This semester, I'm taking a gender and the law class from a brilliant feminist professor. On the first day I immediately thought, "Where have you been for the last 2.5 years!?" During the first hour of class she stated that, "Privilege is never having to think about whether you deserve to be at the top." Ahh, suddenly I was breathing familiar air.

Even in my final semester of law school, so much of my legal education still feels foreign. I've accepted that I will never get used to this level of privilege. I will never get used to people in the grocery store assuming that I'm smarter than they are just because I will one day have a law degree. I will also never get used to many of my classmates who believe they are entitled to the benefits of other people's history and labor. I will never get used to the narrow lens through which the law is usually taught and I will never (ever) get used to the fact that ideas are taught as "objective" just because they are main stream.

During the same class as the privilege discussion ,  the professor identified Lochner v. New York as "class warfare." I remember thinking something along those lines as I sat silently in my constitutional law class during my 1L year. My 1L self, of course, didn't say this out loud. The way Lochner was taught to me was much more similar to the Wikipedia version and, well, I felt a little craz for thinking otherwise. According to my con law professor, and Wikipedia, Lochner "was a landmark United States Supreme Court case [... where the Court] rejected the argument that [a New York employment law] was necessary to protect the health of bakers." I thought I was nuts for even wanting to talk about class and social inequity. And then, last month I heard my own voice reflected at the front of the classroom. Yes! Of course! This case was about class!

But talk about class in law school? I can imagine few things that are more taboo. You might as well be talking about elicit sexual liaisons between professors and students.  It has taken me all six semester to find someone who has even acknowledged the subject. I've written before about losing myself in law school. About feeling out of place and, frankly, crazy. It's nice to know that even if I am crazy I'm in the company of a brilliant professor. Even if class warfare and homogeneity in law school is all in my head...it's nice to know that it is in someone else's head too. It doesn't hurt that the other someone has a Harvard Law degree. 

This post is cross posted at http://reconstructinglawschool.blogspot.com