By: Elizabeth Devine

It is hard to turn on the television or open a newspaper these days without being bombarded with negative news regarding our economy and fiscal security.  Headlines have been swamped with words like greed, cheat, lie and steal.  Perhaps in the wake of Bernie Madoff, the public is more fearful it will happen to them and have subconsciously become more attune to these issues.

But it is not just the bankers who are greedy these days.  Sure, we’ve heard of corrupt lawyers.  They are the butt of almost every lawyer-joke we’ve heard.  But recently the unethical lawyer has moved beyond lighthearted cocktail hour banter to front-page headlines, specifically regarding the Marc Dreier scandal.  Last week I came across an article in New York Magazine titled “The Impersonator” by Robert Kolker.  The article discussed Mr. Dreier’s schemes in great detail leaving me to wonder, in a society where “the lawyer” is already on a moral thin ice, will public figures such as Dreier forever tarnish an idealistic view of what is just within the law?

As law students we are taught that the justice system is a series of rules and procedure.  It is heartless; a machine that sucks one in and spits him back out, forever changed, and often, not for the better.  We forget that the public views the law as a judge of what is right and what is wrong.  The eternal optimist will see the law as a fair judge of what is morally right or wrong in a conflict.  Whether this is true or not is a matter of debate, but regardless, who protects the public in the face of the law?  The lawyer.

In our Law & Literature class, we have seen injustice as the result of a justice system.  However, we have also seen the moral triumphs of the lawyer.  In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch takes on the case that no one else will take on, representing an African American man.  Knowing he has a losing case, he still fights, knowing that it is the morally right thing to do.  In The Verdict, Frank Galvin demonstrates transformation and human betterment through the law.  As a lawyer who has been led astray, it is not until he stumbles upon “the” case that he sees the difference between what may be legally right versus what is morally right.

Both Atticus Finch and Frank Galvin demonstrate how a lawyer can still protect an individual from the heartlessness of the justice system.  When I read about Marc Dreier, however, I wonder whether his actions will destroy the moral good that (at least fictional) lawyers have done before him.  As Mr. Dreier’s face flickers across our screens, do we, as public, lose all respect for the lawyer?  Do we view the entire legal system as a corrupt, cheating process?  If we cannot even trust those who are meant to protect us, what other buffer do we have when we stand before the Law?

It would be too big of a stretch to claim that Marc Dreier’s actions will forever negate the good work the majority of lawyers do in society but it is hard not to question how scandals such as this do not effect placement of “the lawyer” on the public’s morality spectrum.

By: Nicholas Millman

Through all the thieving, drug dealing, and murdering that takes place during all five seasons of HBO’s brilliant Baltimore set drama The Wire, it is the lawyer, Maury Levy (Jewish?), who perseveres.  Mr. Levy, played quite well by actor Michael Kostroff, lies and manipulates his way through the reign of both drug kingpins Avon Barksdale and Marlo Stanfield, consistently holding his position as gatekeeper between the often bumbling police officers and ADA’s and the street criminals they pursue.  Mr. Levy performs every function imaginable for the criminals: sets up dummy corporations enabling them to hide assets, defends them in court, bails them out, and even arranges for certain lower level criminals to turn themselves in and confess to crimes in order to protect the syndicate leaders.  In the final episode of season one, Mr. Levy clearly manipulates the system, agreeing to bring in a suspected dealer to take the fall for the shooting of a police officer, but cleverly proves that the dealer was only attempting to sell baking soda and not directly linked to the murder.  After realizing they had been outsmarted by Levy, one of the officers present remarks to Levy, “nicely done,” and walks disgustedly out of the room.

