A lot of (extremely nosey) people ask me why I dropped out of law school. After my faux-nebbish dissembling, about half the time I’ll give about half of the overall story: got there, figured out I couldn’t do what I set out to do, and started to hate law school and myself. That’s half true.
Sure, there was one case that made it easier: BMS v. Superior Court of CA. Between May 25th when I got my (overly, mystifyingly) generous scholarship package and August 28th when I started class, the ground upon which I’d made my calculation to go to law school had shifted. Without going in to the boring legalese for a paragraph or two, I’ll summarize: BMS made it impossible for me to do one of the three things I wanted to do. I had a theory of a way to essentially kamikaze the big petrol companies without regard for my potential disbarment. And after June 19th of 2017, that path more or less disappeared.
Now, that’s one avenue of analysis pertaining to why I got the fuck out, but it’s mainly an entry into the main idea: I wanted (want, let’s be real) to punish motherfuckers (primarily oil fuckers) and I quit because I figured out I couldn’t do it as quickly as I could taking other avenues.
Going in to law school, I thought that my passion was protecting the weak and voiceless. I really had some naive, insane internal image of a legal paladin, valiantly cutting swathes through a corrupt (but not irredeemable) legal system. Well, turns out that, uh, no: I like to attack and uh, no: the legal system is going to be closed off to people on my side of the divide for 30, maybe 50 years.
I want to attack–and bring low–the large and powerful. I want to see them embarrassed, sundered, broken. Justice is a fiction, but it’d be real nice to inflict our play-acted, preschool ideal on the obscenely rich and powerful men who have made the world into the hell my generation will try (and fail) to improve. But that’s not defense. That’s not becoming a public defender, or working with immigration law practices to ensure that people scooped up by ICE have the best possible* legal representation.
And the system is broken. It’s no coincidence that I return to finish this draft in the FBI-granted grace period for GOP senators to brainstorm reasons they’re going to confirm Justice Brett (BRETT!) despite his being an alcoholic rapist. Trump did what I hoped Obama would do in 2012 when I cast my first “Dems suck, but…” ballot in my life. (I wanted him to fill a bunch of judicial vacancies. Trump is outpacing him, thus far. We live in Hell.) You want change? Don’t look to the courts.
Mostly, law school taught me that I was wrong. Wrong about a great many things, including things I had taken for granted about myself. But the number one thing I learned I was wrong about was “how bad it’s actually going to be.” My whole law school thesis was based on three premises proved wrong in quick succession, but even if those had remained, I’d likely end up in the same place. Physics cannot be reasoned with; hydrology doesn’t care what your educational credentials are.
The interior west, and my home in particular, is fucked. There’s not enough water and there’s too many people. That’s the facts, ma’am, and there’s no way out. But in the process of coming to this conclusion, I started to look back at what I wanted to do in law school. I wanted (again, want) to punish the fuckers. They deserve it, and I want to be the one to give it to them.
At the time it may have been unspoken, but I now recognize a climate fatalism in the “punish the fuckers” thesis. Before I immersed myself in the true danger of the irrigation and agriculture of the Colorado River Basin, my Green Leftist take was “expropriate and go green” or some nonsense like that. I don’t even say that anymore, unless I’m in mixed company. I just don’t believe it can happen; the only thing we can get is punishment. It won’t fix anything, but goddammit it’ll make the people moving their lives 20 miles in from the coast or 100 miles closer to freshwater, or the people who remained from a deadly climate catastrophe, or the people who baked to death in the hot, ever hotter sun just an iota happier, I’d like to think.
And, honestly, who cares if the punishment doesn’t solve anything, if we’re so fucked that there’s no coming back? They deserve it.