EPISODE 106 | BIG TRANSITIONS: What’s Next for Our Justice System REVEALED with Law Professor Em Wright
Watch Em Wright’s intervew on Human Amplified with Brandi Fleck on YouTube.
Listen to Em Wright's Interview
Get to Know Em Wright
Em Wright is a law professor, fisherman, dog dad, and nerd. Their professional life has spanned from the dishwashing room at a Pizza Hut to conference rooms in city skyscrapers and everywhere between. A die-hard legal realist, Em finds hope and inspiration from their students and the members of our society who show up to make the hard decisions and do the hard work.
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Intro - Episode 106
Today we’re talking to Emerson Wright. They go by Em. And y’all, this episode is worth a listen.
Through the lens of being a transgender law professor in Florida, we look at how bringing our whole selves to how we show up is healing and empowering, whether we do it individually or systemically.
And staying connected to our humanness is how we make life and systems better. That’s huge, and that’s how we’ll change the justice system, which Em is part of, or any other system that you may be part of.
As we evolve, the systems we’ve created must also evolve to integrate who we really are.
So we talk social, medical, and career transition, complete with failures and progresses, which if you look deeply here, is a microcosm of the bigger shift the justice system is experiencing. We talk how the public’s relationship with the law is strained, if law even still matters, and having hope in the face of fear.
You Might Also Like: On Gender and Transition: How Much Is Enough?
Full disclosure, Em and I were the best of friends for many years, starting in high school, through college, and for some time after. But this interview is the first time we’ve caught up in at least, I’d say, 15 years. And it was so good to reconnect.
Oh, and be sure to get to the end of this interview for a surprise paranormal story from Em.
Read the Interview Transcript - Episode 106
Brandi: Em, a question I ask everybody who comes on the show, what does being human mean to you?
Em: Yeah, you know, I've thought about that since we've been emailing and since I've listened to your show. And obviously that's a really big question, right? I think that for me, I struggle with that concept more and more as technology and as like we communicate more and more as people.
And I think a lot of what being human means for me is just getting back in touch with some of my basic needs. Stepping away from the complicated web of all the sort of unnecessary esoteria that we encounter every day and just getting in touch with who I am as an animal, right? What kind of food, nature, food, shelter, clothing, love do I need just as an animal creature?
And so I've been trying to get more in touch with that side of my humanity because I think that helps us find more empathy for each other when we get back to those basics.
Brandi: Everybody, I'd like to welcome to the show today, Em Wright. Thanks for being here.
Em: Thanks for having me. I'm delighted to join you.
Brandi: Yeah, I've really been looking forward to the conversation we're gonna have today. Before we dive in, can you just give our listeners a little rundown on who you are and what you do?
Em: Sure. I am Em Wright. I teach legal research and writing and a few other law classes.
Stetson University College of Law down in Gulfport, Florida, right on the beach. I have been through kind of a winding path to get to my current career. But I would say what I do is hang out with dogs and go fishing and love on my nieces and try to be a family guy.
That's what I try to focus on doing. What I do most of is teaching and writing about the law.
Brandi: Then I'm just gonna throw us into the deep end, I guess. What is it like being a transgender law professor in Florida right now?
Em: Man, it's a real mixed bag, right? So I started my career teaching in Macon, Georgia, and then I spent two years teaching in Eugene, Oregon. And then now I'm in Florida.
And so I've experienced that kind of cultural shift across the country and back. And when I was in Eugene, I had a conversation with one of my colleagues who's not transgender, but is a member of the LGBTQ community. And we were kind of talking about what we felt like was sort of empty allyship coming from liberals out in Eugene and from many of our colleagues.
And she and I had a conversation. She said, you know, sometimes I think when you're really up against a lot of bad discrimination, it creates an opportunity for community that is lacking sometimes when you don't have all of the opposition gunning for you. So in a way right now, being trans and being in the center of a lot of really negative transphobia and anti-trans activism, in a way, it's refreshing for me because I feel like I've got some purpose and I've got a role to play.
And I've got a sense of community that I didn't have when I wasn't in a place where we were constantly under attack. On the other end, it's just super surreal and discouraging because for example, I spent today, you may notice I'm wearing the colors of the trans flag because today I sat through a meeting at work with some students and some administrators about how our school is going to comply with Florida's new bathroom law. And so I'm serving as a law professor, part of this conversation about creating this policy, trying to support students well in the back of my mind, and also very publicly in front of all my colleagues, I am thinking about where I can go to the bathroom at work.
