class speaking notes

Why the syllabus for our practicum begins in the philosophical/theoretical/academic realm.

You see the phrase, ‘practicum’ and are excited that perhaps immediately, in the very moment of your enthusiasm, you can put your feelings into action. And then you look on D2L and see, not a manual on legal technics, but philosophy, theory, statistics. Why? Let me, in the beginning of our class, try to convince you why this is a worthy goal.

The history of our people – liberals, as I assume you all are, and if you are not, forgive me, but I am only referring to the dominant distribution of our school – the history of liberals suggests that for us, action that too readily precedes thought, that a seemingly good idea, that purports to benefit one people at one time, ends up backfiring completely.

We will be exploring this phenomenon in detail later on in this class, in the form of Ban the Box, a policy which Portland has adopted and is substantively relevant to expungement. Other examples readily come to mind. Let’s think about the two issues that have been most front and center during the Trump administration, immigration policy and now militarized policing.

For years, the dominant political issue of the trump administration was immigration. The foundations for his policies were not created by some conservative. Immigration policies that we have today largely came out of liberal reforms during the Clinton era (1996) meant to benefit unions by shielding them from the competition of immigrant labor. It might surprise you that President Obama deported more people than any other President ever. In fact, the Post reports,

While the Obama administration deported 1.18 million people in his first three years, the number of deportations has been a little under 800,000 so far under Trump, according to the Post (written three years into Trump, in November 2019). The Obama administration also deported 409,849 people in 2012 alone, while the Trump administration has yet to deport more than 260,000 people in a year, the Post reported.

Again, it was the liberals who enacted tough on crime bills which have created the criminal justice system we have today. Back then it was justified as having the backing of the black community at large who were, as ever, more likely to be victims of crime. The liberal establishment’s motives and actions exactly mirrored that of the academy. My law school professor recalls that, when she was graduating in the 90s, all the left-leaning progressives were racing for the prosecutor’s office. Now they race for the public defender’s office. We will read an argument claiming that the introduction of the public defense system did nothing for the underclass of people targeted by the criminal justice system, but rather legitimized it.

I am not bringing up all this to engender nihlism. We can break the cycle. Indeed, it is why we should have this class, rather than waste away or have more idle pursuits like power or fame. And I believe that we can do this, we can really do this. But we will need our brains, and also our hearts.

First our brains. We can break the cycle by giving serious thought to the proposal of our own class, whether providing expungement for free to anyone who wants it, is a good idea. Indeed, you are probably thinking that, since we are having this class, and I am asking this question, that this is merely a thought exercise, and there the continuation of this class is not really in doubt. You would be wrong. This course was originally conceived of in early 2019. The class went well and we decided to have it again right after we finished the class in fall of 2019. Do you remember 2019? No coronavirus, no protests, the only people who wore masks when they were sick were Asian? I have to say that I have become a different person, and that the world has become a different place. We need to think this work through. Perhaps we cannot import wholesale the ethics and strategies for reform that we held in that world. Perhaps it is time to rethink things. This, of course, has been a kind of slogan for the left in all times. But rarely is the air so rich with energy that such imagination has something to breathe. 

Next our hearts. We need to be brave. It is simply a matter of the intellect to attack one’s opponent’s ideas, but it is a matter of the heart to examine one’s own. This is doubly true if those ideas are shrouded by a layer of cultural aversion that we would rather not disturb, for the benefit of our group cohesion. Later on in this semester, we may have some readings by authors on the left critiquing the culture of the left, positing that it is a barrier to achieving our true goals. Let us be brave with each other, and let each other speak. To not fear that an opinion outside of our echo chamber will destroy us. To be brave. To perhaps come away with real confidence in the correctness of our opinions.

Let me propose this: if we should come to the conclusion that our method of providing expungement is, in fact, counterproductive to our ends, we will not hold another expungement practicum. I mean it. How can I not? To do anything otherwise would be to corrupt the idea of the expungement practicum itself. The stakes are high. Imagine that your calculus professor said, if it should be that learning calculus does more harm for the world than good, we will cease to teach it.

The moment we are living in presents an extraordinary, perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity, for real change. Let’s not waste it repeating the mistakes of liberals past.

Here is the payoff of all this. If we can truly look deep into our own intentions and the realities of our actions, and say that we are pure, then we can proceed with real confidence, and deep sense of pride in our work. It is not the shabby dwelling of popular thought, but the temple of a grounded ideal.