Switching on the car radio while running an errand, I happened to hear Pride in the Name of Love, U-2's stirring song about Martin Luther King Jr.
Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
When Bono sang these lines, it reminded me of a conversation I'd had with Chris Hunt, a Minneapolis attorney with whom I serve on the Twin Cities area alumni/ae council for Valparaiso University School of Law Twin. Last spring, Chris happened to mention to me that he and his family had been in Memphis on a spring break trip at the time of MLK's assassination.
With the attention to detail you'd expect of a successful lawyer, Chris commented that the U-2 song contains a clear factual error. The shots did not ring out early in the morning, as Bono's song suggests, but at 6:01 p.m.
Why Bono's song contains this obvious factual error, I do not know. He could have written "not yet twilight, April 4," but he didn't.
Still, the song's power remains undeniable, a generation after it was written. Listen:
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Syria's National Morale — or Morass
My father would have turned 79 tomorrow.
He died on October 7, 2007 from complications of liver disease — a condition he somehow came down with even though he hardly ever consumed alcohol. He served as a Lutheran minister for 38 years, preaching the word, baptizing those new to the faith, burying the dead, conducting marriages, visiting the sick, and doing all the many other things pastors do to equip the saints.
I miss him every day.
With my dad in the back of my mind, I happened to hear about a 79-year-old human rights lawyer in Syria being sentenced to three years in prison for supposedly “weakening national morale.” Haitham Maleh had spent six years as a political prisoner in the 1980s. This did not deter him, however, from decades of advocacy for an end to emergency rule in Syria.
Amnesty International decried the sentence and described Maleh as a prisoner of conscience for his criticism of the corruption and one-party rule of the Ba’ath party, which has banned all opposition since it took power in 1963.
Maleh is not the only human rights activist who has been imprisoned. Mohannad al-Hassani, a 43-year-old lawyer, was also jailed for three years on similar charges.
Neither Maleh nor Hassani should be in prison. One reason I support Amnesty International is that it keeps their personal stories and political commitments live, despite the unjust imprisonment.
Given the grim conditions in Syrian prisons and the ineluctable effects of age, Haitham Maleh may or may not leave prison alive. But he's fighting the good fight, just as my father did in his own ministry. In the words of the epitaph written by civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson, as engraved on his tombstone, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
By that measure or any other, Haitham Maleh's life is important. As was my father's.
He died on October 7, 2007 from complications of liver disease — a condition he somehow came down with even though he hardly ever consumed alcohol. He served as a Lutheran minister for 38 years, preaching the word, baptizing those new to the faith, burying the dead, conducting marriages, visiting the sick, and doing all the many other things pastors do to equip the saints.
I miss him every day.
With my dad in the back of my mind, I happened to hear about a 79-year-old human rights lawyer in Syria being sentenced to three years in prison for supposedly “weakening national morale.” Haitham Maleh had spent six years as a political prisoner in the 1980s. This did not deter him, however, from decades of advocacy for an end to emergency rule in Syria.
Amnesty International decried the sentence and described Maleh as a prisoner of conscience for his criticism of the corruption and one-party rule of the Ba’ath party, which has banned all opposition since it took power in 1963.
Maleh is not the only human rights activist who has been imprisoned. Mohannad al-Hassani, a 43-year-old lawyer, was also jailed for three years on similar charges.
Neither Maleh nor Hassani should be in prison. One reason I support Amnesty International is that it keeps their personal stories and political commitments live, despite the unjust imprisonment.
Given the grim conditions in Syrian prisons and the ineluctable effects of age, Haitham Maleh may or may not leave prison alive. But he's fighting the good fight, just as my father did in his own ministry. In the words of the epitaph written by civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson, as engraved on his tombstone, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
By that measure or any other, Haitham Maleh's life is important. As was my father's.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
The Missouri Bar, July 1986
When I read the results in the Kansas City Star, on the first Sunday in October of 1986, I felt a profound sense of relief. I had passed the Missouri bar exam, administered six weeks earlier in Jeff City − as Missourians are wont to call their tiny, rather obscure state capital,
The drive from Kansas City on a 100-degree day in late July was stressful. I had picked up my little hand-me-down 1980 Olds Omega in the parking lot of Rockhurst College in KC, after flying down from Minneapolis-St. Paul. The BAR/BRI course hosted by Rockhurst had ended a week or so earlier, so I’d gone back to my parents’ home in Minnesota for the last week of study before the exam.
