Walker Clark Worldview

Law.com has published the National Law Journal’s summary of  “The Decade’s Biggest Stories.” It is most certainly not a nostalgic trip back to the good old days when we partied like it was 1999.

To list the top ten stories (out of 25):

1. War on terror tests the limits of law
2. For associates, a time of thrills and chills
3. Accounting scandals flood the courts
4. They blog, they tweet, they friend
5. Seats change at the high court
6. The decade was fun while it lasted
7. Where have all the flowers gone
8. A law office in every port
9. The ruling that picked a president
10. A time of backlash and disgrace

Many of these top ten events — as well as others on the list — are part of worldwide  trends. However, there appears to be an ethnocentric bias to the NLJ list.   Although some of the top events were part of larger international trends, only one  – the uprising of Pakistani lawyers — even made the list, in position 23.

I can think of other events, such as Justice Richard Goldstone’s investigation last year of alleged violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza, and the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002, as being of greater significance than, for example, a bunch of sleazy accountants finally getting caught.

To be fair, the National Law Journal is an excellent American publication and, as such, is concerned primarily with the American legal profession. But the apparent unawareness or discounting of important legal events elsewhere in the world — ones with arguably greater long-term consequences — was disappointing.

Notwithstanding my concerns about parochialism in the American legal profession, if you are an NLJ subscriber, you will find the full article interesting and worthwhile.

Let’s hope that the next ten years will be better for our profession and our world.

Norman Clark