Who’s in Charge?

My cats supervise my columns while I write them. Quite annoying. Wardell, named after the great tenor sax player Wardell Gray, is…gray. And Wardell has an abundance of feline grey matter. He knows how to open drawers and pull everything out, how to run down the hall with my slippers, a feat usually reserved for dogs, and how to run into the shower when I take one and mostly avoid getting wet. Sorry, I got carried away. This column is not about my cats. I just mention Wardell, not his sister Natalie, because Wardell has assumed the role of supervisor while I type this column. Knowing Wardell, he is likely to step on some keys that may cause confusion or dismay in some readers. If so, blame it on Wardell. Let’s segue into our main topic with a cliché about time; take it from me, “it flies.” I have been around long enough to know about its deceitful behavior. In one’s later years it can appear to move at the speed of light. At other times, it leads you to believe it moves at the pace of the slowest moving animal known to humankind, the three-toed sloth. In one of my past columns, I wrote about having my foot in the way of the redoubtable Presiding Justice Mildred Lilly as she was making her way to the lectern to speak to the Commission on Judicial Appointments. Her leg hit my foot. As I watched her begin to stumble, time stopped. So did my heart. During that eternity, that lasted nanoseconds, I made a bargain with a higher power not to let her fall. She didn’t. Whew! Faust made a better deal. But we can all acknowledge that time does not stand still. When I was a kid, I knew time marched on from going to the movies with my parents. Before the feature we saw a summary of the news called Time Marches On. There it was, filling the screen in bold block letters, tilted at about a 20 degree angle. I had no doubt that time did not stand still because the authoritative voice of the announcer reinforced the concept. In a stentorian voice he said, “Time Marches On.” He then narrated as we saw glimpses of battles in Europe and the Pacific during WWII, and then for a change of pace concluded with a few lighter moments, a chimpanzee doing somersaults. The announcer convinced me that time marched on but did not clarify the pace of the march. Was this a fast John Philip Souza march or the march of a funeral dirge? Time marched, more like dragged along, during grammar school as I waited for summer vacation. It moved at the pace of a slug during my tax course in law school. Yes, in the beginning, time marches slowly, but, believe me, it picks up momentum and flies, reaching warp speed from the perspective of later decades. Clichés, though trite, are indisputably true. Have you ever seen a rolling stone gather moss? It seems like yesterday (speaking of trite, sorry) when I was a law student. Note: I still am. And so are all my colleagues. In those days, the professors ruled. They questioned us, and, yes, we questioned them and debated with them, but we showed up on time for class. Yes, we grumbled now and then, but the professors set the agenda. We could suggest change but did not dictate change. Nowadays it seems the roles have become blurred and, in some instances, reversed. I admit when Dean Prosser paced back and forth before us in that semicircular tiered classroom, thousands of tiny legs of terror scurried to and fro in the limbic portion of my brain carrying a teeny but powerful loudspeaker that screamed “Please, Please, Do Not Call on Me!” But it seems different today. I have spoken to law professors and law school students individually and in their classes and what I sense is worrisome. And what I have heard from a professor or two is in so many words, “I sure hope I don’t piss off the students.” On a few occasions I participated in a law school class at a prominent university to act, no, I mean be, the judge in a practice session for a moot court competition taught by a professor friend of mine. Most of the students who participated in the practice session were prepared, eager to learn and responsive. But on every occasion when I participated in the practice sessions, a few students sauntered in late, and displayed resentment if pressed when their responses to questions were not responsive or simply wrong. They were sullen and churlish during the discussion after the moot court session. I did not sense a lack of respect for the law professor among the few recalcitrant students. He was extremely bright, conscientious, well liked and admired by his students. Does my limited experience reflect a trend? I cannot say how pervasive this phenomenon is, but my discussion with a few law professors leads me to believe my experiences were not isolated incidents. My cynical conjecture about the present-day provenance of this phenomena in law school, in addition to changing notions about education in general, and changing societal mores, may be the prohibitive cost of a law school education. What law school wishes to anger students and lose enrollment when the fees their parents pay are in the thousands of dollars? But I am convinced there are other more pervasive causes of what I see as a troubling phenomenon, the students running the agenda. And it began a few decades ago. I wrote in one of my previous columns about students at New York University Law School refusing to participate in a moot court problem concerning a gay couple who wished to adopt a child. The students assigned to represent the social services agency refused to participate because they were opposed to the position of the agency. I argued that when the students become lawyers, they will be better equipped to represent the adopting couples by practicing in moot court to take the opposite position. After a standoff, the law school shamefully gave in and let the morally righteous students off the hook. Not so sure how successful those students will be if they represent gay couples in real life. Social critic Nat Hentoff agreed with me and quoted my column in his book Free Speech for Me – But Not for Thee (1992, HarperCollins). I certainly agree that students should have a say in their education and their suggestions for improvement and change should seriously be considered, but someone has to run the institution. Generally, but not always, those with experience have the last word. There are moves to lower the standards for professional school admissions. Some have argued that this is necessary to admit more people of diversity into the professions. How insulting this is to all people. Some of our best judges, lawyers, doctors, and other professions are people of diversity. Linguist John McWhorter is a controversial figure. His ideas provoke a thoughtful discussion about standards of behavior and education. He argues that everyone can and should meet high standards. That is what we expect from a brain surgeon operating on us or a lawyer representing us in a complicated lawsuit. Some might argue this is discriminatory. Oh, oh, there goes Wardell. He is heading for his box.