The law is not for everyone
This will probably be long and jump from one topic to another more times than necessary to be readable, but I really need to write it.
The problem is, itâs impossible to be enough for law unless youâre a great actor. Thereâs nothing wrong with the subject itself, actually Iâm proud to say I think my countryâs legal system is pretty decent compared to others, the problem is the people. And I know, everyone knows this, tale as old as time, law students are assholes, whatever. But I think itâs more than that. Before starting university I used to hear complaints from people outside the field who had to deal with these demons, and Iâd just say it probably wasnât that bad, and that I definitely wouldnât become one of them. Now that Iâm in the lionâs den, I WISH I could become one of them, because being aware of this peopleâs insanity is going to make me rip every strand of hair out of my head. The point is, I have a different perspective on how irritating people in law are because Iâm surrounded by them instead of looking from the outside, and the conclusion I reached is that itâs more complex than just pretentiousness and arrogance.
First, now that Iâm going into my fourth semester, I realized professors constantly go back to subjects that should already have been absorbed by everyone, and I donât mean that in an annoying âperfect studentâ way where I think everybody should memorize every single piece of information, I mean the foundations of legal understanding, things necessary to understand ANYTHING else. At first I thought it was just kindness from them, little reminders to make class more didactic for people who might be distracted or something, but as we started getting practical activities where students had to explain their reasoning out loud and share ideas, I realized it was genuinely necessary.
The best example I can give is something that happened last week in a public administration class, where we had to judge, in the role of a committee, whether a public employeeâs actions were inappropriate and what procedure should be applied. The case study was delicate and controversial, it involved depression and other psychiatric issues. Me and my partner chose a middle ground because it would be easier to present something like that instead of fully going with what we actually wanted, which was showing a little humanity. What surprised me was how radical our choice seemed compared to the rest of the class, who as a WHOLE chose severe punishments. When the professor questioned them, more than one pair said something that genuinely left me speechless, they chose punishment to avoid creating âprecedentsâ. In simple words, they wanted to make an example out of one person. This isnât uncommon in law, but it caught me off guard and sparked this inexplicable anger in me.
The thing is, since the first semester one of the things professors constantly have to remind the class about are the basics from our very first subject, âHistory and Introduction to the Study of Lawâ. The professor for that class, who was amazing by the way, did everything she could to make us absorb simple ideas like legal equality, the supremacy of human dignity within the legal system, and why legal positivism was abandoned. That last topic has to be revisited way more times than should be allowed for a third-semester class, since professors have connected that ideology to authoritarian regimes like Nazism more than once, which should honestly be shocking enough already. But apparently it isnât. I literally had to raise my hand and argue with one of the classmates who wanted to punish this fictional character because, according to him, âhis actions already have punishments established by law and it should be followed.â The professor agreed with me when I insisted on something a 12-year-old should understand: the law should serve the people, not the people the law and all of that. Law HAS to be interpreted and analyzed subjectively according to the concrete case, everybody has the right to be judged for their own actions and circumstances without worrying about âprecedentsâ or whether the law itself is adequate or unfair. Itâs not even some controversial take, Brazilian law literally allows for this kind of interpretation and gives judges interpretative authority. Thatâs basic maintenance of justice, one of the tools used to fill gaps in the law.
Something similar happened in a digital law class. Recently weâve had a lot of training on how to use AI in law in an appropriate and âethicalâ way, within the limits of what can even be considered ethical while using AI. In this specific class the professor opened a discussion by asking what we thought about judicial decisions being made exclusively by AI, and whether weâd change our minds if there were a judge supervising it. Of course this issue is deeper than it seems at first glance, it opens discussions about unintentional bias both from judges and from AI systems, but to my surprise my classmates, who are decades older than me, one of them literally a computer engineer who knows way more about AI than I do, said he thought it was a great idea, that AI isnât biased, and that it would lead to fairer outcomes, more aligned with the letter of the law. Once again, it feels like legal positivism genuinely isnât a problem to them. I try to imagine they just forgot, but part of me insists on thinking itâs actual cruelty. They wouldnât care about blindly following the letter of the law if it said to fucking machine-gun someone for stealing bread, because thatâs whatâs written and therefore shouldnât be questioned. Thinking AI is less biased than a human being is already ignorant on its own, AI is driven by prompts, somebody put those values there.
Those situations wouldnât irritate me so much if I thought it was just stupidity on their part, but for that Iâd have to think Iâm smarter than them, and I know thatâs not true, so I just assume itâs intentional, which is somehow even more absurd than thinking Iâm intellectually superior, because that would mean theyâre horrible people and Iâm morally better, and I hate feeling snobbish. Feeling proud somehow puts me closer to the classic asshole law student position.
The problem is that thereâs no escaping it when it feels like this is whatâs considered acceptable, like this is simply how things are supposed to be. Law isnât for everyone. I constantly have to build this vulgar confidence just to keep sitting in that classroom, and it usually has to come from some ugly place of contempt and superiority inside me, because thatâs the only thing strong enough to keep me standing there. And itâs not to fit in, itâs to try NOT to fit in while still staying there. Itâs kind of contradictory, but I need to become the kind of bad I already know so I donât become the kind of bad they are.
I think a lot of people donât hate the formalities of law the way I do because either they donât have to adapt to them, or they simply never question them because âthatâs just how itâs always beenâ, and for most people thereâs no problem with it continuing that way. To me itâs infuriating to walk into a classroom wearing eyeliner, my leather jacket, facial piercings, and green hair and see most people around me dressed formally even though their jobs donât require any of that yet, and they sit in the same classroom as me and take the same exams as me and get grades similar to mine, but unlike me, they belong there. And it sounds like I do this on purpose, like Iâm different just for the sake of being different, but for once this genuinely isnât about me. I walk around campus and see people from healthcare fields, degrees just as serious and respected as law, honestly even more necessary, and theyâre such diverse, authentic people. The seriousness of the field doesnât strip away their individuality because it doesnât need that to prove its importance. Everybody already knows that work is essential to humanity and regardless of how you present yourself or behave, youâll be respected because people will need you.
Law on the other hand acts like a pathetic whore (sorry for the misogynistic term). It constantly needs to show off and prove its importance. The people studying it need to perform this posture that isnât genuine at all just to prove a value that anyone actually inside the environment realizes is pure theater. And if it really were theater it would at least be better because it would have artistic value and provoke different emotions in people. Law just causes fear and inferiority in those who arenât inside that stage.
I could say a lot more about nepotism, about the sadistic glorification of criminal law where nobody admits how weirdly fascinated they are by it and instead keep constantly bringing it up in this almost perverted superficial way, about maintaining capitalism and the elites, about how itâs probably going to be almost impossible for people like me to find work outside public service exams, or about how networking is basically impossible if you donât drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, or cocaine too honestly but thatâs still just a suspicion I havenât been able to prove yet, but that would add another ten paragraphs and I need to feel a little more anger before continuing. >-<