In the early hours of the morning, law professors wonder whether anything we do makes the world a better place.
Today, I feel pretty sure that the answer is yes. That’s because, on January 28, I awoke to a televised image of Ammon Bundy’s lawyer, Mike Arnold of Eugene, Oregon, reading a statement urging the other Malheur protesters to stand down. Arnold is a former student of mine. So is Tiffany Harris of Portland, who represents Shawna Cox, the 59-year-old woman who was arrested in the car with LaVoy Finicum, the militant spokesman who was shot during a traffic stop near the occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
I couldn’t be prouder.
That’s not because I like their clients. I taught Mike and Tiffany during 16 happy years at the University of Oregon School of Law. During that time, I also taught students who had grown up on ranches in the eastern desert, on farms in the state’s irrigated south, on hippie settlements on the rain-drenched Oregon coast, on the state’s Indian reservations, in the Willamette Valley wine country, and in the sophisticated urban areas around Portland. Oregon, a state the size of Italy, supports a population roughly half the size of New York City. Much of the state is desert or forest; its ecosystems are exquisite but fragile. It is a place that needs careful tending. And by and large, those who live there take that responsibility seriously. Land-policy issues—and there are many—tend to be resolved through painstaking negotiations among local farmers and ranchers, Indian tribes, urban dwellers, and state and local governments.