People Who Have Shaped the Teaching Careers of Our Faculty—Part 4

The editors of the blog asked several law school faculty to write about the people who have been the most formative figures in their careers as legal educators. This fourth submission in the series is by Professor Chad M. Oldfather.

The path I took to law school was direct in the sense that I went right from college. But in more important senses it was as indirect as could be. Growing up as (what for the sake of simplicity we’ll call) a farm kid I knew no lawyers, and nothing of the world of business. “Work,” as I understood the term, implied getting dirt under one’s fingernails. My momma wasn’t gonna let me be no cowboy, but neither could the prospect of me being a doctor or lawyer or such have figured too prominently in her plans. The world of professionals was, to me, a great unknown, an uncharted land inhabited by a whole different sort of person.

All of which means simply that I’ve had a greater need for formative professional influences than the average bear. Like everyone else, I needed to learn how to be a lawyer in the sense of developing the necessary skills. But to a greater extent than most everyone else I also needed to recognize and then internalize the norms of professional interaction. Put differently, I knew there’d be unwritten rules. What I didn’t know was how they’d be different from the ones I grew up with.

I had the great good fortune to begin my career as a clerk to Judge Jane Roth.

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Humility and Advocacy

[Editor’s Note: This month faculty members share their favorite brief writing or oral argument tip. This is the fourth entry in the series.] My favorite advocacy tip applies to briefs and oral arguments alike. (Indeed, for my money it serves as a pretty good rule of thumb for life in general.) It is this: Your arguments are never as good as you think they are.

As a general matter, the phenomenon is a product of (or is at the very least related to) what psychologists call the confirmation bias. That’s our tendency to assimilate new information in such a way as to confirm our pre-existing beliefs. If I’m inclined to believe in the truth of Proposition X, then I will give relatively greater weight to new information that confirms that belief than to information that runs contrary to it.

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Standing up for the Rule of Law

Charles_Swift_--_Guantanamo_August_2008Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which concerned the President’s authority to employ military commissions without congressional authorization, is among the most noteworthy of cases to have been decided by the Supreme Court in the last few years.  Last month, Professor Stephen Vladeck, who was part of the team that represented Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan before the Supreme Court, was part of the law school’s Constitution Day observance.  On Wednesday, we have the good fortune to host Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, who represented Hamdan from the beginning.

Swift’s presentation promises to be compelling in at least two respects.  The first is that Swift will provide a first-hand account of the legal issues surrounding the war on terror via the story of his advocacy for recognition of the rights of Guantanamo detainees.  The second concerns the personal cost to Swift of his representation.  According to media accounts, Swift understood that the expectation was that he would simply assist Hamdan in entering a guilty plea.  But, Swift explained to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,  “I didn’t volunteer for this. I got nominated for it. When I got it, I just decided to do the best I could.”  That resulted in a trip to the Supreme Court, in Swift being denied a promotion, and in turn to the end of his military career.  As Swift explained to a Bloomberg reporter, “If you start thinking about your career over your duty, it’s time to get out.”

For more information, and to reserve your spot, go here.

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