by Amanda Cross
“Blair,” Kate said, “I’m not sure that you or anyone else can quite believe my ignorance about law schools. I don’t even know what you ordinarily teach. I know Reed teaches criminal law, but I don’t really know what that is, apart from reading the ever-drearier newspapers.”
“Ah,” Blair said. “What is criminal responsibility? That, as someone said, is the question. You don’t know, I don’t know, Reed probably has some idea, and I promise you no one at Schuyler Law has a clue, except to agree with Rehnquist and Scalia on all points, including instant implementation of the death penalty.”
“That the faculty of Schuyler is hardly on the cutting edge of progressive thought I have more or less gathered. What I need,” Kate said, “is a short rundown on the cast of characters before I meet them.”
“Like the beginning of one of those old-fashioned, voice-over films, I suppose,” Blair snorted.
“I like voice-over films,” Kate said. “I know they’re not in fashion, but they seem very British and interesting to me; so much better than the avant-garde sort where you can’t figure out what happened or hear what anybody’s saying until the end and often not even then.”
“Good,” Blair said, “because this is definitely an old-fashioned film. Let us start with contracts.”
“Our contracts?” Kate said. “They’re only for a semester, thank god.”
“The course contracts,” Blair said. “Has Reed told you nothing about law school?”
“Nothing,” Kate said. “He would have, but I never asked. He doesn’t teach it, so it never came up. Reed teaches criminal procedure; I have heard about that. Sometimes he teaches evidence.”
“Doesn’t he teach any first-year subject?” Blair asked.
“Only on occasion, I think. Except for those who request it, they alternate on first-year courses.”
“O Reed, among the blessed. At Schuyler Law, everybody teaches the basic courses.”
“And they are?” Kate firmly said. “I await your voice-over.”
“The other basic courses,” Blair said, “—I trust you are taking notes, I’m not going to repeat this, ever—are, in addition to Contracts: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Property, Procedure, and Torts.”
“We’re moving right along,” Kate said cheerfully. “I’ve now got the six basic courses, and I have no intention of asking you about advanced courses. We’ll save those for another time.”
“To which I look passionately forward,” Blair said. “All law-school courses are advanced, but some are core and some are not. That is, the core courses are taken by all students regardless of their interests in other areas of legal study, whereas the noncore advanced courses are taken according to the special interests of the students.”
“So what do they do in clinics?” Kate asked. “And why has Schuyler had only synthetic ones?”
“Don’t be a snob,” Blair said. “Synthetic clinics teach much the same as real clinics. They’re both involved with lawyerly skills. But Reed’s kind of clinic—about which I’m frankly even more of a snob than you—teaches substantive law by working with students, clients, administrative agencies, or courts in a particular area of law. Simulated clinics only get you so far; they’re okay for practice, but they don’t provide help to real people in need.”
“That’s just what Reed said. On to the basic courses at Schuyler Law.”
“Contracts.” Blair took a break while (apparently) trying to picture the catalog description. “Contracts studies the laws regulating agreements for commercial purposes. It also studies how the state enforces contracts. That’s a lot to study, and it always occupies two semesters. As does constitutional law.”
“Don’t tell me,” Kate said, “let me guess. It studies the Constitution.”
“Well done,” Blair responded. He was getting into the spirit of the thing. “It also considers the legislative and judicial spheres, federal and state, government and individuals.”
“In short,” Kate said, “Rehnquist versus Brennan, or Marshall vs. Thomas.”
“You could put it that way, yes,” Blair agreed. “Except that questions of original intent get rather hairy.”
“Sorry for the uncalled-for remark,” Kate said.
“Apology accepted. I’m doing my humble best.”
“You’re doing wonderfully,” Kate told him, meaning it. “As to what you learn in Torts,” she said, “I cannot even guess.”
“Well, I have taught it,” Blair said, “but that’s not going to be much help. It’s to do with injuries not covered by criminal law. It also deals with the principles of liability.”