In such heat, I was concerned that the decidedly-not-young Olds would boil over, and indeed it was making problematic noises as I made my way down I-80 toward Jefferson City. Somehow it held together, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled into the Ramada Inn where the exam was being held and checked in without incident.
The two or three days to follow were a blur of exam taking and coping. The two news stories catching my attention were Antonin Scalia’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the outcome of the United States Football League’s antitrust case against the NFL. Never before or since, even during the Iowa bar in February 2000, have I experienced such 24/7 immersion in the law.
Interesting as the USFL’s anguish was, the Scalia story really stood out. Only a little over a year later, Robert Bork let it all hang out in his confirmation hearings and − it became a verb − got borked, Scalia was able to play it coy as coy can be. Any question that might raise even the most reticent of ideological eyebrows was met with the same, on-message response: “I’m sorry senator, I can’t answer that because it implicates an issue that might come before me on the Court, if I am privileged to so serve.”
When I finished the exam, I drove the Olds back to KC and caught a flight to Chicago. From there, I got a shuttle to Valparaiso, Ind., where I had graduated from law school two months before. My parents were waiting at my apartment, after driving out from Minnesota. My mom saw my crestfallen face and feared the worst.
As it turned out, however, I had stayed strong throughout the exam. My multistate (nationally applicable multiple-choice) score was so high that, a year later, I was admitted in Minnesota on motion, without having to take the Minnesota exam. I was sworn in as a member of the Missouri bar in the fall of ’86 by the Honorable Charles Shangler, the judge I was clerking for at the Missouri Court of Appeals.
The drive from Kansas City on a 100-degree day in late July was stressful. I had picked up my little hand-me-down 1980 Olds Omega in the parking lot of Rockhurst College in KC, after flying down from Minneapolis-St. Paul. The BAR/BRI course hosted by Rockhurst had ended a week or so earlier, so I’d gone back to my parents’ home in Minnesota for the last week of study before the exam.
In such heat, I was concerned that the decidedly-not-young Olds would boil over, and indeed it was making problematic noises as I made my way down I-80 toward Jefferson City. Somehow it held together, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled into the Ramada Inn where the exam was being held and checked in without incident.
The two or three days to follow were a blur of exam taking and coping. The two news stories catching my attention were Antonin Scalia’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the outcome of the United States Football League’s antitrust case against the NFL. Never before or since, even during the Iowa bar in February 2000, have I experienced such 24/7 immersion in the law.
Interesting as the USFL’s anguish was, the Scalia story really stood out. Only a little over a year later, Robert Bork let it all hang out in his confirmation hearings and − it became a verb − got borked, Scalia was able to play it coy as coy can be. Any question that might raise even the most reticent of ideological eyebrows was met with the same, on-message response: “I’m sorry senator, I can’t answer that because it implicates an issue that might come before me on the Court, if I am privileged to so serve.”
When I finished the exam, I drove the Olds back to KC and caught a flight to Chicago. From there, I got a shuttle to Valparaiso, Ind., where I had graduated from law school two months before. My parents were waiting at my apartment, after driving out from Minnesota. My mom saw my crestfallen face and feared the worst.
As it turned out, however, I had stayed strong throughout the exam. My multistate (nationally applicable multiple-choice) score was so high that, a year later, I was admitted in Minnesota on motion, without having to take the Minnesota exam. I was sworn in as a member of the Missouri bar in the fall of ’86 by the Honorable Charles Shangler, the judge I was clerking for at the Missouri Court of Appeals.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
In February 2000, I was seated at a writing table in a ballroom at the University of Iowa, waiting tensely along with dozens of others for the Iowa bar exam to begin.
Before we could start, the examiners asked us to write something in our test booklets - as a writing sample, they said, in order to avoid fraud. Wouldn't want someone borrowing someone else's ID and taking the test for them under false pretenses.
The two sentences we wrote have stayed with me ever since.
"Don't sweat the small stuff," went the first sentence. "What a good reminder," I thought.
The second sentence went even farther: "It's all small stuff."
Really? Three years of law school study, thousands and thousands of tuition dollars spent, seemingly a career on the line - and it's small stuff?
