Many people didn’t think it would happen. They thought it was crazy. But it’s real. We have a Brandeis Undergraduate Law Journal, and it’s here because of the undeniable hard work and tenacity of Judah Marans. Innermost Parts contributor Nathan Robinson wrote a thing for it, and so did respected Professor Gaskin, among others.
The details (in an email I got):
The Brandeis Law Journal is happy to announce the release of its inaugural issue this Wednesday, May 5th. One of the few undergraduate law publications in the country, the journal will include an introduction by University President Jehuda Reinharz, a foreword from renowned Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, a piece by Professor Richard Gaskins, and numerous contributions from the students, faculty, and staff at Brandeis. The issue is free for Brandeis students; to reserve a copy e-mail subscriptions@brandeislawjournal.com.
Have a great week!
Best, Judah
They’ll be handing out copies outside Usdan tomorrow morning.
AB,
Thank you very much for that post. Judah is a friend of mine and a really hard-working guy who put everything he had into the law journal. It’s completely unfair and mean-spirited to trivialize his efforts so thoroughly. I’ve never met anyone who loves working with law so much, and I can say with complete confidence that Judah’s motivations are much more than just ambition.
I think that Ari needs to look into the concept of constructivism, or “learning by doing”, because it’s well-established that many people learn much more thoroughly and easily through practical experience rather than just being lectured at. I’m sure that everyone who participated in the Journal got invaluable experience in writing legal papers, and Judah proved himself as an organizer in a way that the classroom just doesn’t allow.
Dearest Josh, Maloy, and Ari.
I sympathize with you. You are unhappy with your university experience and therefore you must blame the people that work hard to get what they want out of it. I sincerely hope that you three are able to find solace in your hate speech about a hard working, productive member of the Brandeis community. To be honest, I am also not happy here. I have never made the “best friends” that I wish to have, nor have I ever associated with those people who crave to join clubs rather than take rigorous academic classes. I am one of those people that does take rigorous classes. I am one of those people also, that has to work to make a living, even here on campus. I work 40 hours a week. Yet, somehow, when someone does something that I don’t agree with, I don’t badmouth them, nor their work.
Judah Marans, is a person. He’s a human being. His blood bleeds as red as mine or yours. And he worked his ass of for this journal. It doesn’t matter what his intentions were – the fact is that he did something for the greater good of our University. Our University. Although I don’t particularly wish to share it with you after what you’ve said, I’ll be fair and say its yours too.
With that said, I don’t know what your intentions were in writing that article. Was it to make yourself feel better by belittling Judah? Or maybe you wanted to make yourself feel better by insulting Alex? Either way, I hope it made you feel better, because it made me sad.
After three years in this University, I finally became coming out of my shell. This year, I joined an organization which I obtained a leadership role in, alongside doing my 40 hr a week job. You might say, “Damn, this kid is an idiot – he does all this work because he wants to get into grad school.” And you know what, that’s fine. I do a lot of things for my resume because its prudent. Only I can know my real intention – part of which is for the future, obviously, but much of it is for now – for me to enjoy myself as well as be able to look back and say “Wow, I did that. I can be proud of myself.”
Judah is a stand-up person. Yes, he takes some things very seriously, but that is his job, in many cases. We can poke fun at him all we want, but at the end of the day, we all know that he did his job correctly to the letter in the Judiciary case. The only problem we all had with it was that we didn’t think it was that big of a deal. But that’s not Judah’s fault. The fault is in the way the University Laws and By-Laws are written. If you have a problem with those laws, go on a crusade and change them. But don’t kill the messenger. He just took his job very seriously – hopefully like he will do in a real courtroom someday.
All in all, Josh, Maloy, and Ari, I think you guys are very cruel. Kicking a man in his weak spot is the lowest thing you can do. To call something a waste of time, or to call someone an idiot for reading it – or to call someone an idiot for posting on here (Might I remind you, that all of you read this website, as well as comment on it) – is a travesty of the worst kind. It’s a violation of conduct – I don’t wish anyone to ever call something which you put your heart and soul into a “waste of time.” Hopefully if they don’t agree with it, they can say something nicer that still reflects their views, but doesn’t hurt the person who did it. It’s fine if you don’t like it: I’m not forcing you to like it. But give credit where its due. Judah did a fine job.
You three, however, deserve embarrassment like you just caused Judah. I hope that karma goes easy on you.
Yours truly,
A UWS and USEM accomplished student.
P.S. Picking on Alex was even lower than picking on Judah. Don’t be asses.
