I probably should have guessed, but I didn't.
I'd never met him before, and couldn't even place him in the set of people related to people I knew. He was, or is rather, the grandson of a rancher I've known for eons, but I'd never seen him at a rural gathering. He was dressed in a rural fashion, with the clothes natural to him, but wearing a ball cap rather than a cowboy hat. I probably was too. It was unseasonably cold, I remember that.
He was holding forth boldly on what was wrong on higher education. All the professors were radical leftist.
I figured he was probably right out of high school, in part no doubt as I'm a very poor judge of younger ages. It was silly, so I just ignored him, although I found his speech arrogant. The sort of speech you hear from somebody who presumes that nobody else has experienced what you have. 1 I.e., we were a bunch of rural rubes not familiar with the dangerous liberals in higher education.
I figured he'd probably get over it as he moved through education.
Yes, there are liberals in higher education. Frankly, the more educated a class is, the more likely that it is at least somewhat liberal. That reflects itself in our current political demographic. The more higher education a person has, the more likely they are to vote for the Democrats. It's not universally true, but it's fairly true. And the Republicans, having gone populist, which is by definition a political stream that simply flows the "wisdom of the people", is a pretty shallow stream. Conservatism isn't, but it's really hard to find right now.
I heard earlier this year that he'd obtained a summer position in D.C. with one of our current public servants there, and thought that figured, given the climate of the times. Recently, his grandfather told me he'd just taken the LSAT.
I didn't quite know what to say.
I didn't have any idea he was that old. And I didn't realize that was his aspiration. I asked his progenitor if being a lawyer was his goal, and was informed that it was. I did stumble around to asking what his undergraduate major was, thinking that some have multiple doors to the future, and some do not.
"Political science".
"Well, he doesn't have any place else to go then".2
Not the most encouraging response, I'm sure.
I've known a few lawyers that were of the populist political thought variety, but very, very few. Of the few, one is in office right now, but I didn't know that person had that view until that person ran. One is a nice plaintiff's lawyer who holds those views, but it's not his defining characteristic, like it tends to be with some people, and he's friends with those who don't. One briefly was in the public eye and has disappeared.
He's going to find that most law professors, if you know their views at all, and most you won't, aren't populists. Some are probably conservatives, and most are liberals. A defining characteristic of the Post GI Bill field of law is that it's institutionally left wing. As I've often noted before, there are in fact liberal jurists, but there really aren't "conservative" jurists in the true sense, in spite of what people like Robert Reich might think.
I suspect politics is the ultimate goal. By the time he's through with law school, and has some practice under his belt, the populist wave will have broken, a conservative politics will have reemerged and liberals will be back in power.3
So I hope that he likes the practice of law, as that's what law school trains you to do. Not to save the world. Not to "help people". Not to provide opportunities for people who "like to argue".4
I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
Recently, I ran this:
June 25, 2024
An article on Hageman's primary challenger in the GOP:
Helling has a less than zero chance of unseating Hageman. What this item really reminded me of, however, is just how old these candidates are. Helling is an old lawyer. His bar admission date is 1981, which would make him about 70. Hageman's is 1989, which I knew which would make her about 61, old by historical standards although apparently arguably middle-aged now.
Barrasso is 71. Lummis is 69. John Hotz, who is running against Barrasso, has a bar admission date of 1978 which would make him about three years older than Helling. Seemingly the only younger candidate in the GOP race this primary is Rasner.
This isn't a comment on any of their politics, but rather their age. Helling is opposed to nuclear power, a very 1970ish view. With old people, come old views, quite often, even if they're repackaged as new ones.
Right after I ran it, I went to a hearing where one of the opposing lawyers is approaching 70 and supposedly is getting ready to retire, but doesn't seem to be. Right after that, I was in a court hearing in which there were two younger lawyers, but a host of ones in their late 60s or well into their 70s. One of the late 60s ones appeared to be stunned and noted that there was at least 200 years of legal experience in the room.
I was noticing the same thing.
Lawyers have a problem and that's beginning to scare me, not quite yet being of retirement age. I'm not sure if they don't retire, can't retire, don't think they can retire, or something else.
It's not really good for the profession, I'm sure of that. While it's a really Un-American thing to say, a field being dominated in some ways by the elderly pushes out the young. And it's also sad.
It's sad as it's usually the case that younger people have wide, genuine, interests. Lawyers often, although not always, give a lot of those up early on to build their careers. Then they don't go back to them due to those careers. By the time they're in their late 50s, some are burnt out husks that have nothing but the law, and others are just, I think, afraid to leave it.
I think that's, in part, why you see lawyers run for office. Maybe some are like our young firebrand first mentioned in this tread. But others are finding a refuge from a cul-de-sac. A lawyer who is nearly 70 should not become a first time office holder, and shouldn't even delude themselves into thinking that's a good idea (or that it's feasible). They should remind themselves of what interested them when they were in their 20s. The same is true of office holders in general who are in their 70s, or older.
Footnotes:
1. I've often seen this with young veterans and old ones. Some young veteran will be holding forth, not realizing that the guy listening to him fought at Khe Sanh or the likes.
2. That wasn't the most politic thing to say, but I was sort of hoping that the answer was "agriculture" or something, that had some more doors out.
Political science really doesn't. Maybe teaching. But if our young protagonist graduates with a law degree and finds himself not in the world of political intrigue making sure that the American version of Viktor Orbán rises to the top, but rather whether his client, the mother of five children by seven men gets one of them to pay child support, which is highly likely, he's going to have no place to go.
3. Bold prediction, I know, but probably correct.
Right now, I suspect that Donald Trump will in fact win the Presidential election, and the country will be in for a massive period of turmoil. By midterm, people who supported Trump will be howling with rage about the impact of tariffs and the like and demanding that something be done. The correction will come in 2028, but by that time much of the damage, or resetting or whatever, will have been done. The incoming 2028 Democratic regime will set the needle more back to the center.
4. Being good at arguing, in a Socratic sense, makes you a good debator or speaker. Liking to argue, however, just makes you an asshole.
