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Features
Virginia Law Weekly
This Week in
U.Va. Law History
From the Annals of the Law Weekly
1948: The second Virginia Law Weekly ever hits Mr.
Jefferson’s Law School. Students pay ten cents per issue,
or $3.00 for a 30-week subscription. For the record, the
Law Weekly is now free, though we’d gladly accept
donations.
Another thing—career services operates a bit differently.
The Placement Office is the “nerve center of an
organization whose extremities touch all forty eight
states” [emphasis added]. Each state has an alumni
committee that advises students as to local conditions and
assists them in finding work. Some state committees have
GPA requirements (New York’s alumni committee set
theirs at 2.7). Oh, and previous passage of a bar exam is
preferred. As of this week in 1948, there are 94
employment opportunities. Makes you appreciate CASE,
no?
1950s, 60s, 70s: Today marks the end of the first week of
school. Ah, the good ol’ days.
1969: U.Va. Law introduces a 4-category grading system
and abolishes letter grades. Ah, the 60s.
1987: ANG, that bastion of prophecy, reports that “We at
the Law Weekly love personal computers. Every week,
we spend several hours perched in front of our keyboards
and screens working to get this publication out. Yes, we
understand the limitations of the computer. One of these
limitations is in the classroom. For those who haven’t
noticed, a certain local law student has taken to bringing
his portable PC to class with him. As the professor
lectures, this high-tech note-taker hammers out a pulsating
beat with his keyboard. Undoubtedly, a new SBA policy
governing computers in the classroom will be
forthcoming, but until they act, the Law Weekly makes
this humble suggestion of courtesy: leave your PC at home
and buy a pen. Thanks.”
1994: Peer advisor women make the following plea:
“Attention, all second- and third-year men who are
desperately trying to scam on first-year women! The
women Peer Advisors are not in any way a dating
service….”
Additionally, the NGSL begs softball players to stop
discarding beer cans on the ground at Copeley Field after
the University threatened to shut down the league.
1996: A young lady at
the Law School is the
subject
of
an
entertaining personal ad
(address omitted to
protect
Sanjit’s
privacy). Read on:
1999: “Couples,” an oil painting affectionately dubbed
“Hounds of Hell” by the student body, mysteriously
disappears from Withers-Brown Hall, as discovered by
Dean Bergen around 7:30 a.m. on a Monday morning.
Friday, September 21, 2001
Bueller?…Bueller?…Anyone?…Anyone?
Social Norms and Intellectual Sparring at U.Va. Law
Normally I am a news writer,
and this column marks a departure from that role. But it was
provoked by news—if you accept
the definition of “news” to include
Andreas Stargard raising his hand
after a guest lecture last week.
Jonathan Riehl, a
third-year law
student, is the Law
Weekly News Editor.
The lecturer was the Right Honorable Lord Slynn of Hadley, one
of the United Kingdom’s 12 most
senior judges—roughly equivalent
to our Supreme Court. Lord Slynn
was delivering a talk on his role in
the series of lawsuits seeking the
extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from the
U.K., where he was arrested for
violations of international law.
Slynn was part of a minority
that voted against extradition.
He is not a poster child for legal
human rights activists.
I think most of the hundredplus listeners at that lecture
will remember Mr. Stargard’s
question.
Using various invectives and
aggressive adjectives, Stargard
delivered one of those “questions” which seem to go on for
quite a while before showing
much evidence of containing an
actual query. There was a
query, though, by way of near
verbal attack on the speaker: a
demand to know why the Right
Honorable Lord had adopted a
self-validating legal rationale
that was, Stargard declared,
“evident to anyone who had
been listening.” And then there
was point two, an insinuation
that the speaker had no sympathy for the families of the
victims of Pinochet’s regime.
Let me say right off that
when it comes to the actual debate
at hand, my sympathies probably
lie more with Mr. Stargard. But I
was stunned at the way he spoke
up. I don’t think I was alone.
This incident prompted me to a
consideration of what is “normal”
in the daily exchanges occurring
in our classrooms between students and teachers. Here: a very
respected man had just spoken, in
markedly lucid and humble manner. He had been promptly and
aggressively questioned by a passionate, if not terribly diplomatic,
intellectual opponent.
seems that my experience here at
Virginia Law has been more
marked by the phenomena of
teachers producing vast quantities of pregnant pauses—or simply rolling along, having become
accustomed to the idea that no one
was going to have anything to say;
or that when people did speak up
they did so more to garner participation points than to contest an
idea.
