Clark Memorandum: Spring 1991 J
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Brigham Young University Law School BYU Law Digital Commons The lC ark Memorandum Law School Archives Spring 1991 Clark Memorandum: Spring 1991 J. Reuben Clark Law Society J. Reuben Clark Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/clarkmemorandum Part of the Legal Education Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation J. Reuben Clark Law Society and J. Reuben Clark Law School, "Clark Memorandum: Spring 1991" (1991). The Clark Memorandum. 9. https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/clarkmemorandum/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Archives at BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in The lC ark Memorandum by an authorized administrator of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. I I I; 0 N '1' E N T S SPRING 1991 2 H Reese Hansen lumor in Law Teaching Dean ames D, Gordon I11 Scott W Cameron Jalues 10 Editor Clder Dallin H Oaks Charles D Cranney Associate Editor Hmv to Win Friends and lnfluence Republicans: 16 The Remarkable Campaig'n of Bill Orton Linda A Sullivan Charles D Cranney Ar t Director 24 John Snyder Keeping the Weightier Matters uf the Law Photogiayher Elder Marlin I<. jensen Jonathan Skousen Christiunity and the Mud Dog Litigator 30 ThY TYP% David G Campbell Joyce Janetski Assistant Copy Editor Memoranda 36 Thomas M Cutler Mike Bothwell Editoi ial Assistants SPRING 1991 The Clark Memorundurn is published by the J Reuben Clark Law Society and the J Reuben Claik Law School, Brigham Young University. Copyright 1991 by Rrigham Young University All Rights Reserved Cover Painting of J Reuben Clark, Jr , by Alvin Gittins, 1922-1981 ..... JAMES D. GORDON 1111 NCE AT A CHURCH MLETING delightfully amusing, but also because they reveal Elder B.H Roberts spoke for nearly an hour, leaving Kimball’s genuine humanity in a colorful and memorable J Golden Kimball only five minutes Elder IGmbalI arose way. They teach us that although he was a church leader, he and said, “B.H. Roberts is the president of the Seventy was very much like the rest of us, He too struggled with and has taken all the time Someday he will be dead, and weaknesses and frustrations. Despite his apparent imperfec- I will be president. Then I will take all the time ” Then he tions, the Lord obviously loved and approved of J Golden sat down.2 Kirnball enough to use him in remarkable ways. If that was J Golden Kimball stories like this one play a valuable role true of J. Golden KimbaI1, the stories tell us, perhaps there is in LDS culture Elder Kimball’s use of wit in serious settings hope for us as well. created incongruities that were somehow both starthng and Like religion (although not nearly as important), the refreshing The stories persist not only because they are study of law is a serious enterprise It is difficult, frustrating, Professor of Law, J Reuben Clark Law School I have not shown Jeffiey R Holland, Gregory Husisian, Jay Eeno, Michael W McConnell, this article to the Dean He would have urged me not to publish it, and Douglas H hiker, Bud Scruggs, Barry G Silberman, Steven Douglas I’m already in trouble with him He says that I never listen to him (or Smith, John S Tanner, Mark Twain, Gerald R Williams, and others something like that--1 don’t remember) Apologies and thanks to Dave T Madsen, Defender of the Faith: The B H Roberts Story 350 Rarry, Gyles Brandreth, Johnny Carson, Redd Foxx, Bruce C Hafen, (1980) PORTRAIT ADAPTATION BY WILSON ONG CLARK MEMORANDUM and often intimidating. It constantly reminds us of our own Humor can relieve some of these tensions It reminds inadequacies There is exhilaration in discovering new ways students not to take everything (including themselves) so of thinking,3 in learning about the world,4 and in feeling our seriously, and to find more enjoyment in what they are understanding and abilities grow However, there are also doing The ability to laugh at oneself and to find absurdities uncertainty, uncase, and even fear Law school has been in everyday life can help a person cope with stressful situa- compared5 to one of those movies in which somebody wear- tions and difficult challenges Psychologists say that laughter ing a hockey mask terrorizes people at a makes people feel better both physically summer camp and slowly and carefully .. and psychologically l5 slashes them all to pieces Except it’s Several years ago Norman Cousins, an worse, because the professors don’t wear editor of the Saturday Review, wrote a hockey masks, and you have to look now famous account of how he contrac- directly at their faces SCHOOL ted an incurable and life-threatening dis- ease of the body’s connective tissues, HAS BEEN COMPARED which he believed was precipitated by adrenal exhaustion In his article, ost students initially find TO ONE OF