Ever notice how Nike likes to name their sneaker styles Air [Insert Lofty Adjective Here]? It seems that they're either running out of good words to use, or someone didn't bother to consult the dictionary. I was in a shoe store a few years ago and saw signs selling a sneaker called "Air Trepidation." Right. That's a shoe I really want to have. I think. Or maybe not. I'm not really sure, can I get back to you?
The above came to mind because the emotion I've been strongly feeling today on the eve of orientation is one of trepidation, and I was trying to figure out why. As mentioned yesterday, residual stress has taken its toll, but I think there's something else on my mind.
I've been reading a lot more lately about SCO, and the RIAA, and various other high tech civil liberties issues and I think it's triggering a fear I wasn't prepared to deal with, or at least wasn't expecting to deal with right now. Part of the reason I wanted to go to law school was to fix things that are broken in the law. But what if the more I learn, the more I find out that the law isn't necessarily broken; that to fix the things that I think need fixing would undermine things that actually work.
I knew that there might be a conflict between my generic sense of justice and actual legal mechanics but I glibly dismissed it in my initial post. Today I find it giving me pause. As I watch the utter destructive arrogance of groups like SCO and the RIAA I want to start jumping in right now and weigh in in the fight. But I feel hampered. Hampered by the fact that law school itself will suck up most of my bandwidth, and, I fear, hampered by what will inevitably be an ever growing realization of how little I know.
I guess the question boils down to how I can affect positive change without being paralyzed by the daunting task before me. But maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. It's as if I expect that as I start learning about the law, it will be like digging a well. The further I dig into it, the deeper the pit I'll find myself in. But perhaps there is instead a more constructive analogy - literally - where the more work I put into my studies, the stronger the foundation I will have for my forays into fixing what's wrong in the world.
And there's another reason for optimism which the SCO example illustrates. There's a lot of legal and technological experts who are appalled by their behavior and find it anithetical to various legal tenets. Take, for instance, the GPL, which SCO has unilaterally decided to declare invalid, despite the position of those who created it, complied with it, or enforced their rights under it. It makes me think that perhaps to affect legal change you DON'T necessarily need to know what you are talking about... So imagine what I can accomplish if I do.