“What do you teach, besides literature and law with me?” Kate asked. “I should have asked that question long ago. Were you in literature, I would have ascertained your field in the Oak Room before we had ordered a drink. There is too little understanding between the professions.”
“A condition we are trying to remedy with our lit-law course,” Blair gallantly said. “I teach Procedure. Who can sue whom? When? What do courts do? What are the rules, the role of lawyers, the costs? Perhaps we can discuss the details some other time over a drink.”
“That would be lovely,” Kate said. “Now, what does that leave us? No, don’t tell me; I’ve got to get this clear. Property; how could I forget?”
“In an American law school you can’t and shouldn’t. Some forward-looking schools actually include environmental as well as historical and economic perspectives. At Schuyler, they study property, meaning land and water, chiefly in the context of mine versus yours and, above all, versus the state. And speaking of Schuyler, we’d better get down to that reception. Follow me.”
“Do they serve alcoholic beverages to oil the wheels of social intercourse?” Kate asked, remembering her recent visit to the Theban.
“That they do,” Blair said. “Bourbon is the drink of choice.”
“I should have guessed,” Kate said. “It figures. Reed and I drink scotch.”
“They’ll probably run to a small allowance of scotch for you and Reed. I’m a scotch drinker myself.” He bowed her out of the office, locking the door behind him.
The reception turned out to be much less difficult than any of them had anticipated, largely because of the alcohol. Kate, despite her questions to Blair concerning alcohol, decided not to drink, feeling the need to connect the names she hardly knew with the courses she had just heard about, and wanting to get an impression that might not be offered to her again. Kate never drank when she was working. She considered this reception, unlike that at the Theban, work. Why, I wonder? she asked herself.
Blair introduced Kate to Professor Zinglehoff, who immediately intrigued her. He had two characteristics she found compelling, in the sense in which a horror scene is compelling. First, Zinglehoff never finished a sentence, always interrupting himself just before the eagerly anticipated end to introduce another qualification, and second, he wore under his dark jacket a black turtleneck sweater instead of a shirt and tie, which made him look exactly like a turtle. A tendency to thrust his head forward as he made his never syntactically concluded points increased the resemblance. Kate, who liked turtles, tried to turn this aspect into a compliment, but faltered. My god, she thought, I’m describing someone without even meaning to. But Zinglehoff is someone deserving of description; just think what Dickens might have made of him.
“It must be a new experience, being taught by a woman,” Zinglehoff remarked, “not that there is anything untoward about a woman teaching in a law school, particularly a woman who is not a lawyer, and many intelligent women are not lawyers, in fact, I suppose you could say most intelligent women are not lawyers, but I have been curious as to how our students, who are a hardworking lot, particularly when you consider their outside jobs, and some of them are women like yourself—”
“What do you teach?” Kate rudely interrupted. She wondered how his wife, if any, managed to converse with him. Perhaps she left notes. Perhaps at home he was unalterably silent. On
e could only guess. “Do you teach a basic course?”
“Basic courses are, of course, the heart of any law school, unlike all those frills that can be added afterward, well, some of them are useful, I don’t doubt it, in their own way, and I have even taught Real-Estate Transactions from time to time, when the need arose, which in a small school like ours it sometimes does, due to leaves and other emergencies, and I can’t say that I approve of hiring adjunct professors to take up the—”
“You teach Property?” Kate asked. She felt an overwhelming urge to shout, “Answer yes or no.” And indeed, a yes, trailing a long sentence behind it, had just passed his lips when Reed appeared to the rescue, saying: “Kate, Professor Abbott would like to meet you. He’s over there; let me introduce you.”
“Excuse me,” she said to Zinglehoff.
“You looked in need of rescue,” Reed said, “and Abbott did ask to meet you. Be brave.” He grinned, and headed her toward Professor Abbott, who was indeed notable; in addition to being the only non-white person in the room, he was large, and handsome, and stately.
