Emotional Immunity

Today for criminal law, I read the following cases:

• An eight year old boy died after his father punched him. The autopsy showed that the boy was malnourished, underdeveloped, and had experienced abuse for an extended period of time. The boy's sister testified that the father once beat up the boy after drinking 2 quarters of whiskey, and had often choked the boy.
  
• A two year old died after being attacked by a neighbor's pitbull. The neighbor had a treadmill to train his dog, and manuals about increasing its biting strength. Though the neighbor leashed the dog, he did not put him behind a fence like he told the boy's mother he did.
• A man died after being stabbed 51 times. The man who stabbed him claimed "self defense" after the two men were in an argument about the authenticity of a item purchased.
  
• A terminally ill man died after his son shot him point blank in the head 4 times in his hospital room because the son didn't want his dad to suffer anymore.

Lawyers get the reputation as cold-hearted people. But sometimes you have to wonder if all the hard cases that you read in law school teaches you to put up a guard. So you don't get emotionally attached, so you look at the facts, so you zealously advocate for your client.

I honestly think that if I didn't distance myself from some of the cases I read, I would be far too emotionally drained and have too many nightmares. And it's not just the extreme murder and criminal cases that are hard. It's writing child-support and divorce memos in Legal Rhetoric and reading deportation cases in Public Law, inequity in housing in Property, discrimination cases in Constitutional Law, and torts cases- so many sad tort cases.

I'm all for showing empathy to people, especially your clients, but you can't wear your heart on your sleeve as a lawyer. I'm sure people who work at hospitals have to do the same. People might think that it's unnatural not to react to some of these cases; I think its unnatural not to form a defense mechanism after reading so many of them. And on that note, I'm going to go read something fun (Newsweek cartoons?) before I go to bed.