Terra Extraneus

Several things have been brought to my attention this week that seem to deserve scrutiny. They are at best loosely connected, it would objectively seem, but,…well, maybe they are connected.

Money Magazine’s latest edition listed the best professions based on various criteria and lawyering was listed. That surprised me, given that it takes three years of graduate school or six years of night graduate school, and a bar examination in most states, to enter the profession. Then, it takes several years of practice to become sufficiently experienced to be of real value. Professor Irving Younger asserted it took 25 jury trials for a trial lawyer to be experienced.

But, Richard Barlow, writing in The Boston Globe, developed the theory that burnout, a persistent problem among legal practitioners, could be cured or prevented if lawyers developed a personal spiritual quest. Personally, I think he is right. But, the point not to be missed is that the need for such cure and prevention, is undeniable in the profession. He quotes a six year old study that indicated that 75% of the members of the profession were not terribly happy with their career choices or paths. Money Magazine did not seem to find the study in their research regarding “good jobs.”

In the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Allen K. Harris, a respected commentator on attorney ethics, made the bizarre claim in his recent article, “The Influence of the Socratic Method on Law Students,” that the “Socratic Method” was somehow warping attorneys into “meanness” and “blind insistence” on client’s rights with a “serious lack of a spirit of compromise.”

First, the Socratic Method is rarely used in law schools. Students usually listen to lecture after lecture in class after class, and rarely are called upon to recite or defend assertions about case book materials. Most teachers of the law are not by personality sufficiently combative to keep up such banter for more than a few minutes, much less every hour of every class or with every student. Most law school classes have so many students that even if students were subjected to the Socratic Method, they could only be participants for a few moments in a semester, if ever.

Second, Mr. Harris seems unaware of the numbers of cases that settle each year without full trial proceedings. Relatively few cases go to trial. Thus, the “spirit of compromise” seems alive and well. While some lawyers are ill mannered, combative or litigious, the vast majority counsel cost-effective dispute resolution. Thus, mediation and arbitration have come to dominate most types of civil litigation.

Nevertheless, even though the opening thrust of Mr. Harris’ article is, frankly, ludicrous, his point is probably impossible to dismiss, and that is that law schools should integrate professional responsibility and ethics education rather than teaching professional ethics merely as a collection of rules to be committed to memory. Mr. Harris wants lawyers to be moral creatures in order to be ethical lawyers. In that sense, he may be in complete agreement with Mr. Barlow. Mr. Harris, however, would have to admit that sometimes, no matter how ethical or moral the lawyers involved may be, a trial is necessary. Some clients cannot get their own stability back without a day in court and the chance to tell their side of the story. One of the reasons mediation is so effective is that it gives clients a chance to tell their story.

Texas Lawyer Magazine reported that the dean of the law school I attended resigned because the law school fell in the US News and World Reports 2007 rankings of accredited law schools to 70th place out of 180 accredited law school that achieve mention on the ranking list. While I do not doubt the quality of the list, I simply doubt its enduring significance and was stunned it would be career determinative for a law school dean. The dean, she was not the dean while I was a student in the 1970s, ended a six year tenure rather than supervising implementation of a plan to improve the school’s rankings. After all, there is always next year’s list, to loosely quote most sports fans.

So, what did we learn from these seemingly disparate reports? The profession is still thought of as desirable as a vocation, so much so that a law school dean might lose popular support for failing to maintain the ranking of a law school and reducing, allegedly, the marketability of the graduates. But, the focus on marketability, graduating, employment, and making a living, seems to have crowded out spiritual values, and maybe moral values, leaving only ethical constraints.

Mr. Harris’ proposal to integrate teaching about professionalism, rather than teach it just as a separate class, will fail, if Mr. Barlow is correct, because morality and spirituality are being de-emphasized, and may be defeated in the lives of practitioners by over emphasis on the technical or economic aspects of practice. Mr. Harris must recognize that a mere fall in annual rankings in a media list can bring about a change in law school administrations. Discussion of the alteration of the entire curriculum to integrate professionalism, or even morality, will not be possible in such an environment. Worse, Mr. Harris must evaluate Mr. Barlow’s position and decide if integrated professionalism and ethics curriculum, without morality, or even spirituality, yes, even faith, will make any difference at all.