While Mr. Levy is clearly not depicted in anything resembling a positive a light throughout the show, none of the officers, all of whom risk life and limb to bust drug dealers that are replaced on the street the second they are arrested, seem to direct any animosity or blame toward Levy.  They act as if he has merely outsmarted them, that the law is on his side, and that there is nothing they can do about it.  Furthermore, given the ongoing theme in the show that no matter how hard the government tries they can never eliminate the drug cartels that decimate the city and run the streets, law enforcement and prosecutors are clearly depicted as powerless and ultimately ignorant compared to the private sector, motivated by money and greed rather than morality and justice.  While depicting the government, police, and district attorneys as powerless to criminals and big-money private law firms is nothing new to movies or television, what makes The Wire unique is its complete unwillingness to ever really grant the “good guys” any victory whatsoever.  They are always one step behind, one minute too late, and one piece of evidence too short of actually making a difference.  Whenever an important conviction appears imminent, in swoops Levy to quash the charge or exclude the evidence.  The Wire puts forth a clear contrast between the ultimately futile goal of justice seeking through doing “the right thing,” and the clearly more powerful, ruthless, amoral, and emotionless letter of the law.

By: George Kordas

Fox has debuted a new show this season called “Lie to Me,” whose tag line is “The truth is written all over our faces.”  The show focuses on a business formed by experts in microexpressions, which are supposedly insuppressible facial expressions that are universal among populations of different cultures, and how they use them to expose lies.  The experts in the Lightman Group are repeatedly called in by governmental agencies to use their knowledge to determine the truth in various situations.

The show exposes the conflict between truth seeking, a highly moral activity, and the limitations imposed by the goals of typical legal investigations and the law.  Many times, the show concludes with the experts crafting a scheme to trick the perpetrators, who the experts have determined to be liars, into incriminating themselves so that legal recourse can be pursued.  Inevitably, the experts rouse the perpetrators and use their anger or emotional outbursts to elicit a confession or an incriminating remark in front of governmental authority figures.  This scenario has replayed itself and been fairly consistent throughout much of the episodes.

Episode eight, which aired on April 1st, demonstrated the real conflict between truth seeking, which is a form moral justice, and achieving what society may view as a favorable result; more specifically monetary reparation for injured parties.

This particular episode featured an investigation by the SEC of a family run investment group that stole billions from investors.  The Lightman Group was brought in to try to elicit the location of the stashed funds from the indicted father, who was the head of the company.  Through their investigation, the Lightman Group uncovered that the real perpetrator of the scheme was the man’s daughter, who the father was trying to protect by taking the fall.  The father agreed to reveal the location of the funds, but only if the daughter’s name was not sullied.

Seeing the benefit of restoring the funds to the injured parties, the head investigator on the case agreed not to divulge the actual perpetrator of the crime.  The investigator’s assistant; however, did not think of it only it terms of the greater good.  He leaked the story to the media, and later the daughter was arrested for perpetrating the fraud.  What followed was an internal investigation by the Lightman Group of that particular employee in order to determine if he had leaked the story, which, if found to be true, would have resulted in his termination.

What he did was pursue moral justice.  He revealed to society the identity of the true defrauder, even at the risk of ending his career and violating his duty to his employer.  He did not see recouping the lost funds as the greater good, but instead exposed the truth.  His actions and their possible repercussions revealed the tension in our culture between pursuing “the greater good” and pursuing truth.  His leaking of the story would have breached his confidentiality with his employer.  Confidentiality is highly valued in our society, so much so that violators face severe liability in our legal system.  It is interesting to note that the effect of contractual agreements and the initial goals of the SEC investigation acted to de-emphasize truth seeking.  A company, whose primary objective is to reveal the truth, was ready to fire an employee who did just that.  It further evidences the conundrum in our society between seeking the moral remedy and attaining “the greater good,” and the way in that the law seeks to elicit truth, but also restricts individuals’ ability to do so.

