Its hard to know what to write about when most of what I think about these days is this strange abstraction called the law. Its contours, its restrictions, its normative motions are soaking up most of my time.

So how do I make this bloggable? Have I gotten so deep into this that it becomes near ridiculous to bust out another blog post? Sometimes, it feels as if it does. But once I get my head out of the books, I naturally arrive here, probably because I haven’t written in a while and because it feels normal, in a sense, to be here.

So what’s been going on? I’ve been learning that the lives I read about in cases - who have been shot, stabbed, battered, wounded, defrauded, misrepresented, left to die, left with a bad deal - are mere characters that explain a staggering array of rules that are designed to govern us, that set up normative bounds within which we can play and do whatever we like. But once we cross those bounds, sirens abound.

The characters are many and they are mostly women, people of color, and others who live their lives in the margins. Most of our law is designed by problematizing their suffering. And yet, I see a discrepancy, where are a disproportionately high number of men of color behind bars, immigrants in detention, people shot without compensation. Clear indications that the law doesn’t work for the people that made it the way it is.

But is what I am seeing true? That it was “designed” by those most residing in the margins? I’m not sure - if it weren’t for people challenging the status quos of their time, the law wouldn’t be where it is now.

I feel that I have a lot more to learn - I’m only 8 weeks into this mess. Come back to me in a year and I’ll tell you what inconsistency I obsess about then.

In the meanwhile, I’ll keep my nose in the books.

Posted by Vivek on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 12:50 am.