WHY THIS?

A reading intro for (some) classes explaining why we’re reading what we’re reading.
Why this photo? Sliced clementines to remind us that analysis can be juicy?

For Mon., 3/16

FINANCING YOUR PUBLIC SERVICE CAREER

 

I remember the first time I listened to the Texaco Saturday Afternoon Opera in my 20s. This was a weekly radio program broadcast on NPR stations sponsored by—you guessed it—Texaco. I’d never heard full operas before, let alone operas staged by the legendary Metropolitan Opera in NYC, the most prestigious opera house in the country. Why did the Met need a global oil company to underwrite its program? What did it mean that not enough ordinary people in the United States were willing to pay to listen to The Marriage of Figaro or Tristan and Isolde? That we, as a society, had to resort to corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy, and government grants to produce each of these monumental works of art?

Pretty depressing.

Over the next 15 years—playing classical music in orchestras, publishing literary poetry with independent presses—I got a ground-level view of what it means to be a member of an unprofitable subculture. Where the concert programs are filled with corporate ads, the book jackets with institutional grant acknowledgments. These communities that I love can’t survive without regular subsidies and gifts. But what I’ve learned about the relationship between money and (un)popular art is that net worth never tracks intrinsic worth. Taylor Swift isn’t 80 times better of a singer than soprano Nina Stemme. She’s just a lot more marketable than a Swedish soprano who sings 3-hour-long German operas.

You can probably see by now the point I’m about to make: Don’t let the Big Law salaries fool you into thinking that those jobs are more valuable or more important than the public service jobs that pay far less. Like Taylor Swift’s record sales, these salaries are the result of complex market forces. (For a quick peek into Big Law recruitment and retention costs, see the ABA Journal article in the readings for this class.)

Do take a serious look at the public service salary information and loan forgiveness information being provided in these readings. Do think about how financial considerations play a role in your career choices. But, as John Bliss (author of the optional law review article, “From Idealists to Hired Guns”) observes, remember that finances are just one part of the equation. Give yourself the room to consider all the things that you value.

For Wed., 2/16

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

 

If I had to choose one or two of the most important classes this semester, I’d choose this one. Why? Because no matter how much knowledge you may absorb and retain from this course (and all the others you take), most of it won’t apply directly to your life or to your well-being as an attorney. This one does.

Our readings and podcasts highlight the biggest chicken-and-egg dilemma that we face when considering our careers. Do I chase my passion in my job—which seems highly intuitive, instinctive and, therefore, hard to force? Or do I try to construct my passion in my job? We don’t need to view these choices as mutually exclusive, of course. We can reasonably consider both. But U.S. popular culture currently idolizes “chase my passion” along with the pursuit of relentless productivity and “workism.” It takes intentional effort to question these narratives. Let’s take a step back during this class to do so and to give you the space to start exploring.

For Mon., 1/26

THEORIES OF JUSTICE

 

As public service attorneys, so much of what we do rides on our ability to convince other people (who don’t always think like us) that something is terribly unjust. That true justice means giving our client what we want. But how do we talk about justice in ways that acknowledge how divergently decision makers of different partisan and ideological persuasions might think about justice?

Our first set of readings for class gives us a few vocabulary terms to start tackling this question. The two major branches of justice theory that are most relevant for our purposes are distributive justice and retributive justice:

  • Distributive justice principles apply to basically all questions of how we distribute money, benefits, rights and services—welfare benefits, stimulus checks under the CARES Act, the number of asylum visas per year, and whether a police department or a mental health agency will receive crisis intervention funding.

  • Retributive justice principles apply most obviously to criminal law at the indictment, guilt and sentencing phases. But they also apply to civil statutes and common law torts that permit punitive and treble damages, for instance.

I’ve also chosen a few readings highlighting equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. The articles by Vox writer Dylan Matthews and Prof. Alex Rajczi do a good job of capturing how the left and the right tend to react to these (often opposed) concepts.