So it's like really awkward pivoting between sort of professional legal mindset, and then just the personal ins and outs of everyday life. And there's a lot of back and forth and a lot of sort of whiplash, I think that I get from feeling energized by the fight, and then also feeling just totally beaten down and humiliated by the onslaught of attacks coming.
Brandi: Yeah, whiplash is a really good word. And yeah, so I love that you brought up the community aspect of it, though. I'm taking like a nervous system regulation certification program right now, and the instructor talks about when you're living in a world where you're constantly oppressed or constantly being traumatized, and there is no safe place, building that community is super important. Do you have any more thoughts on the community that surrounds you?
Em: Yeah, you know, I remember speaking of that. I got involved in some local government actions when I lived in Macon, Georgia. We were trying to pass a non-discrimination ordinance that would cover the county.
And I ended up testifying in front of the Board of County Commissioners and made myself really vulnerable and communicated about things I did not plan to speak about publicly, right? And then after that, I was terrified. I had like all the panics, right?
All of the central nervous system attacking me. And then after that, I felt so much better because so many people just came and talked to me and thanked me for my comments and folks that had like watched the YouTube live stream and all kinds of stuff. And from that experience, I ended up making friends and getting really welcomed into the queer community in Macon.
And I remember having a session with my therapist and talking about that. And I think about this a lot because a lot of times the advice you get is like, turn off the outside world, don't look at your phone, make yourself a safe space. And I talked to my therapist about that, and he said that there's lots of research that shows that actually doing stuff in the face of oppression is better for your mental health because it gets you involved in that community, it gets you some support, and it gives you a sense of agency and power that I think just trying to unplug gives you that helplessness.
Brandi: Gotcha. Well, let's pivot a little bit. You've referred to yourself as a late bloomer when we were talking before this interview, and so not only were you in your mid-30s when you transitioned socially and medically, but you also transitioned to a law career sort of later during that time, or I don't know exactly how it lined up, but it was later in your life.
Can you just tell us a little more about your experience with those transitions?
Em: Yeah, absolutely. And I think in retrospect, they're very much related. So, you know, you knew me in high school, and so high school was not a particularly easy time for me, although in a lot of ways, I think the social and political environment now is arguably worse than it was back then, which is terrifying.
But, you know, I had a struggle in high school. I had a really difficult relationship with my family, and I went to college straight out of law school and was having some mental health crises, just the, like, drama of being a queer kid in middle Tennessee with very religious, very strict parents. There was a lot of trauma that I needed to address that I just couldn't until I was out of the home.
And so all of that kind of hit me when I got to college the first time. And I ended up failing out of school and slinging pizzas with you, and then slinging pizzas a lot longer than you, and ended up delivering pizzas and working low-wage jobs up until 2010 when I was old enough to claim my own income on the FAFSA form, and I was able to qualify for student loans and go back to school. So I went back to college when I was 25 and didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I needed a degree to do something else.
And I started off my return to college thinking I would do like an eight-year PhD program in clinical psychology. I don't know what I was thinking because that would not have been a good fit for me, but I was very like mission focused and wanted to get something that would pay off for me in a pretty quick fashion. But then I started taking classes and realized that I didn't know anything about history because we were taught history primarily by folks that didn't have much interest in teaching, just trying to be generous.
And so I started taking some history classes and I really loved them. And I thought, there's nothing I can do with a bachelor's degree anyway, probably. I'm going to have to go to grad school for most things, might as well major in history.
So I changed my major to history, and then I was involved with the app now known as X. But I'm going to violate my policy on dead naming only for this one entity, and I will always call it Twitter. So I was on Twitter in the early days, and I was being exposed to a lot of writers and a lot of thinkers that I really admired.
And I thought to myself, what job is it that all these people have that they can just read the news and read legal opinions and opine and write about them all day long? And I figured out that they were all lawyers. And so I thought I'm going to go to law school and see what happens there.
And then I got to law school and really loved it and did really well my first year and kind of figured out that the experiences I had had in my being late was actually very much an advantage. Because I realized that I knew, speaking of being human, I just had a collection of experiences and a collection of knowledge and had developed some resilience and some ability to make connections that you just don't really have until you've lived a little bit of life. And so, yeah, I got into law school and then went in a very short time from the Pizza Hut kitchen to a fancy law firm in Atlanta.
Speaking of whiplash.
Brandi: Yeah, yeah. And how did the social and medical transition fit in for you with that?