I should qualify all of this by
saying that I have yet to encounter a professor here who, when a
student did seriously or aggressively question an idea, did not
take the time to seriously and adequately address him or her. I
have no reason to believe that intellectual curiosity is frowned upon
by the faculty.
So what keeps us quiet? Apathy? Fear? Peer pressure?
(C’mon, nobody’s doing it….)
Maybe we are so eager to hear
professorial pronouncement
that we dare not risk the minutes required to question something objectionable. Maybe,
happily, it’s just that so little
we’re taught here, in the vast
annals of the law, is actually
objectionable (set aside
“wrong”).
Perhaps it’s just that
whether something is objectionable or not simply does not
matter as long as we get our B+
(and our J.D.). Maybe we just
don’t care enough to speak up;
maybe speaking up is irrelevant. These are only professors, after all. This is only
school. What does this have to
do with being a real lawyer,
anyway?
So—Mr. Stargard, I do hope
you’ve read to the end of this
photo by Courtney Masini column. Before you write an
angry letter to the editor, let
“Students, meet Apathy. Apathy,
me be clear: I applaud you. Yes,
meet...”
I think you were impolite in
far distance from the norm.
your manner. But you were reMuch more common has become freshing in your readiness to questhe experience of sitting through a tion. None of us here today, as far
class and wondering why no one as I know, suffered at the hands of
was speaking up, even when in- Augusto Pinochet. But the former
vited. The whole of criminal law, dictator, a man who violated just
and no debate of real depth over about every right we learn to regun control or capital punishment? spect and uphold here in our studClass after class dealing with ra- ies, escaped trial for his wrongs
cial injustice, affirmative action; thanks in part to arguments that
voting rights; regulation and taxa- Lord Slynn of Hadley’s vote helped
tion of corporate wealth; enforce- justify. You were the only one upment (or not) of international en- set enough to be indignant; I have
vironmental and human rights written a column calling you imtreaties; fundamental questions polite.
about the ethics of lawyering…. It
It’s something to think about.
This type of thing doesn’t go on
around here very much.
In fact, thinking back over the
past two years, I am hard-pressed
to remember more than a handful
of situations where a student actively and seriously challenged the
intellectual conclusions (or premises) presented by a professor. I
can recall an exchange between a
fellow 1L contracts student and
Paul Mahoney over Williams v.
Walker-Thomas Furniture and social justice (the 1965 case deals
with unequal bargaining power
and “unconscionability” in the context of furniture repossession from
a poor single mother in Washington, D.C.). I have been in two seminars that engendered some lively
talk. But those situations have
proven to be the exception, and a
Computer Labs Revamped
by Tanya Wang ’03
If you were not here this summer, then you were lucky and
missed all the construction, flying
sawdust, wobbly metal supports,
and “Do Not Enter” signs at the
back hall of Slaughter. Now that
school has started, the building
has a fresh look and is now
equipped with two computer labs
filled with 40 new Dell Dimension
8100 computers that are for the
exclusive use of law students,
hence the ubiquitous question for
the first two weeks of school,
“What is an NT password?”
Returning students will remember that the old computer
lab in Slaughter Hall had 80 computers that were open to the public. So why the change? Bill
Bergen, Assistant Dean for Administrative Services, commented
that the old lab was designed in a
different era—an era being just a
few years long. University ITC
opened the University-run computer lab in 1996. The lab was
open to anyone in the University
and, in practice, to the public.
The lab was often crowded with
people not from the Law School.
Dean Bergen called it an “attrac-
tive nuisance.” Many people came
at night because it was a good
facility with nearby parking. Some
of the minor vandalism and inci-
photo by Brian Gist
Will my ebay password work?
dents of theft could very well have
been linked to the fact that the lab
was open to the public.
This is the first year that all
students were required to purchase laptops as incoming students. With the wireless technology and some of the Ethernet plugs
around the Law School, the usage
of labs is not as important as it
was just a few years ago, especially since the use of these computers was traditionally for e-mail
and non-Law School related purposes.
During 1995-97, one of the suggested renovations was to put in
power outlets and Ethernet connections in the classrooms. While
Gary Banks, the Assistant Dean
for Information Technology, supported the power outlets, he was
almost alone in wanting the Law
School to go wireless. The University went ahead and put in
outlets and Ethernet connections
in all of the Central Grounds classrooms. Gary Banks’ foresight, as
Dean Bergen noted, saved the
Law School a lot of money.
When the Student-Faculty
Center opens in January, there
will be six stand-up computers
along the walls in Hunton & Williams Hall. These computers, similar to the ones in the Caplin Reading Room on the first floor of the
library, will still be open to the
public.