The Safety and Justice Challenge

John Mccaffary Burial MemorialIn Ethics and Infinity, philosopher and Nazi prison survivor Emmanuel Levinas is asked about responsibility for “the Other” and says, “You know that sentence of Dostoyevsky: ‘We are all guilty of all and for all men before all, and I more than the others’. This is not owing to such or such a guilt which is really mine, or to offenses that I would have committed; but because I am responsible for a total responsibility, which answers for all the others and for all in the others, even for their responsibility. The I always has one responsibility more than all the others.”

I was a third-year law student in a seminar on Law and Theology when I read that passage and wrestled with it. The philosophical writings of the Jewish Holocaust survivors and of German Christian writers, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suffered under the Nazi regime examined the obligation of the individual in relation to others and the state. Levinas was asserting an extraordinarily expansive (and I thought at the time unrealistic) ethical obligation of the person in relation to the other: to be wholly responsible for seeing and uplifting the human dignity of others, even if there is no reciprocity. Is it possible to secure safety and to render justice to the idea of human dignity at the same time?

At that stage in my education, I had already worked with prisoners as a law student in a clinic, so I had some sense how dehumanizing a jail or prison is to the people locked inside. I had also worked in a prosecutor’s office directing people into the prison or jail system and could understand why some people had to be removed from the community. Both experiences shaped my professional views.

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Tesla to Face Jury Trial over Autopilot Defects Following 70-Page Summary Judgment Opinion

Tesla’s “Autopilot” has been implicated in over a dozen deaths in the U.S. alone, and yet the company has yet to face a significant finding of liability in a litigated case. That may end soon, as trial is set to begin in federal court today following a blockbuster summary judgment opinion issued only a few weeks ago.

Benavides v. Tesla involves a crash that occurred on a two-lane county road in Key Largo, Florida in 2019. George McGee was driving his Tesla Model S from his office in Boca Raton to his home, a distance of around 100 miles, when he ran through a stop sign at a T-intersection and collided with a Chevy Tahoe that was parked on the far side of the road at around 60 miles per hour. Naibel Benavides, a 22-year-old college student, was standing next to the Tahoe and was killed. Her friend Dillon Angulo—the two were on a date—was severely injured and is also a plaintiff in the case.

The Benavides crash implicates many of the same issues raised by other fatal crashes involving Autopilot. The system, despite its name, is a “driver assistance system” that requires constant oversight by an attentive driver, far short of what most people think of when they imagine an autonomous vehicle. Nor is it capable of functioning in any environment; the instructions explicitly warn drivers not to use it on anything less than a divided, limited-access highway, one without stop signs or crossing traffic.

Because of these limitations, every fatal Autopilot crash has involved a distracted driver. In the Huang case, for example, the plaintiff was killed when his car collided with a concrete barrier on the highway while he played a game on his phone (that case was settled for an undisclosed sum on the eve of trial). The Benavides crash is no different: McGee, the driver, testified in his deposition that he was on the phone with American Airlines trying to book a flight across the country when he dropped his phone and bent down to the floor to pick it up. It was at that moment that he sped through the stop sign and into the parked Chevy. (Benavides filed suit against McGee as well; that suit was settled for an undisclosed sum). McGee also used Autopilot on an inappropriate road, manually accelerated to a speed of 62 miles per hour in an area where the speed limit was 45, and repeatedly triggered Autopilot’s warning system for driver inattention.

Unsurprisingly given the facts outlined above, Tesla’s strategy in these cases has been to cast blame on the driver. At times this has been successful. The first trial involving a fatal crash linked to Autopilot involved a plaintiff-driver who had been drinking, and the jury had no trouble concluding that Tesla bore no blame for the accident. In Benavides, for the first time, the victim is a third party. Still, Tesla argued, it was the driver who was to blame for the crash, not Autopilot.

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Resting Your Case – and Yourself

This year’s summer solstice has passed, and the Fourth of July weekend has come and gone. Have you taken – or at least planned – a vacation yet this year? For many lawyers, the answer appears to be “no.” An American Lawyer 2025 survey of 3,000 lawyers revealed that while about 36% said they use all their vacation time, 10% of lawyers said they take no time off at all. A 2024 survey conducted by Law360 Pulse found that more than 20% of lawyers planned to take one week or less vacation that year. Associates were even less likely to take time off: almost one-third reported they planned to take a week or less vacation time.

Why does this matter? Because the aforementioned studies also assessed lawyer mental health generally, and confirmed what we have known officially since 2017 when the ABA National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being issued its report: lawyers suffer from high amounts of stress that take a big toll on our physical and mental health, potentially leading to cardiac disorders, burnout, depression, anxiety disorders, or substance abuse. Chronic stress was reported by 38% of lawyers overall (and 47% of women lawyers) in the Law360 Pulse survey. Fifty-six percent of lawyers working more than 50 hours per week reported chronic stress. Although our awareness of the impact of stress on lawyer mental health has improved in the eight years since the ABA report, implementation of helpful policies to moderate stress has been slow.

So why don’t lawyers take more time off? Sadly, the culture at many firms tends to discourage or even penalize time off. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed by the American Lawyer said that their manager discouraged taking time off. One attorney reported that they didn’t want to go on vacation and have the firm see them as replaceable. Many lawyers cited pressure to make billable hours goals, client demands, not wanting to have work piling up while they’re gone, or a firm culture of being online 24/7 as preventing them from taking vacation time. Although associates may believe they can take some time off when they make partner, the extra demands of partnership may make taking time off an even bigger challenge.

While it is tempting to say that it is good for clients and for the legal profession to have lawyers available 24/7 for their clients, it is only a good thing if those lawyers are consistently at the top of their game. Probably this is not the case. Chronic stress has been shown to impair working memory, concentration, problem-solving ability, efficiency, social skills, and creativity – all skills necessary for good lawyering. Our brains need rest and relaxation to function properly over time, and vacations are a good way to interrupt chronic stress, relieve monotony, and let our brains reset, according to Susan Albers, PsyD, of the Cleveland Clinic. Vacations can decrease stress hormones like cortisol, and trigger release of hormones like serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, all of which contribute to a better mood, a sense of well-being, and improved cognitive function. Although a week or more off is ideal, even a day or two of leisure time can make a positive difference.

It will be difficult to shift the culture of the legal profession in a way that normalizes taking time off to rest and rejuvenate. But lawyers are logical people, and for the most part we have our clients’ best interests at heart. As the evidence accumulates that leisure time is essential to mental health and optimum brain function, we need to spread the word, take some time off, and encourage our colleagues to rest as well. It’s in everyone’s best interests.

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