The existential plastic bag

Sartre wrote that we are condemned to be free, forced all our waking hours to make choices that will decide our essence as human beings. He also wrote of the absurdity of our existence.

ab•surd•i•ty | əbˈsərditē; -ˈzərd- |
noun ( pl. -ties): the quality or state of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable

Yes, for life on this planet, that sounds about right.

So it was with great pleasure that I encountered "Plastic Bag," a remarkable 18-minute short film by Ramin Bahrani and narrated by the great German director Werner Herzog. The protaganist is no ordinary plastic bag, but one with an existential crisis of epic proportions. This is a beautifully shot, poignant film about the environment (particularly the horrendous plastic vortex in the Pacific), but it is also a fun exercise in existentialism. Enjoy.

LAW NOTE: In response to your comment, Tony, several U.S. cities have passed ordinances banning plastic bags as well, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and several others, such as Madison, require that plastic bags be recycled. No state has yet banned plastic bags (Virginia's legislature has killed such a plan, unsurprisingly). L.A.'s ban, which is set to start July 1, will not go into effect if California imposes a 25-cent tax first. China banned plastic bags prior to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

That Disturbingly Pleasant War Criminal, John Yoo

The W&M Law chapters of the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society, along with the Institute of Bill of Rights Law, were kind enough to invite war criminal and Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo to campus yesterday, the last stop on his book tour. I don't fault them for wanting him to appear. Of course the author of the torture memos drew a packed room of more than 100, mostly law students, for a Thursday lunch lecture. People who are largely responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay have a way of drawing a crowd.

As our way of showing discontent, a handful of us from the W&M Law ACLU wore t-shirts (see photo) and handed out Glenn Greenwald's comprehensive guide to John Yoo's War Crimes to those who attended the lecture. In case you don't want to read the entire article, here's a sampling of John Yoo's work:

If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.

And here's Greenwald's tidy, accurate analysis:

John Yoo's Memorandum, as intended, directly led to -- caused -- a whole series of war crimes at both Guantanamo and in Iraq. The reason such a relatively low-level DOJ official was able to issue such influential and extraordinary opinions was because he was working directly with, and at the behest of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: George Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney's counsel (and current Chief of Staff) David Addington. Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes.

If writing memoranda authorizing torture -- actions which then directly lead to the systematic commission of torture -- doesn't make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?

Yoo, in his disarming way, diffused any possible tension by beginning with a story about his appearance on The Daily Show, and spending the remainder of the lecture discussing his new book on evaluating our greatest and worst presidents. In a room full of peers and professors, to accuse Yoo of the worst crimes imaginable — crimes he is almost certainly guilty of — would have garnered almost universal scorn. Still, I feel a pang of disgust with myself this morning. Instead of making such an accusation yesterday, I asked Yoo what would bring about an end to the war on terrorism, and which branch of government can and should make that call. He said that this is perhaps the toughest legal question, and suggested that much legal work remains to be done on how conflicts with non-state actors (i.e., terrorist groups) can come to a successful conclusion. (His answer, by the way, is that the President or Congress—not the courts—can and should make that call, but when and how that will happen remains a mystery.)

But it seems to me that a more difficult question looms: when will someone—whether a president, a member of Congress, or a third-year law student—muster the necessary courage to confront a war criminal like John Yoo and force him to accept responsibility for the reprehensible acts that have led directly to our diminished standing in the world? And will such a confrontation ever bring about the kind of justice we should expect here in the United States?

Spinning the Globe

When I was a kid I used to love to play "spin the globe," always imagining that I would someday go to the places where my finger landed — Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Palau, Uruguay. The more exotic sounding, the better. I'd alternate between putting my finger along the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn before I closed my eyes and spun, not wanting to land in the Northwest Territories, Siberia, or Antarctica. Iowa was cold enough. The game was so central to my sense of adventure that when I left for college, I asked my mom for a new globe to take with me to my dorm room.

When I moved halfway across the country to Virginia I left my globe at home, but it turns out I could use it, this time for real. It has almost come to this — within weeks I will decide which Bar exam to take, and in so doing, will pick the state in which I will live and (hopefully) work for the foreseeable future. Like many of my law student compatriots across the country, I will likely graduate without employment:

Although numbers are not available yet, many members of the class of 2010 and 2011 may graduate without a job, and those who are lucky enough to find employment likely will collectively have lower salaries than their predecessors. In short, the job market is more challenging than it has been in many years, as well-paying jobs are in short supply.

ABA Commission on the Impact of the Economic Crises on the Profession and Legal Needs, "The Value Proposition of Attending Law School," http://www.abanet.org/legaled/prelaw/The%20Value%20Proposition%20of%20Attending%20Law%20School.doc.

Having chosen a career, public defense, that theoretically allows me to go anywhere in the country, I am bound only by a few practical considerations: one, how much more I am willing to go into debt; two, whether I want to do death penalty work; and three, whether my desire for close proximity to family overrides my interest in capital punishment.

First, the debt part: law students graduate prepared to study for the Bar exam, but not prepared to take it. Shortly after graduation — either the following week or literally the next day — we begin taking Bar review courses, usually at a cost of about $2,500. These courses are the ultimate teach-to-the-testers, giving us the form and the substance we need to please the lawyers who'll soon be grading our Bar exams. During this two month Bar review time, from mid-May to late July, none of us will be working. Then, after we take our respective Bar exams the last week of July, comes another break while the state Bar associations grade the exams. During this time we are neither law students nor lawyers — just graduates, hoping for a license. Depending on where you take the Bar, this state of flux can last from about six weeks (North Carolina), till about Labor Day, to nearly three months (California), almost until Thanksgiving.

For those of us who don't have jobs and have a hard time finding them because we're not licensed to practice, this can be an extremely costly wait. To offset those costs, I can choose a state where I know lots of people and can live on the cheap, such as Virginia or in the Midwest. The alternative is California, where it would be incredibly difficult to live cheaply, and I would incur thousands more in debt while waiting for gainful employment.

Second is the death penalty, which makes me passionate about practicing law. For that, I can stay in Virginia or go to California, or to Illinois, or to any number of places in the South, like North Carolina, Texas, or Alabama. (There is also one bonus to staying in Virginia: because I came to law school here, this is where I have the most law-related connections. I am not guaranteed a job, by any stretch, but I have as good or better a chance at finding one here than anywhere else.) I cannot go to places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa, however, and expect to do death penalty work. These states don't have capital punishment.

But they are fine places to live, which brings me to the last consideration: proximity to family and, by extension, quality of life. Virginia, California, and the Midwest all have their pros and cons, but the Midwest has that unique distinction of also being home to my family (not to mention a lot of important friends, though I can say the same now about having many close friends in Virginia). Illinois, then, would seem to be the only place that has both the death penalty and proximity to family. It also has Chicago, an extraordinary city and the home of my beloved Cubs and Bears. The only problem is that I have precious few legal connections in Chicago. But I could still go, volunteer, and hope that I land on my feet.

Well, there is my globe-spinning thinking laid bare. Sweet home, Chicago?