Josh-
I could say a lot of things, but I think this will suffice:
Dude, you spelled propagation wrong.
Alex N, I sincerely hope you are a first-year because your writing style, argumentation (or lack thereof), and diction (please learn how to use the word ‘propogation’ correctly) leave much to be desired. I guess you didn’t pay attention in your USEM. Please do yourself and everyone else who has to read your atrocious writing a favor, and learn how to write–practice, practice, practice. But please also do not practice on this forum as reading your writing (which is denigrating to the term ‘writing’) is a waste of time.
Better yet, I hope you’re a senior, and we’ll be rid of you soon.
Anyway, yes, we need people who care and are willing to put in time to create and pursue bold, important ideas; however, the quality of the output matters as well. You really have no business commenting on the Law Journal unless you’ve actually read it. As I have more important things to do, I will not say anything more about the Law Journal other than the fact that Judah seems to have put his name all over the damned publication…
Agree w Doug. Judah, this is something impressive. Be proud.
I agree with Doug. Being away from Brandeis has really showed me that although the seemingly thousands of clubs and pressure to stress about every little thing can be overwhelming and frustrating at times, finding apathy around every corner feels even worse. But I guess that’s getting a bit off topic from the original post, so anyways I just came to say Congratulations to Judah. Good on ya, mate!
Yeah guys chill the hell out, I cannot believe some of the maliciousness towards Judah. I am proud to know Marans, he’s nice and hardworking guy and he’s passionate about law. So, he started a law journal (chartered a club just like anyone else would), and apologies to Ari that the inaugural issue doesn’t meet his exacting fucking standards. You said it yourself, we are undergraduates and maybe our journal isn’t the most advanced technical piece of work ever. But at least its getting people thinking about and interested in law for the right reasons, not just LIEK OMG IF BECOME A LAWYER I COULD MAKE TEH BIG MONIEZZZZ!!!
Is Judah using this to get into law school? Maybe. Does that actually matter? NO! He is obviously is driven enough to put hours and hours of his time into the journal, not just doing nothing to pad his resume. I think we do spread ourselves to think here at Brandeis, but for other reasons (we lose sight sometimes in our work that we are only 20 and shouldn’t be stressing about every little thing). Beyond this, I think the variety of clubs and activities at this school have allowed me to learn and think about the world more than any class. Whether its the scholarly nature of the law journal. Or the political nature of the Brandeis Democrats. Or just the interest building nature of the Homebrewing club (my club). You can do anything here at Brandeis, and that’s what makes me love this place at the end of the day.
I’m guessing there are grammatical errors in this, unfortunately I don’t have time go through it. I have a final in half an hour. I just was sick of hearing the hatred being thrown at Judah, who’s a really nice and funny guy. Congrats on the law journal, the hours of work you put into it is something everyone here should be proud of.
I feel that this discussion has been propagated mainly by people who really don’t want to work on their finals.
Also, it’s a goddamned law journal. And a person, Judah Marans, whose goals, ambitions, dreams, and motivations you are all just wildly speculating about with no regard as to what kind of damage you might do.
I guess what I’m saying is you’re dumb.
Especially Maloy, who obviously has a high opinion of his/her own intelligence.
Hey Josh,
Talk about wastes of time. Reading innermostparts is any better? And what about commenting on it? I must admit, I like your style. It’s too bad we have to be separated by the entirely moronic stylings of Happy, the toothless idiot.
?Don’t you just love how happy appropriates what he thinks Ari’s ideas were to make a point that was dumber than what he mistakenly thought Ari said.) Hey Happy, listen to Ari and read a book. Or go play in traffic.
Who cares about Judah or the law journal? No one. Ari’s point, although bullshit in its own right, was using Marans’s stupidity as a jumping off point. People don’t know what makes them happy because they do not have the time to confront real ideas about the nature of happiness. These people busy themselves with the mundane. How can they ever understand happiness if they never look it in the face. These kids can and should be blamed for not being reflective. Judah has no larger projects, he is concerned with the immediate and nothing more. Judah and his Journal represents the basic values of American society as they stand. The increasing centralization of decision, the narrowing of the area of free moral choice, the extension into all domains, particularly the cultural, of the rationalized, stilted forms of mass organization and bureaucracy, all of these heighten the awareness that the way of life resulting from these pressures—the rawness, vulgarity, mass sadism and senseless sybaritism, the money lust and barbaric extravagances—can only stifle creativity and free living.
