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Topic: On the ethics of choosing a career
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prowsej
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 798
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posted 15 May 2008 05:14 PM
Under a utilitarian ethical framework, we're obligated to maximize general welfare with each of our decisions. I'll likely be starting law school this fall. My decision is that I could study internet law and I'm sure that I'd find it interesting. To be like Geist or Lessig. But my dilemma is whether this would satisfy the ethical obligations that are incumbent upon me when compared with the option to study a type of law - be it human rights, poverty, or environmental - that arguably has the potential to realize results that are more significant. My question is whether it can be ethical to study internet law, and more generally, whether you have thoughts on the ethics of choosing a career. Thank you.
From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001
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M. Spector
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8273
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posted 16 May 2008 05:47 PM
quote: Originally posted by prowsej: My question is whether it can be ethical to study internet law, and more generally, whether you have thoughts on the ethics of choosing a career.
Studying something is hardly ever "unethical".You can study internet law all you like without violating any ethical codes. The ethics comes into play when you decide what you are going to do with all that knowledge. Every legal dispute has at least two sides. If the dispute involves internet law, you could be acting for the angels or the forces of evil. And you can't really decide, before you even go to law school, which side you will find yourself on. Many progressive people for example approach law school with a determination to study and practice labour law; when they graduate they find pro-union jobs are hard to get and they end up doing management-side labour, or something completely unrelated. Remember, studying internet law or labour law or aerospace law, or any of the other legal specialties at the undergraduate level means taking at most perhaps two or three courses in it in three years. The vast majority of the time you are learning the same stuff as everyone else. So you can forget about having to make a choice of career specialty before you start law school. Very few lawyers actually end up in the kind of practice they imagined they would. I'm pretty sure, for example, that Michael Geist didn't plan to be an internet specialist when he started law school. Just go with the flow, and do what you like to do for as long as you can do it. Oh, and you can forget about changing the world through practising law. Sorry.
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005
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prowsej
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 798
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posted 16 May 2008 06:18 PM
Looking at the biographies of some of my professors I think that you can change the world with a lawyer's pen, viz.: quote: Dr. Michael M'Gonigle is the Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Victoria, and is cross-appointed between the School of Environmental Studies and the Faculty of Law. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace International, SmartGrowth BC, Forest Futures (Dogwood Initiative) and a founding co-director of the Sierra Legal Defense Fund. When he was Chair of the Board of Greenpeace Canada in the early 1990s, he initiated the Greenpeace forest campaign. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he worked in international environmental law, leading the Greenpeace team that led to the global moratorium on whaling. In the 1980s and 1990s, he worked in the wilderness movement in British Columbia, leading a 12-year campaign that resulted in Class A park status for the Stein River Valley northeast of Vancouver. He continues to work on forestry issues, most recently as a member of the Legal Mechanisms Experts Team devising innovative legal mechanisms for aboriginal and community-based management of British Columbia’s Central and North Coasts.
From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001
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