Lin Yutang (between tears and laughter, Doubleday, 1940) posited a society of manners and decency, or a society of laws and lawyers. The lawyers, naturally, prefer the latter.
Real jobs? Reporting and lawying are real jobs, but they are completely out of whack, like an Asimov robot who can’t allow humans to get hurt, but must obey lawful commmands, so when they are given a lawful command that would expose humans to potential harm they lock up all the humans and take over.
Now we have two prestigious law schools, which is supposed to train lawyers to lawy, and they’re acting insane. Penn U wants to forbit the author of the offending article from teaching first year law students, and San Diego wants to examine students to see if they’ve been traumatized. I spent 18 years as a paralegal, and if a lawyer doesn’t have a cast iron psyche to begin with, he will not make it in the never-ending head butting contest that is litigation. A fragile little snowflake that needs to checked if he’s twawmatized by an editorial probably wouldn’t be able to put together a real estate closing.
Something is seriesly out of wack. It’s like a cnacer.
Laws are only necessary when culture fails. That says something about two subjects: (1) Our culture and (2) Folks who want unnecessary laws.