THOSE Anatomy .f an Illness (as Perceived by the Socratic method in- the Patient),’6 Cousins recounted how timidating, if not potentially humiliat- MOVIES IN WHICH he decided to introduce more hope, faith, ing6 Students struggle as they learn and laughter into his life. His theory was about stare decisis,’ and leg- SOMEEODY WEARING that laughtcr and other positive emotions islation ’ They somctimes fccl that their could affcct his body chemistry for the professors are being condescending” or A HOCKEY MASK better. He obtained films of classic are out to get them I’ The competitive- Candid Camera television shows and had ness of law school and the fear of failureI2 TERRORIZES PEOPLE a nurse read to him out of a trove of can create debilitating anxieties Students humor books He discovered that the arc sometimes terrificd by thc possibility AT A SUMMER CAMP laughter sessions enabled him to get a of getting poor gradcs,13 and whcn final few hours of sleep without pain The examsI4 approach they can feel about as AND SLOWLY AND nurses took sedimentation-rate rcad- happy as a nine-lived cat run over by an ings (blood tests indicating infection eighteen wheeler These things explain CAREFULLYSLASHES levels) just beforc as well as several why law school has been compared to a hours after the laughtcr episodes Each besieged city: everybody outside wants in, THEM ALL TO PIECES. time, there was a drop of at lcast five and everybody inside wants out points Cousins wrote, “I was greatly EXCEPT IT’S WORSE’ Straight thinking is generally preferred, 8Which is important because, in the law, based on the assumption that we live in a Eucli- BECAUSE THE anything that has been done before may legally dean universe Cf Village of Euclid v Ambler be done again J Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 242 Realty Co , ,272 U S 365 (1926) (implicitly PROFESSORS DON’T (J Ross ed 19th printing 1964) assuming that every point on the surface of a ’Congress’s Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduc- sphere is unique) But cf Tribe, The Curvature of tion law has been desciibed as a law saying, “Stop WEAR HOCXEY MASKS, Constitzitzonul Space: What Laivyers Can Learn me before I kill again ” from Modem Physics, 103 Harv L Rev 1 (1989) lo “Condescending” means when you talk I have always enjoyed learning about the AND YOU HAVE TO down to people world When I was 18, I told my father that I ‘I This view may seem palanoid Howevei, wanted to join the Navy so I could see strange just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that LOOK DIRECTLY AT lands and meet strange people My father replied, people are not out to get you Also, some forms of “You want to meet strange people? Go to St mental illness are not so bad For example, Louis Meet your mother’s people ” THEIR FACES. schizophrenia beats dining alone By me The passive voice is a remarkable I2 My first-semester grades were four F’s and device for avoiding responsibility Cf President a D The dean called me into his office and said, Richard Nixon’s announcement during the “Kid, you’ve got to stop spending all your time on Watergate investigation that “justice would be one subject ” pursued fairly, fully, and impartially, no matter l3 It is alleged that law school grades have no I_ - who is involved ’I Bowers, Using and Misusing the Passive Voice, Califor- piedictive ability on success in law practice Psychics have no predictive nia Lawyer 63, 64 (Sept 1984) Unfortunately for him, people did pui- ability, either If they do, why do you never see a headline that says sue it, and he was the one involved “Psychic Wins Lottery”? ‘The Socratic method is the reason that law school is the only place l4 Law schools give only one exam at the end of the semester, the where YOU LEARN TO HATE YOUR OWN NAME 1 FINAL EXAM OF TIIE LIVING DEAD Latin, fur “We stand by uur past mistakes ” Seventy percent of all I5Talan, Laughing on the Outside: Sick Ilumor May Be a Way We legal reasoning is the logical fallacy of appeal to authority The other Release Our Tensions, Deseret News Magazine, May 4, 1986, at 8 forty percent is simply mathematical error l6 Saturday Review, May 28, 1977, at 4 4 C L A R K ILI E MO R A N D U M elated by the discovery that there is a physiologic basis for with a student “Look,” said the student, pointing at the the ancient theory that laughter is good mcdicine ”17 ground, “a five-dollar bill ” “It can’t be,” responded the pro- Although laughter was not the only treatment used, it fessor “If it were there, somebody would have picked it up was a major part of the therapy Eventually the connective by One could add, “Economics is a closed system; tissues stopped deteriorating and began regenerating, and internally it is perfectly logical, operating according to a con- Cousins recovered Onc endocrinologist was convinced that sistent set of principles.