The Redemption of Lawyers

There's a change slowly unfurling in the legal profession and it's exciting.

Traditionally the way democracies work is people elect legislators who make decisions. These decisions are called laws, the executive carries them out, and judges deal with disagreements, interpret, and enforce those decisions or laws. But Republicans didn't like the Warren Court of 1953-1969 because of its emphasis on fairness, equality, and impartiality. So all through the Powell Memorandum in 1971 and the founding of the Federalist Society in 1982, Republicans tried to appoint more oligarch and plutocrat friendly judges at all levels. This culminated in 1987 with the attempt to put on the Supreme Court Robert Bork, the most oligarch-friendly ideologue of the last century. It failed and the Republicans were deeply ticked off about it. That has put us where we are now with the Republican being a post-policy party that focuses on simply dismantling the state and a Supreme Court that serves oligarchs and not much else.

In general, stories benefit from conflict and court rooms are a great alternative to the normal way conflict is portrayed in the US which is people shooting at each other with guns. Being a lawyer is a good trade, and many detail oriented, well organized young people watch those shows and movies and decide to go into the law. Many have hopes to work in human rights or environmental law, but as graduation nears and the reality looms of US$150,000 of law school debt on top of undergraduate debt, they take a job with Whiteman, Whiteman, & Whiteman and settle into it. By the time the debt is almost payed off, kids are around, house payments, and they are used to their clients the oil companies, private equity scuzz balls, and.....well.....oligarchs and plutocrats. So the cycle continues.

These days national level legislators just aren't doing much. The Republicans live in their world of memes and BS that keeps them diving into dramas they have made up or catalyzed. The Democratic legislators are cranky they can't pass any laws, but keep talking about exciting policies they could pass if the world was just better and are just deeply shocked and upset and how bad and annoying everything is.

Then, back lit, filling the saloon doors, amid swirling dust, staring down the debauch...comes Lina Khan.

How she showed up: The Warren/Sanders wing of the Democratic Party played nicely with Biden in the key weeks after 29 February 2020 South Carolina primary that Biden won. What they wanted was Khan to be the head of the Federal Trade Commission because of her famous paper from her last year at law school on how Amazon was bad news, why, how to solve the problem, and importantly, how that fit into the whole philosophy of anti-trust and fair market policy in the US. The paper won a ton of awards and was the most wildly read law school paper in history. At the FTC she did incredible work to coral the oligarchs and help working people.

Since the minute the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 the Republicans have been focused not on winning elections but on getting and keeping power. They view elections as an important and annoying barrier that they somehow have to deal with via any means necessary. If they could avoid them, they would and they are now closer to that terrifying possibility than at any time in over a century.

Democrats, on the other hand, bless 'em, have simply focused on winning elections, presuming they were and will always be fair. They have this view, despite the glaring cases of, for example, the presidential race of 2000 when five Supreme Court justices appointed Bush II president rather than allowing the will of voters to carry the day. This is similar to how things worked at Whiteman, Whiteman, and Whiteman. The oligarchs would pay good money to the law firms to help them avoid the intention of the law, whether it was avoiding paying tax, or sliding lucrative bits of text into enormous rushed legislative packages. Just pay 'em lots and they'd put a cleaver team on it and figure out how these corporations could most effectively enrich themselves, while screwing over the planet and working people. And the lawyers would do pretty well out of the deal too.

The Khan Method, on the other hand, focuses on fair markets, real competition, and regulating monopolies. But it can be used in many ways. The more broad definition is to simply look at the body of laws in the various jurisdictions, and there are lots of them, and consider, "how can we use these laws to help working people?" If you put enough smart motivated people on that task, some great new ideas appear.

And this brings us to Mamdani. He appointed her to head his transition team. Many people, including me where like, "Ok? Great, but she's a monopoly person not a municipal person. Hm." It took the most important living public intellectual alive today, Cory Doctorow to clarify. Sure she is focused on monopolies but her method is perfectly suited to Mamdani's situation. The Status Quo Democrats are saying, "Oh, well, what can a mayor really do anyway, jurisdiction, etc." The Khan Method is to take a fine tooth comb to the entire body of law and be creative in ways it can be deployed to help working people, do every possible thing that can be done, and be relentless. Her leading the transition team illustrates the Khan Method of making shit happen rather than being sad and upset that you can't make what you want happen. It illustrates the brilliance of Zoran Manadani and it illustrates the future of lawyers and aspiring lawyers, at least for those who want to do great things in this world rather than prop up oligarchs.

And long may they kick ass.

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