Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal

LOS ANGELES PUBLIC INTEREST LAW JOURNAL

1 L.A. PUB. INT. L.J. 344

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INAUGURAL LOYOLA LAW
SCHOOL SOCIAL JUSTICE LECTURE (TRANSCRIPT)*
Julie A. Su

          When I started law school, I was told I would be taught “to think like a lawyer.” I thought thinking like a lawyer meant I would be able to use laws to challenge barriers to a just world.

          It turned out that—at least it felt this way at the time—very little about law school seemed to be about that at all. I felt increasingly alienated as I came to realize that “thinking like a lawyer” meant suppressing and rejecting not just much of what was important to me, but much of who I was. “Thinking like a lawyer,” it appeared, meant that I would have to think less and less like a human being.

          Though I did not know any lawyers and knew little about the law when I got to law school, I did know how to be a translator. Like so many children of immigrants, I grew up translating for my parents: making phone calls, writing letters, and trying to navigate the adult world and adult interactions. I pursued law school because I grew increasingly aware that law is really a language—and those who speak it get to decide who gets what in our society: who gets protected and who does not; who is a citizen and who is not; who can get married and who cannot; who pays to keep our economy going and who does not. Growing up, I had seen how language serves to keep certain people at the margins of society; the law is similar. I went to law school to gain the tools to become a translator of the law for people who were disenfranchised, discriminated against, and exploited.

* For complete transcript, please download the PDF.