the "Ivory Tower"


With all due respect to Chris Edley, whom I admire, and the University of California, to which I owe a great deal, I think Edley's position on John Yoo gets it exactly wrong--and epitomizes why people deride the "Ivory Tower" as insulated from reality.
 
Law schools have an obligation to do more than teach lawyers to offer legal advice without regard for the consequences of their counsel. I also think that law schools ought to model behavior for their students and think very seriously about the pedagogical impact of retaining a man on the faculty whose legal advice and scholarship produced such disastrous policy, to say nothing of the suffering of those on the receiving end of Yoo's ideas.
 
And I think Edley's position wrongfully absolves lawyers, and the legal academy, of responsibility for when they get things wrong--or when their counsel produces terrible outcomes. As my colleague Deborah Pearlstein points out, we wouldn't accept that result in molecular biology or medicine or many other disciplines. I don't think we should accept it in the law, either--not in practice and not in law school, either. Academic freedom should not be a dodge for personal or professional responsibility.

0 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: the "Ivory Tower".

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.radicalism.us/mt/mt-tb.cgi/188

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait published on October 22, 2008 8:26 PM.

an easy mistake was the previous entry in this blog.

Legal Loopholes to Continue Torture is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Students Section

Law Students
&
Campus Rebels


UC Berkeley Billboard

press conference, protest, photos, video, reports

Donations via PayPal
are not tax deductible.


SF Bay Area Events

click here for
the complete calendar



Important Reading

Physicians for Human Rights
Broken Laws, Broken Lives

NLG White Paper
ON THE LAW OF TORTURE...

The President's Executioner



  AUTHOR'S LOGIN

Contact

info@firejohnyoo.org

Authors

Firejohnyoo.org contributors
are members of
The NO TO TORTURE -
JOHN YOO MUST GO!

coalition, Berkeley, CA


Linda Rigas ( email )
  Student/Academic Organizer
Sharon Adams
  The National Lawyers Guild
Curt Wechsler
  The World Can't Wait
Don Spark
  The World Can't Wait