THINKING LIKE A LAWYER, THINKING LIKE A LEGAL SYSTEM Richard Clay Stuart A dissertation ...

177 Pages·2013·0.55 MB·English

THINKINGLIKEA LAWYER,THINKINGLIKEALEGAL SYSTEM
RichardClayStuart
A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department
ofAnthropology.
ChapelHill
2013
Approvedby:
CaroleL.Crumley
RobertE.Daniels
JamesL.Peacock
ChristopherT.Nelson
DonaldT.Hornstein
c 2013
�
RichardClayStuart
ALLRIGHTSRESERVED
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Abstract
RICHARDCLAYSTUART:ThinkingLikeALawyer,ThinkingLikeALegalSystem
(UnderthedirectionofCaroleL.CrumleyandRobertE.Daniels)
Thelegalsystemistheproductoflawyers. Lawyersaretheproductofaspecificeducationalsystem.
Therefore, tounderstandthelegalsystem, wemustfirstexplorehowlawyersaretrainedandconditioned
tothink. Whatdoesitmeanto“ThinkLikeaLawyer?”
This dissertation makes use of autoethnography to explore the experience and effects of law school.
It recreates the daily ritual of law students and law professors. It explores the Socratic nature of legal
education. Finally, it links these processes to complex systems in general and the practice of law in
particular.
This dissertation concludes that lawyers and the legal system are the product of a specific, initiation-
likeritualprocessthatoccursduringandwithinthespecificsocioculturalcontextoflawschool.
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ForMadDog
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Acknowledgments
First,thanksgotomyparents,DickandSusanStuart,foralloftheirsupportdownthroughtheyears.
Icouldneverhavedoneanyofthiswithoutyourhelp.
Thanks are also due to my many friends from law school who have stood by me over the years with
adviceandfriendship. EdErgenzinger,JenKarrmannGranai,AlexMacClenahan,EricTrosch,Elizabeth
Trosch, Emma Lloyd, Rachel Goldstein Zetouni, Nathan Zaleski, and Jacob Wellman. I would also like
to thank Joe Wiltberger for his constant friendship and feedback through grad school, Meg Kassabaum
and my cousin, Lauren Pierce, for letting me crash in their apartments that first year, Will Meyer for
unstintinglysharinginformationregardingthegraduateprogram,JamieClarkfordissertationadvice,and
KristinaKilgroveforprovidingtheLATEXtemplatethatwasnecessarytoformatthisdissertation.
Thanksare,ofcourse,owedtomydissertationcommittee. IwouldespeciallyliketosingleoutCarole
Crumley and Bob Daniels. It was Carole who inspired me to major in anthropology during undergrad,
wrotemyrecommendationtolawschool, generouslyanswered myquestionsaboutanthropologywhileI
was practicing law, and then coached me back into UNC’s graduate program. Bob has been a wonderful
mentor,friend,andcoachthroughthedissertationprocess.
Finally,thankyoutomywonderfulwifeandbestfriend,Carol,andourtwobeautifulchildren,Chloe
and Ethan, who understood and cheered me on through countless nights and weekends as I wrote my
dissertation.
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TableOfContents
1 BOHICA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Autoethnography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 YourFirstCase: Capronv. VanNoorden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4 Discussion: Capronv. VanNoorden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5 ReadingCapronLikeALawyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6 ExploringLegalAnthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7 LawStudents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
8 SocraticEducation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
9 LegalResearchAndWriting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
10 ThinkingLikeaLawyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
11 LeavingLawSchool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
12 YourSecondCase: Buckv. Bell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
13 Discussion: Buckv. Bell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
14 YourThirdCase: Marburyv. Madison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
15 Discussion: Marburyv. Madison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
16 YourFourthCase: Korematsuv. UnitedStates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
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17 Discussion: Korematsuv. UnitedStates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
18 AFictionalCourtDay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
19 LawyeringAsRelationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
20 ColdWarLitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
21 MindfulNetworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
22 AHypotheticalHospitalStay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
23 Heterarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
24 ThinkingLikeALegalSystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
25 ATheoreticalAnalysisofLawSchool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
26 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
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Chapter1
BOHICA
Theroomwasfreezingcold,oratleastitfeltthatway. Itwashardtotellsincemynerveswereplaying
tricks on me. For literally months, I had been dreading this day, dreading this exam. I was scared. The
subject was civil procedure, what lay-people might describe as the rules of the game for non-criminal
lawsuits. It establishes the protocols for suing and defending someone, the proper court in which to file
lawsuits,whocanbeapartytothelawsuit,andsoforth. Buttheoperationofthoserulesintherealword,
meant very little to us. Civil procedure, or “CivPro” as its known inside the building, was the weed-out
courseatWakeForestUniversitySchoolofLaw,andtodaywasthefinal.