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President Bush will be the commencement speaker at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater on May 6. He makes the third president to do so, following his dad, George H.W. Bush in 1990, and Richard M. Nixon in 1974.

Why is President Bush coming to Oklahoma? Perhaps to give a boost to Republican candidates in Oklahoma’s gubernatorial and congressional races this year. Gov. Brad Henry is one of 12 Democratic incumbents up for re-election this year. Or perhaps fellow Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens had something to do with it. Pickens is an Oklahoma native and OSU (Oklahoma A&M) grad. The stadium at which Bush will deliver his address is named Boone Pickens Stadium.

The previous OSU presidential visits did not lead to better days for the chiefs. Richard Nixon resigned from office less than three months later, in August 1974. Bush the Elder temporarily lost his political sanity just a few months after his Stillwater visit, signing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act in November 1990, which raised federal taxes. Voters who remembered Bush’s “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge denied him a second term in 1992. It is too early to speak of the “OSU Presidential Curse,” but it will be interesting to watch George W.’s fate during the next few months.

University of Oklahoma at Norman graduates will hear Katie Couric speak on May 12.

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What kind of leader are you?

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In my article, “Let’s Make English Official Language, No Matter What French-Lovers Say,” I responded to Rep. Ernest Istook’s proposal to declare English our official language. Istook, Oklahoma’s 5th District congressman, is a Republican candidate for governor this year. In response to that article, Stephen Heggy has commented:

This sounds like more of a vote-getting ploy to cater to the rural groups in Oklahoma. Istook has to fight the pro-Democrat farmers and this is one way to do it (sadly).

Mr. Heggy is a freshman political science major at Oklahoma State University. He also happens to be the son of one of the authors of this blog.

Stephen, I’m not sure you are right that Istook’s nativistic attitude plays better in rural Oklahoma than in the suburbs (like the OKC suburb of Warr Acres, where Istook lives). Here in the Southwest, rural citizens are becoming increasingly accustomed to living and working alongside Hispanic immigrants (whether legal or otherwise) from Mexico and other Latin American countries. I think perhaps it is in the suburbs where you are more likely to find those people who so dearly cherish sameness. Same houses, same cars, skin the same pale shade of brown, and the peculiar longing for just one language.

In rural Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and the states west of here, immigrants have become a vital part of the economy, especially in such sectors as farming and meat-processing. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group, has prepared an excellent 44-page report, Unauthorized Migrants. According to that report:

• About 65% of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are employed. That includes all unauthorized migrants: men, women, children and senior citizens. About 92% of the adult male illegal immigrants are employed.
• How are they employed? 33% in the service industry (e.g., hotels, domestics, food service); 17% in construction and extraction; 16% in production, installation and repair; 3% farming.

More importantly, looking at it from the perspective of the rural economy:
• Unauthorized migrants comprise 23% of all workers employed in U.S. farming occupations.
• They comprise 12% of all workers in meat-packing and meat-processing occupations.

On Monday, millions of citizens and immigrants participated in rallies across the country objecting to the draconian immigration measures desired by those on the far right. Rallies took place in such places as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Garden City, Kansas.

Garden City, Kansas? That’s right, demonstrations were staged in several Kansas cities, including 3,000 protestors in Garden City, a city of 30,000 in Southwest Kansas that is nearly 50% Hispanic. Garden City is the site of a huge Tyson meat-packing plant as well as other food manufacturers.

This blog comment by a Kansas resident is instructive:

They [Garden City] are about 20 years ahead of many other meat packing cities out there. My own hometown, Great Bend, continues to have a dwindling population. Vrtually the only newcomers are Hispanic, and let me tell you, they were NOT greeted with open arms when I was in high school 15 years ago. It was embarrassing and shameful. I’m pleased to say that slow but steady changes in attitude have occurred, now that people in the town recognize that most of the new businesses and homeowners are Hispanics. My own xenophobic parents have started praising the “hard working attitude” of these folks, and rave about their cooking. My linguistically challenged mother started taking conversational Spanish classes.

My impression of Garden City is that they recognized this earlier than most small western Kansas meatpacking towns, and offered incentives for migrants to become locals, including things like assisting them in obtaining loans to start businesses and own homes. The migrant-turned-community member is who will make or break these small, dying towns. Embrace the influx of migrants and turn them into townies, or turn the cold shoulder, and watch your town continue to wither and die.

