Why I Could Never Be a Lawyer

[Tim May]

On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 06:27  PM, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 05:36:51PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
>> Also, unlike many in the law business (at least as I see them being
>> interviewed on video and in print), I don't see any "majesty" in the
>> law. What I see instead is a massive deviation from the "kernel" of a
>> largely self-running machine based on core (kernel) principles of "you
>> leave me alone and I'll leave you alone" kinds of Schelling points.
>
> I agree. I've never understood why folks find the law to be "majestic."
> Some theories:
>
> * Some people thrill to the raw application of power. This may explain
> the popularity of law and order and shows of that genre. It explains
> why many people move to Washington, to be close to power and
> eventually hope to become a deputy assistant undersecretary of petty
> and generally inscrutable affairs.

Yes, I think the "will to power" is very strong. It's just that 
different people see it in different ways, and define "power" 
differently. In my case, I grew up knowing how atom bombs worked before 
I was 11 (well, I had a clear mental picture of chain reactions, and I 
was able to describe the "gun type" Little Boy device to my 5th grade 
class...though in retrospect I expect few of them understood what I was 
saying).

I thus grew up believing that science and math were the _real_ forms of 
magic and wizardry in the world, that while there are obvious no demons 
and warlocks and Lovecraftian mysteries, there are deep mysteries in 
the structure of the real numbers, compelling power in the nature of 
undecidable propositions, unbreakable boxes and impenetrable shields in 
the form of RSA, and, of course, powerful computers and magnificent 
H-bomb explosions. And so on, with DNA, engineering of bridges and 
ships, the mystery of turbulence in fluids, and on. (And now I'm 
excited, though I don't write about it much here for obvious reasons, 
that we may be on the verge of discovering what "money" really is, in 
terms of epistemic logic, possible worlds semantics, Bayesian belief 
networks, and topos theory. How can being an Assistant Undersecretary 
for Retired Schoolteachers Affairs possibly compete?)

It seemed terribly petty to me to want to control or have power over 
other people. (I practiced what I preach: when I was at Intel the top 
mgmt was constantly trying to get me to manage a lot of people. I hated 
managing other people. I hated having to tell them what to do, having 
to discipline them for coming to work late, all that jive. I only 
wanted to do my own projects, though I sometimes appreciated having 
technicians around as extra sets of hands to build equipment, help with 
experiments, take data, etc. But I generally hated having control over 
other people. I have none today, and this is fine with me. This does 
not contradict the fact that I would be more than willing to exert a 
certain kind of ultimate control--death administered by firearm--if the 
situation arose where it was justified. Which for me is anyone entering 
my house without my permission, anyone stealing from me, anyone trying 
to tell me what I can read and what I cannot. It's all consistent as 
far as I'm concerned.)

When I was interviewing college seniors and grad students for 
employment at Intel, a large fraction of the people gave as their goal 
"I want to work with people."

Gaack! I generally recommended for hiring (or further interviews) those 
who told me with some excitement what their Ph.D. thesis had been 
about, or what work had inspired them, or which classes they liked a 
lot. I might ask them what they thought of MOS versus bipolar, or about 
superconductivity and what the significance of Cooper pairs really was, 
in their opinion. If they were clueless, or bored, or nattered on about 
how much they wanted to "work with people!," I usually didn't recommend 
them.

(I think some kids--and this was mostly in the years 1977-80--just had 
the idea that they were supposed to emphasize their "people skills" and 
to jabber about how much they liked the idea of being part of a team 
and all. It may have gotten worse after Personnel stopped favoring me 
as someone to go out to engineering campuses to recruit.)

And I think the political equivalent of this is having someone say "I 
want to do public service."

"Public service" meaning "'work in government."

Clearly the world is changed a lot more by the development of a new 
microprocessor or way of doing relational data bases than it is by some 
earnest young history major working her way up from GS-3 to an eventual 
GS-10 position as Administrative Assistant to the Deputy Director of 
Aptical Foddering, Near East Subdivision.

And why is is thought to be noble to work for non-market wages in an 
imperial city like Washington? (As most of you probably know, I spent 
most of the 1960s living near Washington. JFK did not impress me at 
all--a liar born with a silver spoon in his mouth, courtesy of his 
bootlegging father who then bought his way into respectability and the 
corridors of power, proving everything that is wrong about politics. 
Many of us were not sad to see Kennedy whacked. I was not impressed 
with Washington and I certainly had no desire to go back there to work. 
"Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington" never impressed me. A city of petty 
bureaucrats not working on anything important. )

Anyway, I equate "want to work with people" with "want to enter public 
service."

These are not builders and doers and thinkers and men of accomplishment.

>
> * Still others view politics as an honorable profession, or are simply
> intrigued by the change to do good in some way. I know a reporter at 
> the
> New York Times who has consciously dedicated her life to the pursuit
> of "civil justice."

Or like Blair, at the NYT, who devoted his 4-year career there to 
putting one over on whitey.

(He explained in recent days that the reason he lied and fabricated 
nearly everything was because by being black he had "disadvantages" at 
the Times.)




> The common law, before Washington created a Napoleonic code of
> thousands of pages of rules and exceptions and allowances for
> well-connected lobbyists, may have had a better claim to being
> majestic. No longer.

Yep, it's a disgusting dish made by tens of thousands of cooks, each 
adding the ingredients to further his own career and maximize the 
kickbacks.

Nattering about the "majesty of the law" belongs with the other fatuous 
expressions.




--Tim May
"The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the 
government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton