Jobless Law Grad Is Glad He Went to Law School
A law grad who has “no job to speak of” is glad he went to law school, and the reason has nothing to do with career prospects.
A big benefit of law school was con law, University of St. Thomas law grad Ron Walters writes at the Minnesota Lawyer blog JDs Rising. He credits the legal training he received for helping him analyze the ‘flawed’ arguments behind this forwarded e-mail he recently received:
“A Christian nation cannot put up a Christmas scene of the baby Jesus in a public place, but the Muslims can stop normal traffic every Friday afternoon by worshiping in the streets,” the e-mail said. “Something is happening in America that is reminiscent of what is happening in Europe. This is Political Correctness gone crazy. Scary, isn’t it?”
Walters, for one, doesn’t find these events scary. “Constitutional law taught us that (with some important exceptions) the free exercise clause gives individuals the ability to practice their faith freely and that the establishment clause prohibits the government from endorsing religion,” he writes.
Walters says he had vague notions about religious freedom from his undergrad days, “but I had no real appreciation for how just a few words in the First Amendment could be charged with the heavy task of creating a pluralist state with a secular government.” Law school lessons, he concludes, “now seem essential to participating meaningfully in a democracy.”
