the Zealous

In Lawyers as Upholders of Human Dignity, Georgetown Law Professor and legal ethics guru David Luban explains how advancing and maintaining human dignity is a fundamental cornerstone of our profession. Indeed, it is  “what makes the practice of law worthwhile.” Defining dignity as a “property of relationships between humans," Prof. Luban articulates how the right to legal representation in criminal cases neatly encapsulates the notion of the law as a defender of human dignity.

Born in 1860 in Xiangshan, Guandgong Province, China, Hong Yen Chang eventually made his way to America to study as part of the national China Educational Mission. He was 13 years old. His father had passed away three years earlier.
 
For the next nine years, he lived and studied in the US, residing with different families in various states. While at Yale College, the Chinese government abruptly terminated Hong Yen Chang's educational mission, and he was recalled back to China.
 
This was a temporary setback for Hong Yen Chang. A mere two years later, he found his way back to America. He later graduated with honors from Columbia Law School. In 1888, Hong Yen Chang was admitted to the Bar of New York. He became the first Chinese immigrant licensed to practice law in the US.

In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graebe, anthropologist and an early founder of the Occupy Wall Street movement, recounts the rise in the last century of “bullshit jobs”: occupations that serve no socially useful function, and instead cause soul-crushing psychological suffering to those forced to take on such work. Graebe contends that as much as forty percent of all jobs in the world are bullshit, which he defines as:

a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.

Graeber catalogs five different species of bullshit jobs: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He indicts all “corporate lawyers” as falling into the “goons” category.