What's the Big Deal with SUCOLitis?

For non-lawyers, lawyers have a perception of being horribly unfunny, stuffy, alien, etc. In other words, lawyer jokes are much, much funnier than jokes told amongst lawyers. First-year law students regularly laugh at things that are not, under any objective standard, funny (reasonable person jokes, blackacre jokes, etc.), and the level of humor does not improve much from there. To wit, from Skilling v. United States' oral arguments:

MR. SRINIVASAN: In the Martha Stewart case, for example . . . the only reason you needed an extended voir dire was because of the celebrity status of the defendant. You didn't have the deep-seated community passion and prejudice that characterized the Houston venue in this case. So, I think it's not at all unusual to have that kind of extended voir dire, and, in fact, we would say it's absolutely necessary to assure that the defendant receives the fair and impartial jury to which he's entitled.

JUSTICE SCALIA: So either this was too little or Martha Stewart's was too much?
(Laughter.)

Or this, from Florida v. Powell's oral arguments:

MS. BRUECKHEIMER: ...[the Florida S.C.] starts out talking about Traylor and our constitution at the beginning, and they . . . never say that -- that our constitution isn't insignificant or that it's not important. If they did, they wouldn't have felt the need to cite Traylor.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think you would have had a much weightier argument if it hadn't been for Michigan v. Long. If you could have said --

MS. BRUECKHEIMER: It -- it would have been nice.
(Laughter.)

JUSTICE GINSBURG: We could have then remanded to ask the Florida Supreme Court: Was it independently ruling under its constitution?

MS. BRUECKHEIMER: I -- I will keep that in mind.
(Laughter.)

For the non-legal-minded reading this, these snippets are as unfunny to you as they should be. You're not missing anything. Incidentally, both of these were criminal cases where the "laughter" moments came during the criminal defendant's turn to argue, both of whom more or less lost. I'm sure if you did a widespread correlation of "laughter" moments, you'd see similar patterns, but I digress.

The real reason for this entry is the satirical blog SUCOLitis. Although it is now been taken down, SUCOLitis purported to be an Onion-style blog concerning the goings-on at second/third-tier Syracuse College of Law. It was ostensibly run by a group of 2Ls and 3Ls, but for the time being school administrators are apparently investigating 2L Len Audaer for "harassment." Syracuse considers this a violation of their honor code based on "complaints from un-named students."

I understand fully that as a private institution* punishing a student, Syracuse's actions have no First or Sixth Amendment issues. But for the love of Johnny Marshall, if you're going to be an institution instilling students with legal ethics and respect for the Constitution that keeps some of us employed, maybe - and perhaps this is just me - but maybe you could respect the values behind Freedom of Speech or the Confrontation Clause? Perhaps you could not punish someone on anonymous tips for expressing themselves in an outside forum?

More importantly, maybe you could allow your students to try having a sense of humor. Although I can't access the blog currently, these are some of the titles I can find in archived items:

• Beer Bong Elected 2L President in Recall Election
• Senate President Elected SU's Sexiest Semite
• New Chipotle Praised for Spike in 3L Employment
• Class of 2013 Named Most Attractive In History

Brilliant, Swiftian satire? Aside from the 3rd one, no, but who can blame them given the Supreme Court's feeble attempts? In good taste? Of course not, but what satire is?

But what in the hell is the problem here? Oh, yes, because it's "bullying" just like that which leads gays and lesbian teenagers to kill themselves.

Dear heavens. This is exactly the type of behavior people make fun of lawyers for. If we expect law students to go out into the world and be social and political leaders, god willing, they're going to have to deal with indecent satirists. If we expect lawyers to interact with their clients like real people instead of greedy trolls who crawl out from under bridges when there's a remedy to be had, we should encourage this sort of creative outlet. My opinion of Syracuse went up as a result of the blog and down as a result of the backlash. I can't imagine I'm in the minority of Americans on that front.

If individual students are having their reputations harmed, they have a remedy in the civil courts with a plethora of defamation and modern privacy claims** - and possibly with the school's disciplinary body. But anonymous complaints of generic offensiveness? That's cause for Syracuse to investigate a wordpress blog? Really?

No wonder lawyers are miserable. Our institutions are set up to warp their senses of humor away from genuine attempts at satire and towards finding lifeless Supreme Court banter worthy of laughter.

*It's rather curious that institutions like Syracuse Law are still considered "private" when the overwhelming portion of their income comes from federally-backed loans to pay exorbitant tuition fees, most of which will be eaten by federal taxpayers. Differentiating between public and private law schools on this point is little more than an exercise in semantics, but hey, isn't that much of law?

**...which in turn may employ Syracuse alums. By acting and sending a highly-paid professor on a goose chase to investigate this kid and shut down the blog, Syracuse may have prevented legitimate legal work from developing that may help graduate solo practitioners trying to pay off their debts. Is it really smart of a law school to go out of its way to reduce demand for legal services? I think not.