In my high school, a prestigious one in NY, we had absolutely no in-school awards or honor societies (but accepted NHS) until after senior year because, and I agree, they felt that 1) they lead to unnecessary, misdirected competition and 2) good work should be evident in grades, etc. The academic distinction these societies claim to recognize is becoming more and more tenuous as students freak out over the college process.

“Well, you know, two chiefs ago, Chief Justice Burger, used to complain about the low quality of counsel. I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.

I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.”

Just look at APDA. Some of the brightest young men and women in the country gather together to debate every weekend, and a good majority of them have their sights on law school down the road. I wonder why that is–perhaps the intellectual rigor of the law has something to do with the appeal?

Certainly, law itself has a unique appeal to it–unlike philosophy, etc. it has very real consequences–it orders our society, it metes out punishment.

Regardless, we should be focusing more of our grade school education on building up a love for math & science–the US’ success in this century depends on it.