Pulling Their Triggers

Column for week of February 16, 2015

     "What is the world coming to?"  Who hasn't heard this
lament?  I find few things surprising, leave alone shocking.  
They may be disgusting, but not surprising.  The folly of our
fellow humans is, unfortunately, to be expected.

     A couple of recent news items did surprise me.  I hope
they are anomalies, rather than the beginning of a trend.

     When I attended law school at the University of
Michigan, it seemed to be an assumption that law students
should be emotionally tough.  If they couldn't handle the stress
from taking a class for a year and having their entire grade
hang on one four-hour examination, How could they stand the
stress of handling cases with lives and fortunes hanging in the
balance?

     Stress in law school was part of a lawyer's training. 
Would you want to be represented by a lawyer who becomes
non functional under stress?  Such a lawyer would be about as
helpful as an umbrella that folds when hit by a drop of rain.

     One news item reported that law students have
requested that their examinations be postponed because they
were too stressed out to take them.  What horrible personal
trauma did they experience?  Well, actually none.   The cause
of the alleged stress was hearing news from far away about
events that had no direct impact on the students.

     The traumatic events were that two grand juries didn't
indite police officers for killing unarmed black men.  The
purpose of this column isn't to dissect and judge the actions of
the grand juries.  Plenty of other writers have been more than
willing to do that.

     My concern is the catering to the whims of people who
program their emotions to detonate at the pull of a hair trigger. 
At a minimum, for their own benefits and the benefit of others,
they should be discouraged from practicing law.  By the way,
at least one law school granted the request.  Perhaps before
hiring a lawyer you should give him an emotional trigger test. 
See if a few well chosen words cause him to melt down into a
quivering blob.

     If someone has a weak leg, it isn't particularly helpful
to aid them in avoiding using the leg and learning to live with
the weakness.   The individual would benefit far more from
encouragement to use and strengthen the leg.  The emotionally
fragile need the same kind of help.

     I did mention that there were two articles.  The second
is perhaps worse than the first.  Law students are objecting to
professors teaching about the law of rape.   Certain "trigger"
words may be disturbing to some students.  One trigger word
mentioned by a professor was "violate" as in  "Does this
conduct violate the law?"

     If law schools can't teach the law of rape, Should courts
be allowed to try rape cases?  If no one is allowed to teach
about the law of rape, Will there be any lawyers and judges
qualified to handle such cases?

     Are there any words that can't pull someone's trigger?  I
have previously written about the man who became so upset
about the possibility of his girl friend saying "New Jersey" to
him that he pulled a real trigger on her three times.  She
survived to testify against him.  Other horrible words, including
"snickers" and "Wisconsin" also could pull his trigger.

     The one way saying New Jersey might pull my trigger
is someone saying "You have to move to New Jersey."  That
would be something to get upset about.  Still, even that might
not justify shooting someone three times.  Would once be too
many?

     Instead of catering to and encouraging infantile
behavior, we should condemn such behavior and encourage
those with a trigger problem to quit blaming others and fix
their own triggers.  The last thing we should do is make it
easier for those emotional china dolls to become fragile
lawyers.

aldmccallum@gmail.com
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Copyright 2015
Albert D. McCallum