0195182863.pdf

On Becoming a Legal Person 135

As we have seen, the putative safeguard provided by legal discursive structure
relies on a metalinguistic filter. This filter has a number of dimensions: the charac-
teristic layering of legal texts and legal authority,^48 translation into doctrinal cat-
egories, the metapragmatic warrants provided by legal procedure, the insistent
shifting between positions in an oppositional dialogue, the distancing provided by
ongoing technical questioning. To successfully master this discourse, students must
be able to speak in an “I” that is not their own self, to adapt their position to the
exigencies of legal language. Arguably, most professionals must do this, yet the flu-
idity of footing and role taught in law school classrooms stands out as more simi-
lar to, say, acting school than to medical school. In both law and theater, the fluidity
of footing and role, submerging self into the discourse itself, are central to a new
chameleon professional “I.” It is not just one new professional self that must be
learned and voiced; rather, there is an ongoing multiplicity of perspectives and
voices (although they are bound together by a common metapragmatic founda-
tion). Of course, in law school, the act of submersion in multiple voices is part of
a linguistic process by which state power interacts with individual citizens’ lives,
giving it a different character from training in, for example, theater.
Law students, then, are undergoing a quiet process in which their very selves
are decentered through and in speech, as they take on the voices and perspectives
pushed on them by the demands of legal discourse. A poignant comparison can be
made between this process in law school training and discourse in courtrooms.
Recall for a moment the exchange in Transcript 6.25, in which the professor cor-
rects a student’s attempt to describe her own motivations for attending law school:

Come, Ms. C., you’re not that shallow a person. Let’s be honest. Let’s force you to say

something maybe you don’t really mean. Let’s psychoanalyze you. You’re in law school

rather than business school because you find it at bottom more deeply satisfying or

at least you thought you could, to study the law than to go to business school.[... ]

There is a deep emotional fulfillment that you are supposed to be getting from the

law school. That is why you came here.

As we noted, this exchange highlights the process by which students are encour-
aged to separate their inner opinions and feelings from the discursively defined
legal personae they are learning to embody. A core facet of this embodiment, of
course, is the shift to a new voice, so that students engaging in dialogue with their
teachers begin to speak as players in a legal drama. In the process, they move away
from emotion, morality, and context as they create new selves anchored in legal
discourse. This makes sense of the otherwise nonsensical situation we find in this
exchange, where the professor can actually situate himself as more expert regard-
ing the student’s own motives than she herself is.
Let us now compare that law school dialogue with the following exchange
reported by Philips in her study of courtroom discourse:

Philips text:^49

Judge: (Show) the defendant in custody. Uh as I informed you gentle-

men in chambers, I have reviewed the uh defendant’s record and

I cannot go along with the plea agreement with you. If I were to