America the Beautiful | Text by Heather Ferguson | July 2011
As a lowly first year law student, I had a legal research and writing professor who was wise beyond her years. In addition to teaching us the basics of brief writing, she acted as a coach and mentor during those initially very scary months of law school. But after two of our classmates failed to return following the Fall Break, she talked to us one morning in a conversation I have not only committed to memory, but I have tried to embody.
Democracy, she told us, whether in the perplexities of Law School or complexities of Life is really about one thing - balance. We could study 200 hours per week, for instance, and ignore the other aspects of our life, but that would render us useless to ourselves and ultimately to the law. On the other hand, she continued, we could treat Law School flippantly by fully engaging in extra-curricular activity and the social promises of the collegiate experience. Yet that approach would likely cause us to fail, too. She encouraged instead a proposal that encompassed both. Emphasizing the importance of study should not eclipse those activities that brought us pleasure. Thus was born the concept of moderation.
Our country was founded three hundred years ago upon a system of checks and balances, and our three branches of government continue to moderate one another to ensure that the democratic principles of our Founding Fathers still serve and protect our nation. Unfortunately, it is in our personal lives that we have fallen short. We thrive on excess and embrace credit cards and foreclosures in such a way that culminates in a staggering, 57% divorce rate that now characterizes the American family. Laboring hard and long hours in the Office of the District Attorney, I’ll admit that I used to envy the income that Partners and Associates with the power law firms were earning. But I have neither envied the demands those firms placed upon the individual, nor the stressors to and collapse of their families. All too often, our identity and self worth are so inextricably tied to achieving success in our professions that we lose all sense not only of our own identity, but perhaps even more importantly, to the community in which our identity relies. And because our professions exhaust so much of our energy, it’s difficult to remember that they are just one tiny piece in the amazing puzzle, and the constant ideological battle between career success, family needs, and our personal brand.
Democracy, then, is to cooperate not merely with all the aspects of one’s self – but to embrace one’s self as a collaborative member of a global constituency. And while our Founding Fathers never intended America to be a political democracy, it follows that they understood something that their monarchial predecessors had not. For in the words of our newly appointed Supreme Court Justice, Elena Kagan, “Its not that there are no masters – but that there are many. And the job of a Solicitor General is to balance those masters and to accommodate them all: each in their proper places, wisely and well, and in so doing represent the People of the United States.”
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