HT to www.abovethelaw.com for this nugget:
Harvard Law Review - the same one Obama headed up - just published a Note (a law student piece) titled Never Again Should a People Starve in a World of Plenty. (pdf) The piece basically says that you have a moral obligation to provide your legal services to the poor of the world, not to the rich and powerful.
That HLR would publish this tripe is beyond comprehension. I don't disagree with the sentiment. Rich, powerful lawyers should (and many do) do as much good for those less privileged. I understand that some are put off by the elaborate events, yacht parties, and golf tournies that double as fundraisers, but that is a matter of style over substance.
The point here is that HLR is not Newsweek's "My Turn" column - it is an institution of rigorous legal thought. HLR would never consider publishing a Note that was simply an editorial of recent Supreme Court decisions and offered platitudes instead of footnotes and analysis. There is no room in journals, certainly not Harvard's, for bare editorializing. What possessed HLR's editors to ignore that? They had at least 20 other Notes to choose from.
1 comment:
Wow, I haven't read anything quite this infantile in a long time. It has that wide-eyed earnestness (and corresponding moral and intellectual "sophistication") of a seven-year-old, who is for the first time realizing that other people have feelings. And concludes that they know how everyone must behave and must insistently tell people about it. Kind of reminds me of my 3-year old niece, actually. Astonishing that (a) people of such stunted mental faculties are able to become lawyers, (b) HLR chose to waste publication space on this, and (c) I chose to waste my time reading it :).
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