Just about the first thing you realize in law school is that everything is different in law school. In
high school and college, students get lots of opportunities to score points and fix mistakes. Messing up
an assignment typically is not fatal. Homework assignments, papers, quizzes, midterms, miscellaneous
assignments: thesethingscomeatyouinablizzard,providingplentyofchancesforimprovingyourgrade
andfiguringouthowtotestbetterforagivenprofessor.
In law school, you usually only get one bite at the apple: the final exam. That was it. Your grade on
the final is your grade for the course, and since first year, or “1L” in law school speak, also serves as the
weed-outyearinlawschool, itisnoexaggerationtosaythatyourentirefutureasalawyerquiteliterally
restson justahandful ofexams. Thus myconcern, and lookingaround thelargecourtroom thatdoubled
asthelawschool’sauditorium,itwasobviousthatIwasnotalone. Theroomcrackledwithtension.
Wewerealltryingourbest,butforthefirsttimeinourlives,wefoundourselvessurroundedbypeople
just as smart and hard-working as ourselves. Up to now, our best had always been enough to propel us
tothetopofourclasses, buttoday, againstthisgroupofsimilarlytalentedindividuals, wehadtograpple
with the fact that our best might not even be enough to pass. For students who have only their academic
trackrecordtopointto,thatisaterrifyingrealization. Norwasitunrealistic.
Backthen,Wakerequiredthatevery1Lclassbeheldtoan81average. Wehadalldonethemath,and
itwasbrutal. Ourrealitywasthatforeverypointabove81awardedtoonepersonbytheprofessor,points
wouldhavetobetakenfromsomeoneelse. Thearrangementwasaclassiczero-sumgame. Therewould
bewinnersandlosers,andtheonlywaytosucceedwasbytakingfromoneofyourclassmates. Someofus
wouldgohometriumphant, secureintheknowledgethattheyhadwhatittooktosurvivelawschooland
become an attorney. Others would be getting academic probation for Christmas, along with the promise
that if they failed to outperform their classmates during the spring semester, they would be going home
forever.
The room hushed then as our CivPro instructor, Professor George Walker, entered the courtroom and
strodecommandinglydowntothefront. Reachingthebottom,heturnedandswepttheroomwithhiseyes,
surveying us while wearing the wry smile on his face that I had come to know so well. Few professors
have nicknames at Wake, but Professor Walker does. His nickname is Mad Dog, a moniker he obviously
takesprideinandevenfosterstosomeextent.
Of all the teachers in law school, Professor Walker’s class was the one I—along with probably many
ofmyclassmates—fearedthemostsinceheroutinelydismantledstudentswithhisquestions,butnotina
cruelway,justrelentless. Theroutinewasalwaysthesame. IfWalkercalledyourname,youwererequired
tostandatyourdeskandverballyfencewithhimoverthecontentandmeaningoftheassignment,though
fencingfailstocapturetheessenceofthisexchangesincehewasapastmasterofthematerialandwewere
mostly clueless. Class after class, week after week, we marched into CivPro, praying that Walker would
callonsomeotherperson.
Paradoxically, Professor Walker was also one of my favorite professors. Witty as hell and a natural
comedian, Mad Dog managed to generate both terror and humor during each class—a quality worth its
weight in gold under the crushing stress of 1L classes. I would later take one elective with him, and by
graduation regretted that I had not taken more, but that seemed unimaginable during my first semester in
hisCivProclass,whichhad,quitesimply,beenbrutalforme. Andnow,classeswereover. Itwastimeto
seeifIhadlearnedanything.
Iclosedmynotebookandwaited. Sodidothersuntiltheroomquietedonitsown. Ablackboardstood
to the side, and after capturing our attention, Mad Dog walked over to the device and chalked onto its
surfaceasingleword: BOHICA.
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My mind instantly began rifling through all the cases we had covered during the past semester. BO-
HICA? I could feel sweat gathering. Was it a legal principle? The name of a lawsuit? What? I had no
idea. WewereonlyonewordinandIwasalreadyclueless. “PleaseGod,”Iprayed. “Don’tletthisbethe
exam.”
“Inyearspast,”ProfessorWalkerbegan,“meninjuredduringwarandrecuperatinginahospitalwould
have their injuries treated by medical staff. Much like everything else in the military, their medications
would be administered on a schedule. So every once in a while, a medical staffer would walk up to the
chalkboardandwriteonitssurfacethewordthatI’vejustwrittenforyou. BOHICA:BendOver—HereIt
ComesAgain.”
Andastheroomeruptedinlaughter,MadDoghandedoutourexams.
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