The bureaucratic age into which Judah and his Journal usher us is an inexorable extension of the rationalism of ethics and economics. Its outline can be glimpsed in the anguished reflections of Kafka, Toller, or von Horvath. It has been foretold more dispassionately by Burckhardt and Max Weber. It is an “official” world where art, literature and culture especially will bloom in pattern under the watering hand of the official gardener. For it will require, as it has already begun to practice, a corruption by word and image. Organic in its conception, it can only exist by stimulating a spurious brotherhood, while in practice atomizing man.
If, as a primary aim, one seeks to understand, the effort by its nature inhibits action. Assuming an activist role involves subordination to a black-and-white judgment. In a world of organized forces each seeking to exact its own conformities, how can one maintain a critical temper? To join one of the competing interest blocs one must become either a cynic or a romantic. Yet the intellectual knows too well the ambiguities of motives and interests which dictate individual and institutional action. He cannot surrender himself wholly to any movement. Nor can he make those completely invidious or Utopian judgments regarding the nature and needs of man which the cynic and the romantic make. He can only live without dogma and without hope. He can only, as an intellectual, realize his destiny—and by consciously accepting it, rework it—through seeing the world, in Friedrich Schiller’s phrase, as “disenchanted.”
Superficially, this may seem to be a retreat to personal identification or nihilism. Yet we cannot accept philosophical nihilism, for if each man’s values are exclusively his own, then no universe of discourse is possible, mediation between peoples is inconceivable, and the only method of persuasion open is force. The assumption of alienation is a positive value, fostering a critical sense out of a role of detachment; it is, if you will, the assumption of the role of the prophet, the one who through an ethical conscience indicts the baseness of the world, the one of whom the Hebrew essayist Ahad Haam has written: “[H]e is a man of truth. He sees life as it is with a view unwarped by subjective feelings; and he tells you what he sees just as he sees it, unaffected by irrelevant considerations. He tells the truth not because he wishes to tell the truth, not because he has convinced himself, after inquiry, that such is his duty, but because he needs must, be¬ cause truth telling is a special characteristic of his genius—a characteristic of which he cannot rid himself, even if he would.”
This is what the Journal does and represents.
A provocative statement by Ari, deciphering Judah’s love of law / perceiving the Law Journal’s conception as an offshoot of his undeniable ambition. Further, a sound rebuttal by Mr. Rothman.
It’s important to understand that Judah’s ambition, as well as his love of law (if such love exists) are not necessarily opposing values. Humans are naturally ambitious, whether they crave fame, or a quiet & peaceful existence; and to fulfill such an existence, there is a specific and unique desire of how to pursue and achieve one’s idea of happiness. However, it is always important to keep in mind that such a desire pertains to one individual, and one only.
Let’s say that Judah wants to go to Harvard Law School because of a love of law, but more so to provide himself the means to acquire prestige and power such his degree (and TRY–though such an attempt would be futile–to become as handsome as Alan Dershowitz). If that’s his desire in life, so be it. He is entitled to live his life as he chooses. He, like everyone else, is entitled to pursuing his own idea of happiness. If one can make a living by being paid $15 a night to go Hollywood Swingin’ on some 40-year-old cougars from North Dallas, then so be it. If that’s what makes him happy, let him be happy. Further, if Judah wants to fulfill his ambition, to truly be accomplished not for the process of attaining attaining a law degree, but for the degree itself, then so be it.
The real question stems from Ari’s concerns. First: what are others doing in the Brandeis community to pursue their own ideas of happiness? But second: if Judah’s ambition leads him to acquire power in a pejorative sense, who will offset such an acquisition with an equally valuable set of credentials, both tangible and intangible? I believe that, while Ari has a point, the students cannot be entirely faulted for their inability to pursue knowledge and to shape their abilities to independently, intelligently, and analytically think for themselves. The environments from which they come–socio-economically, spiritually–there’s a multitude of factors that equate one’s overall self. And that’s a dynamic issue in itself.
It seems the Brandeis community has students who strive for positive things, both in their lives and in their desire to contribute and improve society. Further, some of there are, undeniably, clubs on campus that assist in perpetuating such improvements in students’ lives. To focus on the accomplishments of one person for whom one has a questionable opinion is an unfortunate waste of time. Ambition will always be rampant. What should be questioned is whether this ambition will serve people positively. If the Law Journal gets Judah in to Harvard, mozol tov. He’ll be with people just as, if not more ambitious than he. But more importantly, if the Law Journal illuminates to one student the intricacies of jurisprudence, to the intellectual discourse of the law and its abilities to preserve and protect a society’s strength and integrity (if not improve upon it), and that student is able to contribute to society and represent the ideals and values of Brandeis as a whole, well–then again: mozol tov.
