Legal Commentary

In the critically-acclaimed 1993 documentary The War Room, directors D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus chronicle Bill Clinton?s successful 1992 presidential campaign. The War Room follows Clinton campaign operatives James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, Paul Begala and others as they engineer one of the most surprising presidential victories in modern American political history, shepherding then-Arkansas Governor Clinton to victory over presidential incumbent George H.W. Bush.

Near the end of the documentary, Pennebaker and Hegedus capture for posterity a moment that is at once moving, powerful and really quite touching: Carville?s thank you speech to the campaign staff. Carville begins, his eyes welling with tears, ?There is a simple doctrine. Outside of a person?s love, the most sacred thing that they [sic] can give is their [sic] labor,? adding that ?anytime that you can combine labor with love, you?ve made a merger.? (The short speech is available here beginning at around 4:30.)

I hadn?t ever given serious thought to what it means to call something a labor of love until Carville put it in those terms. But even so, at the time, when I first watched the documentary during my law school years, the meaning of the phrase didn?t quite register with me, perhaps because I was a student without a job (I regard summer internships, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships as apprenticeships.) But now that I have a job as a law professor, I understand more clearly what it means to describe something as a labor of love.

It really doesn?t feel like work to do what we do as law professors. At least not to me. Here I am, on a lovely Sunday afternoon, having just returned from church, and I am enjoying the time I'm spending at my desk writing a lecture for my introductory course on constitutional law next semester. 

Granted, as a first-year law professor, I have yet to grade my first set of exams, so perhaps I will feel differently in a couple of weeks when I am inundated in stacks of exams. But I am willing to bet that I will feel the same way as I do now about just how lucky I am to be in this profession.

It?s hard to believe that we can make a living, a pretty good living, discussing and reading and writing about things that interest us. All in a university setting populated by artists, athletes, scientists, just to name a few, all of whom love what they do and whose enthusiasm only deepens our appreciation for the richness of the community in which we live.

What a great job we have, don't you agree?