"A(nother) Critique of Pure Reason": Toward Civic Virtue in Legal Education
In Patricia Williams' book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, Williams mentions "a constitutional-law exam in which students are given the lengthy text of a hate-filled polemic entitled 'How To Be a Jew-Nigger' and then told to use the First Amendment to defend it."' Williams makes the point that students taking such an exam, in this case especially Jewish and African-American students, are required to write against their own personal knowledge and experience. She notes that a student who refuses to do this will receive a lower grade, and guesses that "everyone, including perhaps the students of color, will rationalize this result away as an inability to 'think like a lawyer.' "2 In this context, the phrase "thinking like a lawyer" means suppressing or denying one's feelings and personal experience while putting forth a "cold" analysis of the "facts." Classical legal education celebrates reason and devalues emotion.3 Seeking to remove legal reasoning both from "the political" and from "the personal," law professors traditionally shun openlyexpressed emotions in the classroom. When classroom discussions raise deeply emotional issues, students who are able to dispassionately discuss