{ 2 bars + 3 stars }

An empty vessel

On my way to the gym yesterday after work, and who should I see standing right beside me in a drab grey suit at the corner of L and 17th Streets but one Donald Henry Rumsfeld, SECDEF from 1975–77 and 2001–06. There he was trying desperately to hail a cab, as if he had somewhere important to be. None would stop for him (though it was rush hour), and eventually he seemed resigned to the Metro.

Avoiding the controversial details, I will assume that everyone reading this post is keenly aware that Sec. Rumsfeld glibly authorized the ruthless torture of his fellow humans during the last administration’s so-called war on terror (pronounced ‘TURR-er’). May it comfort you to know that today, this moral coward is but a sad-looking old man, with history quick on his heels.

I myself was never so convinced that torture, somehow, is ‘un-American’. It is human nature to allow ourselves the intellectual comforts of means-justified ends — and Americans, after all, are humans. What bothers me to this very day is those who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that state-sanctioned simulated drowning, sleep deprivation, forced stress positions, etc., are indeed torture, the most evil brand of human deprivation. The eraser of mens’ souls. Not just the victims’ but also the torturers’, leaving men like Rumsfeld  haunted, empty vessels worthy only of our pity.

I have a juris doctor degree from one of the so-called T-14 law schools. In 1999, I was accepted, I moved across country, and was fraudulently induced into believing believed for certain all before me was milk and honey. I graduated three years later without a job or much reason to be optimistic: I was a classic middle-of-the-roader in a not-particularly-good economy, with a staggering amount of student loan debt to pay down (and no means to do it). Nevertheless, after several years of depression and struggle, through perseverance and luck (mostly luck) I found gainful employment as a lawyer for a virtually recession-proof federal agency. Luckier still, my work and workplace are more-or-less tolerable — if not enjoyable — and well balanced with the rest of my life. (The downside is that I still pay $1,200 per month to my lender, and will for the foreseeable future.)

With this history in mind, yesterday I read a thoughtful post on Balkinization by Prof. Brian Tamanaha of St. John’s University School of Law. He insists, and I wholeheartedly agree, that law professors are responsible for combating the fraud committed by the vast majority of their employers (i.e., American law schools), i.e., perpetuating the lie myth that a law degree is somehow a ticket to prosperity in the U.S. (Law schools, especially those among the lower ranks, routinely inflate their graduates’ employment rates and starting salaries as a means of duping would-be applicants, knowing full well that no matter their credit histories, law students will have no problem borrowing enough to cover the massive three-year costs of tuition, fees, books, living expenses, etc.)

At its heart, this scam is the same as those perpetrated by the subprime mortgage brokers. The schools know, just as the brokers knew, their jobs are done once the money changes hands. Just as the subprime mortgage bubble burst, so too will the law school bubble. Who knows who’ll be left holding the bag this time.

Systemic economic risks aside, law professors should combat law school fraud for moral reasons. They recognize the wrong and wield the only power capable of stopping it: their collective conscience. Yet the wrong has generated, and continues to generate each year, thousands of terminally bitter, unemployed, underemployed, and unemployable law school graduates with unpayable six-figurestudent loan debts. Young men and women who actually contemplate emigrating from the U.S. as a means of escaping their hopeless predicament. (If you don’t believe me, read some of the blogs cited by Prof. Tamanaha here, here, and here.)

If they do not act — and act soon — our law professors (with the possible exception of Prof. Tamanaha) will be tagged by history as the moral cowards who stood idle as centuries of American jurisprudence crumbled under the weight of simple greed.