By: Laura Mulry

When I recently told someone my hesitations about becoming a lawyer they told me “well you can get used to anything.” It made me think of Meursault from “The Stranger” whose mother told him this and which was a tenet he abided by. I have teetered between despising Meursault, pitying him, and at times envying him. At first it unnerved me how detached Meursault is to the world and how he seems to be superficial, visceral, and only liking things that appeal to his senses, at trial he says “my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings,” and that he probably did love his mother at some point but it doesn’t mean anything.” On this vein, when Salamano loses his dog instead of understanding any sort of love relationship that could exist between a man and another being, Meursault tells him he could get another dog, “but he was right to point out to me that he was used to this one.” So under this callous rationale we only love something because we are used to it. He seems to think of life in a fatalistic fashion, we cannot control anything. When he is talking to someone about his mother’s death he says “(t)hen he explained that he’d heard about Maman’s death but that it was one of those things that was bound to happen sooner or later. I thought so too.” Although this seems insensitive towards one’s own mother, Meursault’s fatal flaw is his brutal honesty, which is also somewhat commendable. Along with this honesty and detachment is his ability to be wholly objective and not judge others for things he does not understand, or maybe he does understand them but still does not make a judgment. I think this is interesting since we strive to have objective judges and juries in the court of law, however Meursualt’s objectivity is exactly what leads him not to make a judgment. For example, Meursault is an excellent spectator, after describing the way Salamano takes his dog for a walk and the inevitable cycle which ensues (where the dog is excited to be outside so starts running forcing the owner to stumble so then beats the dog, then the dog cowers behind, then forgets and runs again, then beaten again), Meursault also sees the way the owner verbally abuses the dog calling it a filthy stinking bastard, however when another neighbor comments on this behavior and asks Meursault if he also thinks it is pitiful, Meursault says no. One of the dilemmas of natural law is that although law may derive from a moral/eternal law, it doesn’t carry moral force because it is people who do the judging and they don’t have the authority and naturally make mistakes.

Meursault is much more complex than he puts on. He is so desolate of feeling not because he doesn’t have feelings but he just doesn’t process them in the healthiest way: he is emotionally collapsed, almost already dead, and does not allow himself to feel. He takes out these repressed emotions on the man he kills. When he first sees the Arabs he says “They were staring at us in silence, but in that way of theirs, as if we were nothing but stones or dead trees.” How fascinating that Meursault who acts more like a stone than a human is offended by this, he is defensive about his nature, maybe even ashamed. Although he kills the Arab in self-defense, his act of going back to where the Arabs are is suspect, especially when it happens because of the sun, which reminds him of his dead mother.

In the TV show LOST, the character Ben is at a standoff with his enemy who has a gun to his daughter’s head, in attempting to get the man to not kill his daughter Ben says “she’s not my real daughter. I stole her when she was a baby, she is just a pawn and I don’t care for her at all.” The man shoots his daughter in front of him. Ben later leaves the island against the rules to seek vengeance for the death of his daughter. He later returns to the island and tells John Locke he is there to be judged for breaking the rules. John Locke says “I think you are lying. You don’t care about rules Ben.” When Ben asks him “Then what do I want to be judged for John?” John says “For killing your daughter.”

This substitution of committing a crime in order to be judged for a past wrong (or simply feeling guilty for something in the past) fascinates me. Most criminals come from families with histories of abuse, where feelings of guilt and anger linger for years and if repressed come out in violent ways i.e. committing crimes. They are committing crimes to be judged in a tangible way, and in seeking forgiveness. Maybe if we could focus less on punishment and more on the prevention of abuse there would be less crime.

On this vein it can be inferred that Meursault kills the Arab in order to be judged for the death of his mother, who he had put in an elderly home. Once in the trial, which is based almost solely on his character inferred from the way he acted at his mother’s funeral, he says “All I care about right now is escaping the machinery of the inevitable.” He says through the guillotine “the condemned man was forced into a kind of moral collaboration.” Meursault finds this the inevitable because he feels it was needed to be judged for his mother’s death, he needed to be forced into moral collaboration because he couldn’t do it on his own. Later the Priest before Meursault’s execution tells him his heart his blind. Up to his death Meursault believes everything in life is absurd, fate makes no sense, and what should a mother’s death matter to him, everyone dies and no one matters. This fatalistic view helps Meursualt to be happy in seeing the “gentle indifference” to the world, which applies equally to everyone. I agree with the Priest that although this may be the truth to the fickle ways of fate, he misses the point- he doesn’t love anyone or at least he doesn’t understand it is ok to acknowledge it to yourself.

By: Noe Burgos

As news stories of the Somali Pirate attacks shock the United States as the world, world leaders are saying all the right things as their navies speed onto the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. This however, is perhaps one of the most pressing and global examples of the failure of the community of nations to take charge of a problem, and now, it is biting them all of them in the rear end. The United States, the European Union, Arab countries and the African union clearly have to legal duty to go into Somalia or into any other country for that matter. However, their failure has lead to the rise of the current pirate threat.

