I fancied myself a rationalist. As a philosophy major I learned to prize reason over emotion, knowledge over belief. It was my opinion that the law ought to extract as much emotion as possible out of the trial process because emotions led to things like prejudice and misplaced sympathy, and generally allowed lawyers to manipulate the system to get what's best for their client, regardless of what's best for society. However if the system restricted itself to the facts, judges and juries could deliberate and reach the rational outcome.

Your first lesson was that law, and especially trial practice, is about more than just the facts. Facts are often indeterminate. As the Necker Cube illustrates, reality can appear very different depending on how you look at it. Juries can't simply enter the facts into a computer and spit out the right decision, they must make tough decisions, sometimes life and death decisions. A trial is a process for making those tough decisions while giving the appearance of justice. It is a rhetorical framework to convince the people of the rightness of the outcome, even though the truth, the factual truth, is unknowable. The rules of evidence are designed to protect the credibility of the process. The lawyer's task, vividly described by Vinny in his speech about the playing card, is to tell a story to convince the jury of the rightness of his her client's view of reality. It requires the lawyer to bring the jury to the emotional point where they believe his or her client deserves to win. In doing so he or she works in the gray area between what is clearly permitted and what is clearly prohibited. A lawyer's ability to push the evidence rules as far as they will go determines his or her ability as an advocate.

However, I'm left with a dilemma. Legal justice is based on what seems to be rather than on what is, and the outcome is often determined by the relative skill of the lawyers and not the truth. Though it may have the appearance of justice, we lawyers know it is just an approximation. Your lesson succeeded in tempering my naive rationalism, but it left much doubt and cynicism in its place.

The second lesson was made less explicit than the first, but it is embedded in the structure of the course and taught by example. The lesson was, "challenge yourself to do something big." Have a vision and try to make it a reality. By doing so we get to choose which stories we want to tell, and consequently we'll have the most freedom to write our own stories. Each of the issues dealt with in the group projects were, or are, big challenges with the potential to reshape society in a significant way.

In Gutenberg, we hope to secure the public domain from the grasping hands of powerful corporate interests in order to protect future authorship. MK Ultra offers the chance to pry open the CIA and make it accountable for its past violations of human and civil rights. In Berkowitz, the target is Harvard itself and the goal is to mold the tenure process so that it fits a vision of fairness and due process. Impeachment is the biggest legal and political issue of the day, the resolution of which will resonate through history. The Pinochet case involves questions of international law and highlights the importance of torturers being made to face their victims. CyberJam set its sights on a new Jamaica, a sovereign Maroon nation, and an economy which is an organic part of their culture. Finally, A Civil Action represented a great legal challenge, making corporations responsible for their toxic dumping, and also a new challenge in legal education, using Woburn as a case study to teach many areas of law.

In all these cases evidence is a tool which allows us to tell the stories, to persuade, and to make an impact on the world in which we live. The name of the course, "Truth, Evidence, Internet," and the course goal of jury trials in cyberspace illustrate the challenge undertaken by the course itself: to take the lead and guide the law into the terra incognita of the internet age. I'm reminded of Jonathan Harr's insight into your reasons, Professor Nesson, for joining the Woburn team. Life lacks flavor without a challenge and to really challenge yourself, sometimes you have to get in over your head. Reach for what you want / Want more than you can get.

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