This article was submitted by Amy Wong, a law student at the University of San Diego.
Older lawyers often tell young law students that your first year (your 1L year) is the hardest because you have to learn to think like a lawyer. It’s a highly unintuitive process gained only by putting in long hours of reading dense, technical legal opinions.
On top of that, every professor is different and wants you to see the law through different lenses. Some emphasize the philosophy behind the law, some emphasize the relevant facts and circumstances surrounding an issue, and some emphasize the policy concerns underlying the law, yet all of them are right in one way or another.
One of my biggest takeaways from law school is that the law is a manmade creation, and is therefore subject to the same inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and other flaws that all of us exhibit. Like people too, the law is a malleable thing.
Follow or Not
There is a natural and understandable desire to follow the law. After all, why else would we have them? There are the big obvious ones, like “don’t kill,” “don’t steal,” “don’t hurt other people.” Those are the ones that typically come to mind if you ask someone to think about what the law is – the rules, or the dos and don’ts of how to coexist peacefully with those you live with. The rule of law, in many ways, functions to keep society organized in patterns and customs that are generally acceptable to most people.
But the law is also a system of categorization. For example, the words “felon,” “alien,” and “race” are words imputing categorization. These words are used as identifying labels that are then used to define the bundle of rights that those groups get to enjoy or not enjoy.
Such As
Classic examples from history include the laws from the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, anti-miscegenation laws (laws prohibiting interracial marriage), the Dred Scott decision withholding citizenship from Black Americans, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Today, blessed with the power of hindsight, we would say with unwavering confidence that those laws were wrong. We would say the law was clearly and obviously discriminatory, immoral and right to be broken. But would we adopt that reasoning and apply it to contemporary issues? If you answered yes, how can you be so sure?
A critical thing that many seem to forget is that the law is written by people. A group of individuals, all with lives and personalities, sit down together to meticulously craft very, very specific language designed to achieve their goals. Lawmakers write those goals into a bill. They debate it vigorously in their respective legislative houses. And they go to work every day hoping to get enough votes for approval. The law is not generated by a machine or pulled from ancient texts to be recycled in the present day. Others, these legislators, get to make decisions on how their red-blooded peers are treated in a court of law and what rights they deserve.
Breaking Bad?
Now, when someone says a person is “bad” for breaking the law, I no longer automatically agree with them. Having seen how the law is weaponized to segregate people and to justify a system of inferiority and superiority, I am forced to think about whether it’s a law that genuinely fosters and promotes goodness and improvement among the members of society that the law claims to protect.
In today’s charged political climate, can we trust ourselves enough to say, confidently, that we can discern whether a law is truly just on its face? Many of us are immigrants or come from immigrant families. Some of our roots go back to a time when the Chinese were persona non grata on American soil. There were times in history when our very existence was offensive to the American rule of law.
Even if the law today is not bald enough to say in such plain language that there are groups who are similarly offensive, who’s to say that the same sentiment does not still lurk behind some laws today? The law did not just appear on a page on a silver platter in front of our state and federal congresses. The law is a product of people who have flaws and prejudices. Although everyone has flaws and prejudices, is it fair that some have the power to enforce their laws upon their peers with less power?
Our Duty
In an era when American law is changing so quickly and dramatically, or is being interpreted so differently, we have a duty as citizens under the law to examine it and to insist that it applied evenhandedly and fairly.
It seems obvious to me that blind adherence to the law is bad, because blind adherence to anything is bad. Accepting the law simply because it is the law is how we develop complacency towards democratic life. When we accept the law for what it is, if we do not critique our country and push it to do better, we do ourselves and our communities a disservice.
And for all the discourse surrounding immigration, right and wrong, I think it’s a little ironic that I learned the idea of love for informed criticism from immigrant families.
Amy Wong is studying to become an attorney at the University of San Diego School of Law. Here interests include trying coffee shops in new cities, reading, and playing video games. Her grandfather is Kung Bill Wong (黄孔标).
