Avoiding the Abyss?

Given the primal necessity of survival, our current focus is on ordering our societies to cope with the critical health issues of Corvid-19. The jury is still out on whether we will manage to do this without being overwhelmed by agonizing, staggering costs in human lives and and suffering. We have seen what happens or looms in densely packed populations in epicenters ranging from Wuhan to Italy to Spain to New York. What threatens to emerge in countries shut by walls of silence, or refugee camps and prison populations, does not bear thinking about...too painful.

But we are human. No matter what else is happening, we need water, food and shelter. And to the extent not struck down by personal disaster, we need to try to order as best we can the modalities of our everyday existence. In the world of law, that is those who administer justice, or deliver legal services, or educate those whose job it will be to do this in the future. All of these must--with great urgency--adapt. In part, this has happened: Courts have begun to struggle with performing some of their tasks online; lawyers and others who render legal services sit before their computers at home; and law schools in many countries have converted completely to online teaching and learning. (And not just law schools; my daughter tweeted "Day two using Zoom to hold ‘morning meeting’ with my class of preschoolers. It’s been fun seeing their faces and they seem happy to see their teachers!")

Such measures are the ones we take to deal with "right now". We look a bit further down the road and see that there are near term issues coming up that require action today to minimize difficulty tomorrow. In the case of the law schools (my focus for today), that up to now has meant moving to a pass/fail grading system this semester, and trying to cope with the realization that the bar exams will be postponed. That, however, only takes us as far as the curve up the road. What lies beyond that curve? Here is where it gets dicey. Will there be exams at semester's end? Will employers even care if there are grades and exams? Worst of all, will there be jobs? That question is why I began with Mario Draghi's views. That question can only be answered by our governments, and the pressures we as citizens can exert on them to act and act wisely.

What seems clear to me is that it would be enormously wise--unfortunately in the middle of all the pressures this mess exerts--to urgently start thinking how we might best cope with the landscape that lies around the curve in the road. Can we shore up the institutions we cherish? If they have crumbled, are there bits and pieces we can preserve? Should we seek to make common cause with others now, in order to emerge stronger? My hunch is that no matter how bleak it is beyond that curve, we will do vastly better if we hang together--rather than battle over the scraps.