Formidable lawblogger Ann Althouse is beating her head against a wall. She’s made it her mission to prevent people who don’t understand caselaw, or aren’t willing to explain caselaw, from hijacking the discussion of Judge Alito’s opinion in Chittister, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) case that’s getting so much attention.
As of now, she’s got a four-part post ( Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.) patiently explaining what she says is "horrendously complicated" caselaw. (Admittedly, by the time she gets to Part 4, she’s starting to lose her patience.)
IANAL, but I sympathize. Law, like theology or engineering or medicine, requires long years of careful study to develop even a minimum of competency of thought, and longer years of experience and continued study to develop anything like expertise in one of the many infolded intricacies.
A true amateur — remember the root of the word? — can, I believe, cultivate a deep knowledge base and practice in critical thinking within any of those fields. Intense fascination with a subject, can fuel years of learning, as much outside the academy as inside it. Haven’t we all known hobbyists who really became experts, all on their own, out of pure love for a subject, be it Civil War history or aerodynamics or engine repair or North American songbirds?
Others become experts for practical reasons. A friend of mine was dissatisfied with the available curricula for teaching her homeschooled daughter to read. She delved into journals and textbooks early-reading research, and discovered that no existing program implements correctly the findings of the most carefully designed research in education, linguistics, and neurology. She’s now writing her own curriculum.
For still others, the subject finds them. A grim diagnosis, for example, is a strong motivator (for some patients — others are perfectly content to remain ignorant and trust their doctors) to become highly specialized experts, not in a field they chose, but in one that chose them.
So I have a great deal of respect for the true amateur, the lover of his subject. Having a degree in law, or science, or medicine, or whatever, is not a prerequisite for intelligent discourse even in a very detailed aspect of a field. The formal study helps, sure, but at bottom it takes interest and attention and intelligence and time and discipline, and maybe discourse with other knowledgeable people, all of which can be had (perhaps with greater difficulty) outside the academy. If anything the amateur-expert deserves more respect, because he or she gains expertise without the positional advantages of the full-time student or professor.
That being said, though, there are an awful lot of people who are neither amateurs nor experts who blow a great deal of hot air; who perpetuate tired myths through soundbites; and who believe that arguments are won by sounding like a smart person, or a smart-ass, instead of by the slower, more careful, less glamorous discipline of marshalling arguments and showing how one leads to the other, on and on to the inevitable conclusion.
And there are a lot of people who seem committed to a subject, but a few minutes’ questioning shows that they succumb to the wildest theories — the sort that leads some people to buy gadgets that promise to strip all the electrons out of their drinking water, thus increasing the bond angle of the H2O molecule, ending fatigue and burning cellulite; the sort that leads other people to claim that because they live in Ohio they do not have to pay federal income tax, and if the judge would only listen then he would see it that way too.
Part of this is magical thinking in action, but I can’t help but think that another part is from skipping over the grunt work of really understanding the basics of a subject, the sort of thing that many people get in Chemistry 101 through 103, and others get by, say, devouring Isaac Asimov’s nonfiction books, wishing they knew more, and turning to more-recent textbooks.
And of course, another part is a deep distrust of anyone who gains real expertise and is able to demolish them in a real debate. It’s so much easier to sneer than to engage.
Anyway. IANAL. But the frustration Ann is experiencing is near-universal and interdisciplinary.
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