Legal Commentary

I?ve been curious about this for quite a while: How many of you law professors out there are former high school debaters?

Being a law professor, it has always seemed to me, is the ultimate career destination for a high school debater. It?s almost like never quitting debate! (Not that I hold that up as the profession's most winsome feature.)

I feel kind of funny outing myself as a high school debater, but, as I?ve tried for years to convince my wife, being a debater actually was cool at my high school. Now, we weren?t as cool as the cheerleaders and football players, but we often hung out with them. (When I try to explain this to my wife, I can tell she doesn?t want to harsh on my reality, but her mouth just involuntarily screws up into an uneven grimace of dubiety. Hey, it?s not like we were mathletes.)

Honestly, I give credit to high school debate as being the single-most important intellectual training I?ve received. Not that the $100,000 I spent on law school didn?t come in a close second, of course. But in all seriousness, I think if I had Warren Buffet?s problem of having billions of dollars that I needed to give away, I?d cleave off a healthy chunk to seed high school debate programs, especially in disadvantaged school districts.

So, in the comments to this post, please out yourself as a high school debater. (Or, take the occasion, if you feel an overwhelming pressure to do so, to let everyone know you were a high school football player or cheerleader ? in which case, let me say, good for you. Just please don?t tell my wife that you don?t remember hanging out with me.)

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