« Stuntz on the Court and Criminal Procedure | Main | Can Roberts Hate Roe? »

Thursday, July 28, 2005

What case(s) "shaped [your] psyche"?

This blog post asks the question, "[w]as there a particular case -- a Seminal Opinion -- that strongly

influenced your attitude toward the legal system or the legal profession, or that helped you decide the role you wanted to play within the profession?  Did one majority or dissenting opinion plant seeds from which your lawyer psyche grew?  If so, what was it and what difference has it made in your professional goals or practice?"
For my own part, I'm just not sure.  On the first day of law school, we worked on Casey in Constitutional Law.  (It always struck me as a mistake, by the way, to start things off with that case . . . ).  I cannot pretend that Casey really "strongly influenced [my] attitude," though.  I used to say -- and maybe I still would -- that Solzhenitsyn's "Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" and Chesterton's "Orthodoxy", both of which I read in high school, did a lot to shape how I think about the world, but they (obviously) are not "Seminal Opinion[s]."  In all honesty, my thinking about the Court was probably formed as much by a 12th grade book report on "The Brethren" as by any particular case (Rehnquist seemed kind of cool; Burger didn't).  I suppose there's a Tristram Shandy-type problem with trying to look back and find the influential case; who's to say, after all, that the effort amounts to anything more than trying to think of a case that now seems like a case that could plausibly be connected to the person or lawyer we'd like to be (whether we are or not)?
Maybe others are more successful at finding the Big Case?
Rick

Posted by Rick Garnett on July 28, 2005 at 11:26 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c6a7953ef00d8342349ce53ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference What case(s) "shaped [your] psyche"?:

» Seminal Opinion from Crime
David Giacalone (via PrawfsBlawg) is asking a great question: Was there a particular case -- a Seminal Opinion -- that strongly influenced your attitude toward the legal system or the legal profession, or that helped you decide the role you wanted to p... [Read More]

Tracked on Jul 28, 2005 2:49:18 PM

» Worst case ever: What's your Seminal case? from Unused and Probably Unusable
Inspired (and how) by a post up at Crime & Federalism, http://federalism.typepad.com if you can't just follow my blogroll link, I wanted to write about the Cases that Get You.

Everyone hears about a case sometime or other. ... [Read More]

Tracked on Jul 31, 2005 12:10:21 PM

Comments

I'm amazed that first-year Constitutional Law classes are beginning with Casey or Bowers. My experience was much different, as my law school split Con Law into two rough halves: (1) the structure of government, including separation of powers and federalism; and (2) individual rights, focused primarily but not exclusively on the Fourteenth Amendment. I'm sure this approach will sound familiar to the Garnetts. The first case we studied, and the case that colored my view of the law from then on, was Marbury v. Madison. Although many other students quickly tired of Marbury (we covered it in maybe six different classes through law school), I was, and remain, fascinated by the central question of Marbury: who decides? That question runs through not only constitutional law, but adminstrative law, business organizations, and innumerable other areas.

Posted by: Dan | Jul 29, 2005 9:45:53 AM

I was in law school pre-Casey, so one of our first Con Law Cases was Bowers v. Hardwick. My Con Law professor was appalled when I pointed out the pink elephant publicly, in class, ripping the opinion apart and demonstrating why it was nothing but poorly-justified, government-sanctioned religious doctrine and homophobia. He seemed to have never considered it in that light, poor fellow, and seemed truly shocked that I would suggest that the Supreme Court was guided by anything other than "pure" legal reasoning. I, on the other hand, felt vindicated when, over the next few years, retired Justice Powell and Evan Wolfson of Lambda Legal Defense made the same comments.

As for a case that strongly influenced my attitudes toward the law, I'm a little reluctant to say this in such a constitutionally-focused forum, but one of the most influential was probably Palsgraf v. LIRR, the seminal NY case (written by then-NY Court of Appeals Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo) about forseeability in tort cases. I was swept up -- practically delighted, in fact -- by Cardozo's opinion. His writing was magnificent, but also the reasoning -- it was as if torts was a giant game, a puzzle to be solved by careful and clever minds! It showed me that law could be not only important, but fun -- something that I don't think had really occurred to me before then.

Posted by: Renee C | Jul 28, 2005 8:32:57 PM

You started off with Casey?! What was the professor thinking? Something like, "Here's an example of the most pompous, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing rhetoric that has ever appeared in print," I hope.

Posted by: Stuart Buck | Jul 28, 2005 6:36:45 PM

Before law school, religious convictions moved to me towards criminal defense and civil rights work. But Atwater ensured my beliefs remained firm.

Putting aside that Atwater is a constitutional abomination: what bothered me most was that the cop arrested a soccer mom, who now has a criminal history. He left her children crying and screaming in the car. You have children: I'm sure you'd have no problem putting yourself in Ms. Atwater's shoes. How much trauma was done to Ms. Atwater? Would her children remember? What would Ms. Atwater tell them when they asked, "Why were you put in jail?" Why did the police officer need to abuse his authority?

That such people as the arresting officer pervade the system reminded me why I wanted to be on the side of people. That the Supreme Court ignored the factual injustice and constitutional violation reminded me why religious people are under a moral obligation to push Sisyphus' rock. Atwater reminded me that criminal defendants are truly "the least of thee."

Posted by: Mike | Jul 28, 2005 12:29:36 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.