December 1, 2008
Hogwarts School of Jurisprudence and Statutory Interpretation
Although it’s not in her official biography, I’ve come to believe that JK Rowlings at some point in her life attended law school. How else could she have become so familiar with the academic tradition that so clearly inspired her seemingly fantastical (now obviously derivative) creation, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Perhaps the astounding curricular parallels are merely due to the fact that law schools bear a closer vestigial resemblance to the British education system than other American institutions, but still it seems suspicious that Rowling’s school for magic would have so much in common with a typical American school for law.
Magic and law are similar disciplines when it comes down to it. Unlike any other academic experience I’ve ever had, law school is not principally about acquiring knowledge nor about creative expression nor about abstract analysis. Law school is about learning arcane incantations, incomprehensibly esoteric but nevertheless capable of producing powerful real-world effects when properly executed. In other words, we’re learning to cast spells.
Magic-law is little understood by laypeople (let’s call them “muggles”), and wizard-lawyers often revel in their ability to confound and manipulate the uninitiated. Their muggle neighbors consequently fear and distrust them, even forcing themselves to believe that magic-law is mere illusion with no power in the real world—that is until they find themselves on the receiving end of a particularly vicious spell. Meanwhile, the art’s practitioners continue to inhabit a parallel shadow-world, doing battle with each other over the muggles’ collective fate and following their own strange rules and codes.
Like magic, law is composed of various sub-disciplines that a young wizard-in-training must master if he or she wishes to pass the Ordinary Wizarding Level examinations (the bar) and be allowed to cast spells in the outside world. Classes are standardized in the first year. Everyone must take Charms (Property), Transfiguration (Torts), Potions (Contracts), and, of course, Defense Against the Dark Arts (Civil Procedure). Later, students can take more specialized subjects, such as Arithmancy (Accountancy) or History of Magic (History of Law). Outside of class, young lawyers hone their skills by dueling (moot court), furiously brandishing their wands with the knowledge that while the stakes may be lower, the spells which they hurl at one another are the same as they will use once they graduate.
Most importantly, like the four houses at Hogwarts, law school students can be divided roughly evenly into exactly four categories, corresponding not to students’ abilities or innate qualities but to their aspirations (after all, the Hogwarts Sorting Hat doesn’t tell young wizards who they are so much as who they want to be).
The most stereotypical type of law student is of course the Slytherin. Contracts and Corporate Law are their strong suits, and they pay keen attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts (Civ Pro), although they are secretly more interested in learning the dark arts than in how to defend against them. In class, you can see their ears perk up as the professor explains how to concoct the most potent of contracts or to cast a particularly devious tort defense. Naked ambition oozes from their reptilian lawyer-glands as they compete for prestigious big-firm internships, yet it is the thrill of combat as much as the lure of wealth and power that motivates them. Slyths crave the feeling of superiority that comes with mastery of the legal arts, seeking out opportunities to best lesser wizards and assert their dominion over the ignorant muggle cattle. As mercenaries for corporate America, Slytherins rightly consider themselves defenders of our collective economic prosperity, keeping the levers of power in the proper hands, full of scorn for those who cannot see the morality of self-interest.
Elbow-to-elbow with the Slytherins sit the Gryffindors. They come to law school hoping to pursue public interest fields. They dream of using their magic to defend non-magical beings, and if they find themselves at large firms in practice, they redeem themselves with pro bono muggle-interest work. However, one of the appealing symmetries of the Hogwarts houses is the thin line which separates the Gryffindors from the Slytherins. Much as they might deny it, the Gryffs rival their snake-like colleagues in ambition and ego. Both love the real-world applicability of Civil Procedure, though for different reasons. Both love to duel. The self-righteousness and arrogance of the Gryffindors is nearly as insufferable as the ruthlessness of the Slytherins.
Then there’s the Ravenclaws, the philosopher-kings. They look forward to Constitutional Law (Runes?) and chafe under the drudgery of Civil Procedure. They look down on the Gryffindors and the Slytherins and their petty rivalries. It is the artistry, the intellectual sophistry of magic-law that attracts the contemplative Ravenclaws. They are destined for judgeships and the ivory towers of legal academia.
Finally, often keeping a lower profile than the other houses though no less numerous by my count, we have the Hufflepuffs. They don’t share the Ravenclaws’ evident intellectual pleasure in the abstract discipline of magic, and they look on the strivings of the Gryffindors and Slytherins with fatigue, and in some cases contempt. How did they even end up at Hogwarts? Perhaps some of them come from old wizarding families or perhaps, enamored with some of the flashier hexes and displaying some early aptitude for magic, they casually enrolled without considering the day-to-day tedium of spellcraft. Whatever the reasons, they seem indifferent to perfecting their charms, precisely balancing their potion ingredients or giving the most insightful interpretation to a particular rune. They would rather spend their time playing pickup quidditch, collecting chocolate frogs and writing wizard-blogs comparing their experience at Hogwarts to whatever children’s book is popular in the wizarding world at the time.