“You’re not a lawyer,” he informed Kate, shaking her hand. “Blair Whitson has tried to explain to me why we want a nonlawyer teaching in a law school, but I’m afraid I didn’t altogether get the picture. Could you clarify it for me? I’d be grateful.”
“Certainly,” Kate said. She looked at her empty glass.
“Let me get you another drink,” Abbott said. “What was it? Gin?”
“I’ve had enough,” Kate said, “but thank you for the offer. Actually, I was looking into my glass for inspiration to answer your question rather than for a drink.”
“I know,” Abbott surprisingly said, “you think I’m an ‘old boy,’ as my daughter calls all academics my age, and I proudly proclaim that indeed I am. It is a privilege for me to be here, in such a fine law school, and I would like to see it continue to offer what I was so glad to be allowed to learn when I went to law school many years ago.”
“And instead they are offering the sort of irrelevance I teach,” Kate said. “I see your point, I really do.”
“It isn’t alone what you teach,” Abbott said. “It’s what the students seem to expect these days. They don’t come to learn, they come to argue before they know what they’re arguing about. They know how to challenge but not how to acquire the information that gives them the right to challenge. Very old-fashioned, isn’t it?”
“No,” Kate said, rather liking him. “It’s gone too far, I do see that. Even in literary studies, many students don’t want to study texts or, as we used to say, literature, they want to discuss the social, cultural, gender, and economic conditions surrounding and infusing the text. One can’t help feeling annoyed with this shift in emphasis from time to time, but I tend to look on it as an extreme but necessary inter-generational adjustment.”
“That’s put magnanimously,” Abbott said. “But why did this extreme adjustment just happen lately? Generations of students studied law as it was taught, and they probably studied literature that way, too. Why need we change so dramatically? Are you sure you wouldn’t like another drink?”
“Well, I might get some more tonic,” Kate said, moving toward the bar.
“Allow me,” Abbott said; he took her glass. “I’ll be right back; don’t move. Just plain tonic?”
“Please,” Kate said. His gallantry allowed her a moment to structure her response, for which she was grateful.
“I’ve been thinking of what you asked,” she said when he had returned with their glasses refilled. “I don’t think revolutions come gradually, or in measured steps, and we are living in a revolution. There are two possible faculty responses to revolutions: to fight them, and to join them, hoping in the process perhaps to offer not only encouragement, but some restraint and caution. The problem I have found—I speak frankly, and only about literature—is that caution is misplaced, because those in power, those who like the old ways, will not budge until pushed. And once you push, the momentum carries you even further than you had quite foreseen.”
“Yes,” Abbott said, “I’ve noticed that. That’s why I’m against the pushers. I’m ready to stand and defend what we have. After all, it took many years of effort to achieve what we have, in law and literature, and surely it’s worth respect.”
“Except for the fact that it is white men who have achieved it, and told some lies and committed some crimes in the process. Since we now know that, we revolutionaries feel inclined to question everything, perhaps more than we should.”
“You want to throw out the baby with the bathwater?”
“No,” Kate said. “I think we just want to reconsider the baby and change the bathwater. But clichés are hard to build on, don’t you find?”
“Clichés, perhaps. Wisdom, I find, is not hard to build on.” He had returned to his pomposity, and was looking over her shoulder. Kate turned to find Blair approaching with yet another faculty member in tow. “Let me introduce you to Augustus Slade,” he said to Kate. “Kate Fansler is teaching the law and literature course with me,” Blair told Slade, unnecessarily. More informatively, and sensing her need to distinguish these men one from the other, he said to Kate: “Professor Slade teaches Criminal Law.” Kate greeted Slade with more enthusiasm than she felt; one could have too many conversations with members of this exalted faculty. She wondered, irrelevantly, if Harriet had decided to attend this sad example of a social whirl. Apparently not; wise Harriet.