The concept of national building has been criticized by both the right and the left. However, the roots of isolationism lay in the fact that there is no duty to intervene abroad or to help others. The lack of this duty comes from the legal concept of “no duty to intervene” to help others. This concept was seen in the last episode of the sitcom Seinfeld, where Seinfeld and his friends are arrested for not helping a bystander. In addition to no duty to help, people are actually held liable for helping others when things go wrong. It is with this basis, that nationals feel that anything that goes on abroad does not directly affect them.

What has occurred in Somalia is a clear example of no duty to intervene. Although there is no legal duty to intervene, it is a moral obligation to both help others as well as to be collectively responsible for the acts of others like us and for our failure to help those others like us. In the early 1990s, the world did respond in helping Somalia, but quickly pulled out when they realized it the task got difficult and started costing lives. Fifteen years later, lives are being out at risk everyday in the waters off Somalia’s coast for both our failures early on but for the lack of the world as a whole to take responsibility for Somalia’s failures.

With no duty to intervene, the United States and neighboring countries of Somalia have had no real reason to intervene in the humanitarian, economic and political crisis Somalia is in. However, it is the moral duty for nations to help others in need and go beyond what is legally necessary. So far, the only attempt at moral intervention ended in failure in the early 1990s. All other attempts, including Ethiopia’s invasion, have been made for a country’s strategic needs. This is where the collective responsibility of the world’s nations comes into the picture. A concerted effort is needed to get to the root of the pirate problem, which is the Somali situation. All countries therefore should be collectively responsible for attacking piracy and its roots. Although all nations should participate, African and Arab nations have a higher moral burden in helping resolve the situation for their Somali brothers and sister. Accepting collective responsibility for the pirate problem and for Somalia’s collapse is the moral obligation of the world. Only this will, and not more talk, will resolve the problems that plague us today.

By: Divya Jayachandran

While perusing through the news yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that several articles had a similar theme—the turn to public interest.  It seems that people are taking a second look, perhaps through a shiny new pair of rose-colored glasses, at the business of helping others.  Motivations for this trend range from what is now being called “the Obama effect” to the last-ditch efforts to secure some sort of position in a increasingly insecure job market.  A lucky few are somewhere in between, seeing an opportunity in the encouragement of their current employers to trade a year off the job in exchange for a significant portion of their salary and even layoff immunity.

In the past, societal cues have led students to chase dreams of building bridges, designing missiles, changing the face of modern computing, and most recently, conquering the financial world.  However, as the economic downturn becomes entirely impossible to ignore in the face of dreadful job prospects and the registrar’s constant reminders to send in cap and gown measurements (regardless of how many bong hits or funnels they did the night before), these once-jaded, carefree, soon-to-be grads are finding solace in the fact that a new American dream is emerging—and not a minute too soon.  It’s a dream grounded in something bigger than a six-figure salary and traditional notions of prestige, inspired instead by aspirations of being a part of the solution and making an exciting contribution.

The short-term effects of this trend have resulted in an unprecedented rise in applications to graduate schools of government and public service, as well as positions with organizations like Teach for America.  However, the long-term effects of the country’s most talented young minds flocking to the public service sector could be far more dynamic.  Perhaps this is a momentary blip in the consciousness of today’s youth, one that won’t go further than the day the government stops hiring and law firms start again.  Or maybe it is the conception of a new service-minded Obama generation rooted less in peer expectation and more in personal satisfaction, going as far as creating a virtual brain drain from the industries that are required to succeed in order to reverse the current economic downturn.  While it is likely that neither extreme will be the case, especially with evidence of both possibilities being no more than anecdotal,  it is hard to refute the simple truth that the recession has led to a new brand of thinking amongst our country’s youngest and brightest.

