my fears about my law degree
When I enrolled a few years ago, I was worried how studying law would have the potential to influence my values in ways I might not agree with. I can’t speak for other areas and countries, but where I’m from, law degrees are seemingly loved by wealthy neoliberals and conservatives, especially people with nobility titles in their name. From the outside, it seems like a rich people pursuit, many influential works written by the aristocracy here ages ago, and attracting those who are after a high income and the prestige that comes with calling yourself a lawyer (for some reason). They seem to be big fans of authority, installing a police state, and state violence in general. There are areas of law largely untouched since the Nazi times that still include Nazi viewpoints.
I don’t see myself in that. I’m not coming from a line of nobility, I grew up fairly poor, and I don’t share these political values. I was worried that studying it might mean I become a cop apologist, an incarceration lover, and an exploitative free market enthusiast (to summarize it).
Now a few years in, I can thankfully say none of it came true. The professors, the mentors, the study group leaders are all fiercely critical of the law and rather left-leaning. My criminal law mentor was always openly hostile to incarceration and cited studies proving it is ineffective. I saw that studying law had nothing to do with real world application of it and what police make of it, so it didn’t touch that at all.
I saw the worst not from my study materials, but from other students; like one saying that a mentally ill man shouldn’t be exempt from going to prison for stealing food due to his mental illness, because it wouldn’t be fair to others and goes against her view of justice, and more. But whenever something like that happened, the professors and other students came together to argue against that. I found my fears of being fed state propaganda that demonizes the poor and marginalized and loves capitalism via a degree were unfounded; instead I found myself proven right again that many authoritarian regime fans without empathy are initially attracted to a law degree because of exactly the assumptions and fears I had. But their views aren’t tolerated.
I had people in my life confused that I would be studying this because of the view from the outside; they know how I think, and I don’t fit in, and law is just seen as something to enact violence with and protect property, not people (which to be fair: it very largely is).
But my rationale is also this: These are the rules we live under, even if we don’t want to, and knowing them is better than not. It gives you power to research, read and understand complicated legalese, and seek better help. It closes some gaps you can be exploited through: it’ll give you the tools and knowledge to spot loopholes or illegal or ineffective clauses in your rental contract, work contract or more. That’s stuff you now wouldn’t sign or can actively challenge that you wouldn’t have detected before. It makes you aware of rights you didn’t know you had and all that makes it easier to provide aid to one another this way.
You learn that you don’t just have to abide, you can fight back within the same system for now. You’re no longer helplessly bound to what some cop or landlord blurts angrily at you, abusing their authority to make you believe lies that serve them. You’ll understand more of what your lawyer does and says if you ever need one (“the lawyer that represents himself has a fool for a client”). If you choose to go into an area of law that has teeth, you can do more against what you think plagues the world than protest and donate. It empowers you and you don’t have to just become a cog in the wheel of some company. You can - if the right laws exist, persist or get created - hold companies accountable for pollution, fraud, illegal data collection, discrimination and more. Students I know wanna become environmental lawyers and judges, for example, and others want to go into labor law to further protect employees from illegal exploitation. My fulltime work is about complying with medical regulatory laws so pharma companies don’t poison us for profit. You don’t have to be interested in, or in support of, law that protects oppressors and criminalizes groups of people.
I personally always love to see companies bleed, and my personal interest is data protection law. I just see a potentially exciting future for that in connection to social media, AI, smart home devices and more. Just look at what happened today with the AI Act.
When the right laws exist, I can use them, and when they don’t, I can be loud and vote and vote with my money to increase the chance. Of course it’s not good enough - nothing ever is - but we can’t just wait until things are different, we have to start the work under the current circumstances with the routes that are available to us.
I’ll close this with one key experience I had in 2017 - I was with a big group of people protesting a (literal, actual) Nazi march in my city - standing and blocking their route - and the cops illegally encircled us and kept us in the cold and rain without access to toilets for 5+ hours. They let passersby into the circle, but not out, so soon after there were equally as many casual shoppers than protesters in it. People next to me had to cancel plans because they accidentally got inside. This was done to increase the numbers enough so it would qualify for an illegal gathering (because it was bigger than registered for). Afterwards, they collected our personal info and said legal action would follow. Of course it didn’t - it was just to intimidate us, no law was broken, but they scared a bunch of kids with that, including me. When the circle lifted, a bunch of people had gathered to bring us tea, blankets, and gave us contact info to lawyers helping us free of charge in case anything happened, while also already calming us down with legal knowledge explaining nothing would happen. That’s how law can be, too, and how knowledge of the law can aid people. More people should have the courage to follow that and provide this to groups of resistance.
Reply via email
Published 03 Feb, 2025