Welcome Back to the Quid!
Welcome back to a new year at McGill Law! We hope that you had a chance to recharge over the summer, despite continuous headlines of the pandemic, protests, and murder hornets. There were moments during COVID Summer where time felt infinite – I foolishly thought I would be able to write a screenplay, learn Spanish, and finish Anna Karenina – but now we’ve returned to virtual Zoom school for a year that promises to be unlike any other.
The Quid is an effective and essential platform for students to share their opinions, thoughts, and ideas for the future of the Faculty and the legal profession as a whole. We pride ourselves on accepting submissions on anything and everything, as you will see in this first edition of the 2020-2021 academic year. This is my second year as Editor-In-Chief of the Quid Novi, and I’m proud to introduce our two new co-Editors-In-Chief, Sara Pesko and Mark Townsend! Sara has been one of our star copy editors over the last two years and is excited to step into a larger role. Mark is new to the Quid and has significant journalism experience on a range of issues from Ukrainian electoral fraud to Prince Edward Island politics. Former Editors-In-Chief Bhreagh Ross and Alexa Klein will continue to be active in the Quid Novi this year, with Bhreagh becoming a guest columnist as she wraps up her degree, and Alexa becoming our Art Director.
Last year was a momentous one for the Quid, as we made significant changes to the layout, developed an online presence, and increased the number of issues published during the school year. This year we aim to increase the number of articles published each week as we no longer have to worry about printing costs due to the pandemic. We will publish exclusively online, so keep an eye out for new issues in The Brief emails and on the McGill Law Facebook groups. I will miss walking into the atrium and seeing our red covers in students’ hands, but if we all adhere to public health guidelines, we’ll hopefully be seeing physical copies again soon.
I encourage every student reading this issue to submit something to the Quid for publication this year. We want to hear from you, whether it’s a case critique, a poem, a book review, or ramblings about current events. It is you that makes this paper something worth reading every week. McGill law students have been published here since 1975, and several of your professors wrote Quid articles during their time studying at the faculty!
We have an incredible team of columnists, copy editors, and layout editors this year, and it’s not too late to apply to join our team! You can learn more about our writers and editors through the weekly “Meet the Team” article. One positive about moving to an all-digital platform is that there is no limit on the number of pages for each issue! While I eagerly await the first hundred-page issue of the Quid, everyone can now have space to have their say. Deadlines for article submission are Thursdays at 5 p.m. and can be emailed to quid.law@mcgill.ca.
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One of the few joys of having every social event cancelled this summer was finding more time to read. Nights that were previously dedicated to concerts and seeing friends became moments of contemplation and learning. One of the most important books I read this summer was The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The book is about three psychological principles and what happens to young people when universities – acting with the best of intentions – implement policies that are inconsistent with those principles. The three psychological principles that Haidt and Lukianoff identify as being disastrously manipulated through good intentions are the “antifragility” of young people, the unhinged brain’s tendency toward emotional reasoning and confirmation bias, and the human predisposition for dichotomous thinking and tribalism. The co-authors explore each of these points through what they call the “Three Great Untruths” that have been creeping into universities:
Untruth of Fragility: “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”
Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: “Always trust your feelings.”
Untruth of Us Versus Them: “Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”
I saw elements of all three of the “Great Untruths” during my first year at the Faculty of Law, but the Untruth of Us Versus Them is the one that worries me the most. Law faculties have traditionally been institutions where freedom of expression and liberal thought have had space to flourish, however dichotomous group-think is endangering those who are hyperpolarized from seeing others as human. Over the last twelve months I’ve heard some classmates and professors make the following statements: “all cops are racist,” “the Enlightenment values adopted from colonial Europe are inherently evil,” “Indigenous legal traditions are inherently good,” “anyone who voted for the CAQ is a racist.” I believe these black and white worldviews are harmful to our intellect and ability to connect with one another, and I urge you to call out Us Versus Them thinking when you hear similar statements in class this year. I worry that the beauty of nuance is being lost in the age of social media, where “hot takes” receive the highest number of interactions and one is perceived as a traitor for daring to not accept all partisan dogma as truth.
I was reminded of The Coddling of the American Mind in the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing last week. I believe Ginsburg was one of the smartest legal minds of the last fifty years, and she was a relentless defender of human rights. When she served, Ginsburg was one of the more activist justices, and there was perhaps no more fierce an originalist that Antonin Scalia. Despite their radically different interpretations of the law, Ginsburg and Scalia were not only colleagues, but also great friends. “We were different, yes, in our interpretations of written texts,” said Ginsburg, “yet one in our reverence for the court and its place in the U.S. system of governance.” Ginsburg and Scalia’s relationship is a reminder that shared values, not shared politics, is what leads to friendships of the highest order. We must follow the lead of Ginsburg and Scalia and embrace the common-identity values that we share rather than follow common-enemy values. We are all interested in justice. We are all intellectually curious. We all want a better world. We may differ in our approaches to the law, but we must never castigate those for having differing opinions. Martin Luther King said that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” and I challenge all Quid readers to relish in our common humanity this year.