By: Megan Rockwell

The recent pirate attack on the U.S. cargo ship Maersk Alabama has raised some very interesting questions, the least of which is: “what are we going to do with any pirates we capture?”  If the Bush (II) administration were still in power, certainly these pirates -like the one currently being held by U.S. military forces after leaving the lifeboat where the Alabama’s captain was being held hostage – would conceivably and likely be labelled “enemy combatants” and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, never to be seen from again.  After all, piracy seems to be almost a precursor and counterpart of terrorism.  Both actions incite fear in dread in those possibly affected, and both can cripple much larger and mightier operations with relatively low start-up costs.  The parties who comprise the ranks of pirates and terrorists also have much in common; most are young men from struggling regions that lack strong government, and they inevitably question how the First World can have so much and they can have so little.  And both groups have taken it upon themselves to turn the instruments of modern commerce and communication into self-destructing weapons.  That just one U.S. (of 78 total this year) ship takeover or four plane hijackings can change U.S. policy is startling, given that the U.S. is still the lone superpower, but here we are (again).  The difference this time?  Obama, not Bush II, is President.

Rather than send these effectively-nationless combatants to the silent lawlessness of Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration is moving in a radically different direction.  In recent significant statements, the administration has noted that 1) the pirates are, in fact, “untrained teenagers with heavy weapons”, according to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, and; 2) the administration is mulling over what criminal court the pirates can be sent to, according to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.  These pronouncements suggest that the Obama administration is looking to treat the pirates more like common criminals than Bush-era terrorists or even other pirates, given that piracy is usually a hanging offense.  Though it is yet to be seen whether Obama orders the surviving pirate from the Alabama attack sent to Somalia or the U.S. for prosecution, it seems highly possible that this man will be afforded more due process than those still held in Guantanamo.  And even if he were summarily convicted and hanged for an act of piracy that he (seemingly certainly) committed, wouldn’t this be better than hanging in limbo at Guantanamo?  With this in mind, we must applaud Obama for his insistence on moving with speed and hopefully transparency against these pirates while asking when those at Guantanamo will have their chance to walk the plank at trial.

By: Karine Altmann

Less and less people are reading. The Internet, Blackberry, and Ipod have replaced books. The more the people think they are informed, the less they are nowadays.

The class of Law and Literature is a perfect illustration of it. We think we know everything about our legal system, when we do not know anything about it.

Of course, like everyone, we know the legal system through the medias, like in the famous Madoff case.

However, we do not know anything about how the legal system functions inside and his direct consequences.

Through books like the Stranger from Camus, or Killing the Mockingbird , we have seen , with surprise for some of us, that Justice is not about be truthful, but more guided by political reasons.

The book of Daniel from El Doctorow illustrates perfectly the consequences of the errors of Justice.

Why writers, who are not part of the legal system are able to see better than us , who are directly involved in the legal system as lawyers, law students ?

Perhaps because they still see the legal reasoning with a lot of criticism and objectivity.

As actual or future members of the New York Bar or everywhere else, we should act as diligent lawyers but also as an outside spectator, keeping his objectivity.

By: Ian Millican

The critically acclaimed HBO show The Wire takes no sides in the war
on drugs in Baltimore.  Rather, David Simon, a former police reporter,
strives to craft a narrative underscoring the cyclical nature of the
Baltimore drug trade.  As one drug lord is jailed, another replaces
him.  As one phony politician is voted out of office, his once
idealistic up-and-comer of an opponent gains office and becomes
corrupt.  Criminals are killed, and underlings replace them.  In
showing the way city politics supports this cycle, Simon argues that
the war on drugs is really a war on America’s underclass.  Indeed, in
this show many times what is legally right is morally wrong, and what
is morally right is legally wrong.

No one is spared.  The detectives, arguably the heroes of the show,
are often depicted as more obsessed with proving their intellectual
acumen as crime fighters, and that they are smarter than criminals,
than really achieving justice.  On the other side of the coin are the
drug lords, who prey on addicts and weaklings, and make millions in
the process.  However, these individuals are often depicted as
likeable.

