Disc 2 Track 02. Continuation of Ricky Shwartz of Jamie to Hunter

Title

Disc 2 Track 02. Continuation of Ricky Shwartz of Jamie to Hunter

Subject

Disc 2

Source

Series 1: Memorabilia
Oral History/Testimony - A Law School for Hawaii

Date

10/20/1969

Identifier

CJWSROH:D2T2

Interviewer

Hawaii State Judiciary Committee

Interviewee

Ricky Shwartz and Jamie Hunter

Transcription

0:00-0:10 CJ: In the committee to ensure that there will be active law student participation in all of these community program right from the time the law school begins.

0:10-0:22 We’ve already made a study of the changes that would have to be made in our existing legislation to let existing law students to even go into court and help with court defenses and court work for poor people.

0:22-0:40 This serves as a two-fold program, it not only to help the poor but perhaps even more important it helps educate our law student and it teaches them about the people that the lawyer frequently know very little about, the very poor people in the community who make up much of the community's problem.

0:40-0:53 The hope is when law students graduate from our law school they’ll know a good deal about the problems of our community and they’ll be more well-equipped and prepared to get out and go to work on those problems and use their training to help those.

0:53-1:02 The last speaker from my committee, the bar associations committee, is Jamie Hunter who will carry that idea forward just a little bit.

1:02-1:09 Jamie’s going to talk to you about some of the very surprising changes that have taken place in law school curriculum over the past few years.

1:09-1:22 Jamie has lived in Hawaii since he was 6, went to undergraduate work at Yale Law school and then to Stanford Law school where he got his law degree in 1964.

1:22-1:40 After clerking for this federal judge in southern district of New York, Jamie went to work as a private lawyer for a firm many of you heard about lately Arnold, Portis and Porter in Washington DC, it’s an awfully good firm even though it had a little bad publicity in the last few years.

1:40-1:53 Thereafter, he became assistant professor of law at the University of Oregon law school and thereafter came here in 1969. He is now a clerk for justice Bert Kobayashi for the Supreme Court.

2:16-2:21 Jamie Hunter: Law schools sharpen young men's mind by narrowing them like a pencil sharpener.

2:21-2:28 A few people teaching in law schools are trying not to do this.

2:30-2:40 The biggest fight that the law school faculty is going have once it is created is whether or not to have a required curriculum.

2:41-2:49 After that one gets fought, they’ll fight about the socratic method as opposed to the seminar method.

2:49-3:06 After that one gets fought and law school grows to a size where there are some teachers who can spend some time with students as individuals doing less program work and something somebody wrote on a case book.

3:07-3:17 It’s at that point in my view, legal education can become more relevant.

3:20-3:29 When I taught, I taught administrative law and criminal law, and administrative law involves: How do government agencies operate? what do they do? what kind of regulation do they have?

3:29-3:42 Administrative law as it’s taught in most law school means judicial review of administrative action that is what courts do about agencies when agencies mess up. Or what you can do in court to an agency that you don’t like.

3:45-4:17 That's ignoring the vast bulk of public activity which goes on in the agency that's largely irrelevant, the bar committee on examinations had a speaker at the Supreme Court a few months back and I asked him how come administrative law wasn’t on the bar exam. He said “oh it’s not relevant unless you’re going to work for the government.”

4:19-4:45 And if you look at the things that are wrong with our environment that going on, that some of which are being explored by this conference, the greatest place where we can affect change in the environment. Where we can reduce the poisons that are going on in our ecology, is through our government.

4:45-5:01 And yet we have administrative agencies mistake which are required 10 years ago, the Administrative Procedure Act was passed, they were required by that act to write down and publish and make available all of the regulations.

5:01-5:20 As you go Supreme Court Law Library ask for them you'll be informed that they are not there, If you ask why you'll be told “well lawyers don't really need them” Well maybe they do but the fact is that most agencies haven’t adopted them and the APA has been around 10 years.

5:23-5:42 Let me give you a thumb nail sketch of some of the kinds of projects that students with interested teaching, I don't know how necessary teaching is, the students are so into it by themselves these days anyway I suspect that they may do it by themselves anyway.

5:42-5:55 But I think if the law school is going to be the place where it takes place then there should be teachers who are concerned about this.

5:55-6:14 And it’s as basic a question as... there are lawyers who are materialists, there are businessman who are materialists but I would hope that not every businessman would rather make smog than produce a product which reduced smog.

6:14-6:37 I think that it's that fundamental a question in the law and in law school but among the projects we did, and when I say we I mean with students where we discovered we started going to group therapy session with people who have been committed the Oregon institution sexually dangerous, we found out that 3/4 of them illegally committed.

6:37-6:52 We challenged the marijuana law in Oregon which led to the Republican candidate for Attorney General announcing that he agreed with our position and he got elected.

6:52-6:59 Of course the administrative agency which was supposed to rule on that didn't have a lawyer so something didn't come out of the hearing.

7:00-7:17 We made legal aid in our community relevant instead of the one night a week operation where you might be able to get an appointment, we got where the students were not being allowed to talk to anybody poor.

7;17-7:29 Their work are being confined to the law library. We completely redid that and made it a relevant program where student can be involved in.

7:29-7:53 Judge Solomon in Oregon said one day he would like to have better participation in habeas corpus cases and he gave me the first one on his off his stack that he thought was entirely non-controversial and a sure loser, he told me, but maybe a law student can work on it with me.

7:54-8:08 We proved that in Peter Ramones trial which have been two years before. The entire 7 man police force of a town in eastern Oregon had lied and created whole series of events, none of had ever occurred.

8:08-8:55 We challenged the state administrative agency, unsuccessfully, which was allowing a new pope plan in Oregon, if you ever been to the 11th valley down south where the University of Oregon is in Springfield Oregon across the river, there is an enormous factory which produces the worst smelling and tasting smog which fills the air, which, prior to that plant, had been just beautiful clean. The state of Oregon and its governor, for economic development mind you, were building another one and they did and we fought them tooth and nail and lost. But I don't think they'll do another one after the fight we put them through.

8:55-9:16 We challenged the state abortion law we studied for city of Eugene comprehensive city civil rights law ordinance under which businesses, particularly real estate agents maybe, who discriminated would lose their license to do business or it will be suspended.

Duration

9 minutes 16 seconds
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Citation

“Disc 2 Track 02. Continuation of Ricky Shwartz of Jamie to Hunter,” The Archival Collections at the University of Hawaiʻi School of Law Library, accessed March 28, 2024, http://archives.law.hawaii.edu/items/show/19354.