The system is imperfect. There will always be things to be improved upon. However, it is important to observe the balance that the good and bad of an intellectual / social sphere strikes.
No small wonder Ari hasn’t found Brandeis to be the bastion of learning and scholarship he envisioned. It’s because this school is populated by people like him. Anyone who would actually waste their time reading the Journal–particularly during finals time–is, by definition, a moron.
-Josh
Hey Ari
I was very intrigued by your comments, and believe that you make several great points. However, I would also like to respond to your criticism with some thoughts of my my own.
First of all, I also got the chance to read many of the articles in the Journal, and quite frankly, I believe them to be very good. In fact, I was indeed swept off my feet by the quality and topics of some of the pieces. They were deep, well-articulated, and I never thought that undergrads would ever get the hang of “Bluebooking” as well as the editors and contributors of the Journal. I have had one year of legal education, and can say that this journal is a quality piece of work. I would defend against any notions to the contrary.
I concede that people probably contributed to the journal in order to boost resumes or job applications. However, this one-dimensional perception would be shallow indeed. It seems evident by reading the journal that the people involved are patently interested in the law. A simple desire to have a line on a resume would not motivate one to plow through the crucible of writing for, and editing, such a Journal. If this is the case, then involvement on the journal itself is great practice for an upcoming legal career. It is a means, not only to express one’s intellectual curiosity, but also to sharpen one’s legal skills.
I similarly feel your pain about students “wasting time” here at Brandeis. However, I do not believe that the academic enrichment that can be realized by contributing to the Brandeis Law Journal is a waste of time. Indeed, it may take such a project to empower someone to take what they learned in the classroom, and apply a Brandeis education to something more tangible and fulfilling.
Jordan Rothman ’09, M.A. ’09
It was certainly the tenacity of Judah that delivered the Journal into our midst. Exactly what motivated such a dogged drive? Having read the damn thing, it seems that there was much more of a desire to create the Journal than to contribute to the field, or any field for that matter. The articles happen to all be pretty terrible. I understand that this is an undergraduate journal, but that is the point: What the hell do they actually know about the law or jurisprudence? Not much. What I think this line of reasoning makes obvious is the fact that this Journal emerged NOT out of a commitment to scholarship of any kind; rather, we now have a Law Journal because Mr. Marans wants to get into Harvard Law School (a goal he makes clear to many).
The question I think this raises is: Why do we waste our time here at Brandeis? Why do we take on so many wasted and worthless endeavors? Why are there so many clubs that suck up so much of our time? The mediocrity here at Brandeis is certainly palpable. We spread ourselves too thin and do not focus on why we are here: to learn. If people spent all of their time in their studies (both for class and, more importantly, personal growth), the student body and the school would be tremendously improved. One of the great disappointments about Brandeis has been that it was not the intellectual paradise I had envisioned as I was carving dirty words into my high school’s furniture. At that time, I was convinced that university would be a far cry from the horrors of my high school “education”.
Alas, things were not much different. People are so concerned with what an activity will do for them, what they can get out of it, what will look good on the next application or resume. This all results in our present state where students do not engage the most worthwhile endeavors, viz. learning and thinking.
This shows a general trend in modern times, a betrayel of the actual for the possible. Look at money, it is not actually anything; we use money to get other things. Yet we horde money and not things themselves. We similarly spend our time attempting to accrue merits that will somehow secure our next merit creating project (e.g. grad school, or some internship). If we cast off this myopic purview and begin thinking of our entire life as the unit of measure, things start to look different. What would it mean if we did not think of our lives as a patchwork of isolated achievements? What if instead we looked at the whole thing? Were we to adopt such ways of thinking, or even if we took these thoughts to heart, I think we would put aside some of our less worthwhile activities, and instead pick up a book.
The purpose of a student is to learn so that you can go on to do things. Our goal is what comes after, and not in the next year or 5 years, but for the rest of our life. We should not learn to get a job, but we should pursue learning so intensely that we learn enough for the rest of our lives. Our short time here should be preparing our lives for when we leave; we have to develop the skills to learn and think on our own, outside of this kind of environment. Moreover, if at university we become too busied and frenzied by the mundane to get at the books, then when will we ever? What will happen after graduation? Will we ever read or think again? And can such thinking ever be serious? Or will be relegated to only participating in thinking light?
While still bitter over the Aronin affair, I must give credit to Judah.