingredient. And even then, it's not justice at its full potential.
That said, it's not lost on my that this reference to a dim mirror is embedded in the famous "love chapter." I think that (I'm risking sounding like a West Coast hippy here) the only thing that can keep the law moving forward toward that undeconstructible notion of justice is, actually, love.
Because it's only love that sees each situation individually. The law necessarily can't. You make a law and you exclude--necessarily. But the law is still a necessary structure--and love has to take some form in order to be imparted and, God-willing, well-expressed--because it's like a language.
Which is another reason why I think Derrida may have been more of an authority on the issue than many give him credit for. Most of the man's work was on the linguistic bent--his foray into jurisprudence was slightly out of the norm for him, but I actually think that the relationship that law has to justice is highly analogous to the relationship between meaning (in the broader sense) and language.
Anyway, this cavernous gap between law and justice, I think, is one of the deeper reasons that I find law school highly unfulfilling. It's hard to read case after case in which the outcome is perfectly--sometimes shockingly--legal and so much of the time a world away from "just." It's hard to not get disillusioned and frankly, it just gets harder to care.
I don't know what I want to do with this degree when I'm done. I don't have any idea what God's doing with my life, and that's become clearer than anything in the last month. But I do know that it's not the law that I'm passionate about, at all. I've always had a passion for justice, truth, understanding...tout ça...so where this is going?
WHO KNOWS?
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