Often the most effective methods for fighting crime are the ones that
are the opposite of what is considered “by the book.”  Only a few of
the men and women in charge, however, endeavor to do what is right
because it is not politically savvy.  In Season 3, Major Colvin, a
particularly enlightened commanding officer needs to get the murder
rates down.  He is tired of violence in his city, and is tired of
seeing families held hostage by drug dealers operating in their
neighborhoods.  Unlike many officers on the force, Major Colvin is
also from the streets of West Baltimore, and since he is in the
twilight of his career, Colvin decides to go against normal drugs laws
and implement an experiment partially legalizing drugs.

Major Colvin decides to open up a small zone in an uninhabited area
(about 3 city blocks) where drug dealing is permitted, but violence is
not.  The area is known as “Hamsterdam.”  Colvin cracks down on the
drug trade in other areas, and his police force patrols the perimeter
of the drug-free zone to maintain order.  The result is a potent
argument for the legalization of narcotics.  Violent crime in Colvin’s
district is brought to a near complete halt.  In fact, the drug
dealing crews themselves police against violence in their own
neighborhoods, because Colvin offers immunity from drug laws in
Hamsterdam under the condition they maintain the peace.  In the highly
populated areas of the Baltimore ghetto, where drug traffic was a
normal part of the streets, families see a reneissance of sorts.
Children are allowed out of the house, the corner boys are gone, and
the all-too-often stray bullets from shootouts no longer hold families
hostage.

This whole scheme, of course, is contrary to state and federal drug
laws already in place.  When Colvin’s plan is discovered, Colvin is
forced into early retirement.  Additionally, many the drug dealers he
had offered immunity to for peacefully selling in Hamsterdam are
caught in the political fallout, and are arrested and sent to jail.
The treatment of these drug dealers is legally questionable: many
would arguably be able to use the doctrine of entrapment as a defense.
Only one of the dealers, perhaps the brightest of his ilk, questions
the legality of his arrest.  Accordingly, Bodie is released, but the
rest of the corner boys who were not so astute end up in jail.

Furthermore, none of the drug lords–the higher ups–are arrested, as
they are insulated from the day-to-day drug trade.  As Hamsterdam is
dismantled, so is the peace in the neighborhoods.  The streets become
once again filled with corner boys, and the Baltimore ghettos become
as violent as ever as a new power struggle over two large drug crews
comes to a head.  Predictably, the politicians and higher echelon of
the police force take credit for the Hamsterdam drug bust, but really
all they did was arrest low-level dealers through entrapment and
return the temporarily peaceful ghetto of West Baltimore back to a
violent triangular drug war involving the police and two powerful
gangs.

While Colvin’s plan was not ideal, it at least conceded that violent
crimes and the drug trade cyclically fed each other, and that a novel
approach was in order.   The Hamsterdam project was but one example of
much needed experiment.  Rather than ignore the systematic failures in
place, Colvin tried something new, which worked in reducing crime.
Hamsterdam is fodder for implementing other drastic experiments in the
war on drugs. I do not profess to know the answer to how to fix the
America’s drug problem, but ignoring the demand that is present, and
arresting low-level dealers and addicts, in lieu of social reform,
seems a vast failure…especially on The Wire.

By: Kate Moore

Can the broken man embrace morality? This is the very question that is posed in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, and which our Law & Literature class examined.  I found it very interesting, that while Portia, appeared to be wise, explaining to Shylock that “Mercy is above this [the law’s] sceptred sway,” she was also quite foolish.  Although morality is one of the central tenets of this class, how could Portia reasonably believe that Shylock would desire nothing else but the law?  Shylock had been dehumanized and belittled for years by the Christians of Venice, and thus, when Antonio defaults on his loan, Shylock demands, as the original agreement between the two provided for, a pound of Antonio’s flesh.  The flesh itself was valueless, but Shylock could not see beyond the law, due to the years of torment he experienced.  Thus, Shylock could not embrace the moral sphere.  He was broken, and insane.  Morality meant nothing to him, when no one had ever shown him mercy or kindness.

Portia’s attempts at transforming Shylock, were therefore, offensive.  By adopting a “holier than thou” attitude, she completely disregarded everything that Shylock had experienced, perhaps making him even more hostile to the concept of being merciful and moral.  Shylock would never be what Portia desired, until the very thing she was requesting of Shylock; mercy, was shown to him.