Kate repressed a sigh. When caught, as she now was, in a reception or cocktail party, Kate thought of Shaw’s response when asked to stand for Parliament: “It would be easier and pleasanter to drown myself,” he had replied. But Professor Slade was, clearly, ready like the others to let her know she had no business here at a law school. What Slade did not realize was that Kate had decided upon him as the one to be questioned about the battered woman syndrome. Reed had told her that a number of women in the prison his clinic would be associated with were there for having killed their battering husbands. Kate wondered how the old guard would react to this new twist of the law, though she thought she could guess.
“And how do you like the company of lawyers?” Slade asked. “Or are you, because of your lawyer husband, quite used to having us around?”
“I’m not used to it,” Kate said, “and I welcome the opportunity to talk about law instead of literature. Would you mind if I asked you some lawyerly questions? Blair did say you teach Criminal Law.”
“Like your husband. Surely you can’t have any questions you couldn’t ask him?”
That was a facer. “Well,” Kate said, adopting a simpering manner that always worked with just-met professors and other self-satisfied and powerful males, “I don’t like to bother him with questions when he comes home after a hard day’s work. One wants to show an interest, don’t you know, but one doesn’t want to hammer away.”
“Very good thinking,” Slade said. “I wish you could pass your wisdom on to my wife. She seems to think I can explain every legal twist and turn the newspapers pepper us with. What was it you wanted to ask in these professional surroundings?”
“Well,” Kate simpered on, “being a woman, I’m naturally interested in the new laws affecting women. The old laws don’t seem to have taken women into account.” She hoped this would get him onto the battered woman syndrome, but if not, she would have to get more specific.
It appeared, however, that she had pushed the right button. “These changes in the law are preposterous nine tenths of the time,” he declared. “Giving women total rights over their bodies is bad enough, with no consideration for the fetus, but when you distort the law to let a woman murder her husband and let her off by rules that don’t apply to men, you have got yourself in real danger. Real danger.”
“Surely that can’t happen,” Kate said, widening her eyes and crossing several fingers and toes.
“It can and does, my dear. Practically every day. It might have happened to my oldest friend, Fred Osbo
rne, but the only comforting aspect to his horrible death is the fact that his wife was sent to the prison on Staten Island before this battered-woman nonsense took hold, and I trust she will rot there. Betty Osborne should have been put to death, in my opinion, but despite what you say, the law is easier on women.”
Kate forswore pointing out that New York State did not have the death penalty except for killing policemen. “I can’t believe that the wife of a friend of yours actually killed her husband,” she said.
“Killed him in cold blood when he was asleep. Just as though he were an animal. Like a gang execution, really, that’s what it was. Horrible.”
“Why was she mad at him?” Kate asked.
“No reason; no reason on earth. She was just crazy, a mad, ungrateful, unbalanced woman.”
“Did he beat her? Isn’t that why it’s called the battered woman syndrome?”
“Of course he didn’t beat her; he was a member of this faculty, not a working-class thug. She claimed he beat her, of course, but I can tell you the worst he did was drink a bit much, and maybe he knocked her around once or twice when he was under the influence, but I’m sure she wasn’t battered. She had a nice home and two children; she was a liar and a nut, if you ask me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Slade left with no pretense of courtesy; he was opting out of the discussion.
Kate stood for a moment, reflecting on his remarks, isolated in this room of babbling voices, sharply aware of not belonging, of being, in fact, a spy in an enemy camp. She had barely begun to reflect on this strange experience when a glass was tapped, and a tall, trim, handsome man demanded attention. “Welcome,” he said, when the room grew quiet, “welcome to our traditional gathering. At least once each semester we join, all of us who teach in this fine institution, in one room to remind ourselves who we are and what our mission is: to pass on the law as our forefathers conceived it, to the young who will defend it after we are gone. The need for defense of that noble law grows greater each year. I lift my glass in tribute to those who honor what time and experience have proven true to our country’s destiny.”