Via DBR, here’s a letter to the editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, which is running a multi-part series on the aftermath of the Duke lacrosse case. An excerpt:
If the young men from Duke are innocent [as the state attorney general now has said that they are], they should take their outrage and fight for justice. I hope they will use their outstanding educations and affluence to become outspoken lawyers for the ACLU or another similar organization. Surely they won’t just become stockbrokers?
I’m assuming the bracketed phrase was inserted by the paper.
First of all, what’s wrong with being a stockbroker? (In fact, “60 Minutes” reported this week that Dave Evans has accepted a Wall Street job.) Second, who says that these guys should want to be lawyers at all? There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But why is it that becoming ACLU lawyers is the only way they can “fight for justice”?
Earlier in that letter to the editor, the reader says that, “Injustices happen every day, every moment. I don’t know how many times a day a young black man is falsely accused of doing something wrong. Or how many times a week a Spanish-speaking person is suspected of being uneducated and illegal. It seldom makes the front page.” Even accepting that tremendous generalization, I would argue that having a living, breathing example that pretty much anyone can be falsely accused working in the corridors of power would be as helpful in the “fight for justice” as allowing Wall Street types to marginalize him as a bleeding heart true believer. Saying that only ACLU lawyers can care about justice makes it easy to let ACLU lawyers be the only ones who do care about justice. (Obviously I’m quoting the letter here, but using “ACLU lawyers” to refer more to a type — not a type that works on Wall Street.)
I hope Dave Evans (and Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann when they graduate) will continue to care about justice, and use their opportunities and resources to implement the lessons they say they’ve learned. But I just don’t think they have become “ACLU lawyers” to do that.