But the Stepfordites are so enamored of pale skin and the Queen’s English that they are willing to cut off their own upturned noses to spite their faces. They have not given much thought to what would happen to our economy if we somehow deported all 12 million illegal immigrants overnight. Conservative columnist George Will calculates that it would take 200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska to deport all illegals. Besides, Will observes, “There are no plausible incentives to get [them] to board the buses.” In “Guard the Borders - And Face Facts, Too,” Will writes:

Conservatives should want, as the president proposes, a guest worker program to supply what the U.S. economy demands — immigrant labor for entry-level jobs. Conservatives should favor a policy of encouraging unlimited immigration by educated people with math, engineering, technology or science skills that America’s education system is not sufficiently supplying. And conservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society’s crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English. Faux conservatives absurdly call this price tag on legal status “amnesty.”

But I doubt that most white suburbanites care much more about the fate of rural America than they care about the needs of foreign-born workers. So let me talk about something middle-class and upperclass suburb-dwellers care about: cost of living. According to the aforementioned Pew report, from 20% to 30% of many construction-related skills are provided in the U.S. by unauthorized migrants. We’re talking about painters, roofers, dry-wallers, tile-layers, cement and brick masons and the like. So, before you pack up all of those illegals and send them back home, you better make sure you have all of your home remodeling and repair projects done. And if you’re planning on trading up to a nicer home, you better do it now. Because once you remove all the illegal aliens, the cost of construction, maintenance and repair in the suburbs is going to go sky high. Now are we talking about something you care about?

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Good piece by columnist Maggie Galagher on the immigration/border debate. An excerpt:

“Don’t call me anti-immigration. Count me among the 17 percent of Americans in the new Pew poll who say they’d support raising the legal immigration quotas. I’m also vigorously opposed to any law that criminalizes charity for people who need food, clothing or medical care. But I do want one thing from Congress: Come up with a plan to secure our borders. What about the 12 million people already here? As far as I can tell, they are not a crisis. Certainly the pro-immigration lobby says these people are good for the economy, so why the urgency about documenting them?”

Galagher cites poll numbers which show the American people are conflicted on this hot issue. See the whole piece: “Politicians Ought to Start at the Border to Fix Immigration.”

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I have a simple question for those on the far right who not only want beefed up border security, but also are vehemently opposed to any kind of guest worker program or other proposal that would allow the millions of illegal immigrants who are already living peacefully and productively in the U.S. to achieve legal status. My question: What are you afraid of?

Is it human beings you dislike? Do you look upon each additional person who enters our country as a burden? Is each additional human just another problem to deal with? Do you live by a “scarce resources mentality?” The fewer human beings the better? The fewer people, the bigger your piece of pie? By the same reasoning, do you support abortion and euthanasia?

Or is it that the majority of illegal immigrants to the U.S. are from Mexico and other Latin American countries? Is it Hispanics/Latinos that you dislike? If so, what is it about Latin Americans that you dislike so much? Is it the color of their skin? Is it their language? Is it the music they listen to?

Is it that most Latin Americans are full or part Native American? Is it actually Native Americans you dislike?

Or is your issue that the vast majority of illegal immigrants lived in desperate poverty in their native country, and they came to the U.S. looking for work to support their families? Is it the fact that they are so poor that makes them so distasteful to you? Do you consider poor people an irritation, an eyesore, a burden, a threat? Are we back to dividing up that pie? Are you worried you won’t get a big enough piece?

Which is it? That they are poor? Or Native American? Or Hispanic? Or brown-skinned? Or do you just hate all humans? I would love to hear an explanation.

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Heavy cell phone use linked to brain tumors. The Swedish study defines heavy use as 2,000 hours or more cumulative lifetime — which equals an hour/day for 5-1/2 years.

I hate talking on the phone. Probably average 10 minutes a day tops on the cell phone. Even at that low level, I’ll hit 2,000 hours in 33 years. That’s OK for me, I didn’t get my first cell phone until my late 40s. But kids who start out at age 10 or 12 with their own phones and spend hours a day in the yakosphere may be in for trouble. An hour a day starting at age 12 will put a kid in the danger zone before age 18.

Kids (and other humans) need to yack less and blog more. Carpal tunnel is better than a brain tumor.

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