Sunday Reflection: Wisdom Not My Own

This Friday, I am presenting a paper that summarizes some of my core ideas about teaching. I have included the introduction below, and welcome your comments.

When I was a federal prosecutor, I got to be a tangential player in one of the great and compelling dramas in American law—a beautiful juxtaposition of transgression and truth, violence and principle.

A man (it was nearly always a man) would run from the police. He had robbed a bank, or sold narcotics, or fled the border, and was caught. He would run across a street, a field, a frozen lake, pursued by three or four officers. When he was caught, as he usually was, he would be thrown to the ground, rolled over, a knee would be placed roughly on his neck to hold him in place, and his hands would be shackled behind his back while he writhed on the ground.

It would be then—after the man was subdued but while he still struggled—that the most remarkable thing would happen. One of the officers would reach, still breathing heavily, into his pocket, retrieve a card, and read aloud the Great Principles of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment:
You have the right to remain silent.
You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him present with you.
If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you.
You can decide at any time to stop any questioning….

What a glorious, amazing thing! There in that rough field or alleyway, the improbable is recited—that we do not force confessions, that we value counsel, and that we do not favor the rich over the poor. These are principles. These exemplify wisdom. And, sadly, they are rarely addressed as such in law school, where we bury ourselves in rules that have come to encase those principles within a thick coat of opaque and hoary jurisprudence.

This paper has a simple premise: That if we are to teach towards wisdom in addition to knowledge, we must teach principles in addition to rules. Principles, unlike rules, allow room for personal agency, inner conflict, and the entry of the Holy Spirit—a perfect recipe for wisdom.

Allowing our students a route to wisdom requires that we teach principles as well as rules, and that we distinguish between the two. In the end, when we see true wisdom—in heroes from Aristotle to Martin Luther King, Jr.—we see it in those who pursued principle even when those principles transgressed the rules.