Well, in a way, yes. Though the words "dont sweat the small stuff" weren't nearly as eloquent as the serenity prayer, to me they hinted at a similar idea.
After the exam, I tried to take this notion to heart as I awaited the results. Easier said than done, to be sure.
Finally, one day in early April, I walked over to Drake Law School from the duplex my wife and I were renting a couple of miles away. Thankfully, the posting on the door of the law library showed I was among those who passed. A few days later, I was sworn in to the Iowa bar in a ceremony held in a grand old auditorium in Des Moines called Hoyt Sherman Place.
Hoyt Sherman Place is about a mile from Methodist Hospital, where - almost ten years ago now - our first son, Micah, was born.
Before we could start, the examiners asked us to write something in our test booklets - as a writing sample, they said, in order to avoid fraud. Wouldn't want someone borrowing someone else's ID and taking the test for them under false pretenses.
The two sentences we wrote have stayed with me ever since.
"Don't sweat the small stuff," went the first sentence. "What a good reminder," I thought.
The second sentence went even farther: "It's all small stuff."
Really? Three years of law school study, thousands and thousands of tuition dollars spent, seemingly a career on the line - and it's small stuff?
Well, in a way, yes. Though the words "dont sweat the small stuff" weren't nearly as eloquent as the serenity prayer, to me they hinted at a similar idea.
After the exam, I tried to take this notion to heart as I awaited the results. Easier said than done, to be sure.
Finally, one day in early April, I walked over to Drake Law School from the duplex my wife and I were renting a couple of miles away. Thankfully, the posting on the door of the law library showed I was among those who passed. A few days later, I was sworn in to the Iowa bar in a ceremony held in a grand old auditorium in Des Moines called Hoyt Sherman Place.
Hoyt Sherman Place is about a mile from Methodist Hospital, where - almost ten years ago now - our first son, Micah, was born.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Keep Those Lawyers Alive
The name Dave Ramsey was not one I knew until last Sunday. As I was standing in the narthex of my church, however, someone invited me to a preview immediately after worship of a financial planning course that will be starting up again soon called Financial Peace University.
My wife, Diane, and I are doing alright financially. But in this economy, many people are struggling, and Financial Peace University is therefore a significant program at our church. So I thought I'd check out the preview.
Ramsey is a dynamic presenter who isn’t shy about telling his story of quickly making lots of money in real estate as a young man and just as quickly losing it. Today, he’s a bestselling author whose latest book, Total Money Makeover, is number three on the New York Times business hardcover list.
Why, then, did Ramsey take a gratuitous shot at lawyers in his presentation? Out of the blue, he trotted out the hoary old tale about someone suing McDonald’s for serving hot coffee that subsequently spilled.
Maybe Ramsey felt that a little lawyer bashing would help him build rapport with his audience. But surely there was another way to make his point that we should seek first to take responsibility for our own actions, rather than blame others. Of course we should each take responsibility. But that doesn't change lawyers' key role in holding others accountable for harm that can be prevented with reasonable care.
When Shakespeare has a character in Henry VI say, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” he was warning of the dangers of anarchy. Dave Ramsey might be inclined to take this line literally, but fortunately there isn’t a Shakespeare unit in the Financial Peace University curriculum.
My wife, Diane, and I are doing alright financially. But in this economy, many people are struggling, and Financial Peace University is therefore a significant program at our church. So I thought I'd check out the preview.
Ramsey is a dynamic presenter who isn’t shy about telling his story of quickly making lots of money in real estate as a young man and just as quickly losing it. Today, he’s a bestselling author whose latest book, Total Money Makeover, is number three on the New York Times business hardcover list.
Why, then, did Ramsey take a gratuitous shot at lawyers in his presentation? Out of the blue, he trotted out the hoary old tale about someone suing McDonald’s for serving hot coffee that subsequently spilled.
Maybe Ramsey felt that a little lawyer bashing would help him build rapport with his audience. But surely there was another way to make his point that we should seek first to take responsibility for our own actions, rather than blame others. Of course we should each take responsibility. But that doesn't change lawyers' key role in holding others accountable for harm that can be prevented with reasonable care.
When Shakespeare has a character in Henry VI say, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” he was warning of the dangers of anarchy. Dave Ramsey might be inclined to take this line literally, but fortunately there isn’t a Shakespeare unit in the Financial Peace University curriculum.
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