Em: Yeah, so that was largely a lot of just being in the right place at the right time, right? So I think I have always been under the trans umbrella since I was a wee wee little child. It's been very clear that I did not have a binary traditional gender expression.
I mean, in high school, I found a style as best as I could within the confines of what my mama would buy me. And then pretty much as soon as I was liberated from that, I started wearing almost exclusively men's clothing and that kind of thing. But I was always in a situation where I kind of figured that the cost-benefit analysis were trying to get people to respect new pronouns or to take a new name or to do anything like that was going to be more effort and more actual physical risk than would be worth it.
Right? So I'm delivering pizzas in gray Tennessee in the middle of nowhere, and I'm thinking, you know what, these folks are going to accept a butch woman, they're not going to accept something else. And so I just kind of fit in as differently, but still within some understandable mind frame for the people I was around for most of my life.
And then during law school, I actually showed up to law school with five ladies suits from the JCPenney suit separate sale section, because I decided that I had to like play the game and wear ladies clothing to get a job because I'm going to be in an office in the deep south and all of that. And within a couple of weeks of trying that out, it became clear that that was never going to work for me. And I kind of asked myself, you'll probably be able to relate to this.
I kind of asked myself repeatedly, did I take out all that garbage? Did I deliver all those pizzas? Did I touch all that cheese for this?
And I didn't, right? I didn't do all of that work to hide who I was or to be somebody else. And so I abandoned my JCPenney suits unworn, went to the Burlington Coat Factory and bought a really beautiful Kenneth Cole suit.
And then I just started being who I was and applied for jobs that way. And it paid off for me. I did way better.
I was a way better interviewer when I was being who I was, authentically, and not trying to hide. And then I largely just kind of allowed folks to treat me as sort of a butch woman, up until I moved to Eugene. And I was in a place where I worked for a big university with HR and in non-discrimination policies and all of that, and where I was not the only person who identified as trans or non-binary.
And so it was a much easier way for me to make that shift socially, because I was in a brand new place with primarily ally-aligned folks, and I was no longer at risk of losing my job or anything like that. And so I started going by Em and asked people to use they-them pronouns for me and all of that. And then the medical end was kind of a result of one, finally making enough money to be able to pay astronomical amounts for care that many people can't access at all.
So part of it was just an exercise in my own privilege. And then a big part of it was, oddly, a result of the COVID pandemic, where a lot of the regulations around telemedicine were lifted during the COVID pandemic. And so I was able to get hormone replacement therapy prescribed by a physician meeting through telehealth.
And so I didn't have to worry about trying to find a safe doctor, trying to hunt down, you know, safe providers and all of that stuff. It just became easier and the cost benefit analysis shifted for me. And so I started taking testosterone.
I was a little bit nervous about it. I wasn't sure if it would feel affirming to me or not. But I have loved it every single day that I've been on it.
So I've been on hormone replacement therapy for two years now. And I'll be having a top surgery at the end of May.
So, yeah, it's been really gratifying and really wonderful.
I was describing it to somebody. Somebody asked if I was excited about the surgery or the hormones. And the way that I was able to describe it was like, no, I'm not, because you don't get excited about going to the grocery store to get Advil when you have a headache.
You look forward to the headache being gone. You're not excited about going to buy Advil, but you are excited about the headache being gone. And so I've been experiencing a lot of that and just realizing how much I was suffering every day now that I can recognize the absence of it.
Brandi: Yeah. And so having known you earlier in our lives and then seeing you here now, and just so you guys know, this is the first time Em and I have met back up in years. And we were really good friends before.
And I just feel like you're so much more confident. And I mean, you were confident before, but you just seem so much more like, I don't know if grounded is the right word, but like in yourself. I don't know.
Em: Yeah, I think that's right. And I was faking it before.
Brandi: Okay, two things that you brought up when you were talking about your transitions were that when you were sort of adapting yourself to fit in, it was because there was actually a concern for your physical safety.
Em: Oh, yeah.
Brandi: Yeah. So that's huge. And then what did that, having to adapt to meet other people's expectations as best as you could so that you could sort of fit what they would accept, what did that do to your sense of self?
Em: It made me very small. It made me feel very small. It also made me feel like I had multiple cells that weren't integrated.
Right. I had like a deck of selves, and I had to pick which one got to come out in which environments and around which people. And that's still to some extent true, I guess that's true for everybody to some extent.
But it was very, very, very prominent in my life. Just the decision making about who can I talk to about what? Who can I acknowledge what with?
And especially on the safety end, that's an everyday concern. That's an all day everyday concern. And so it's really difficult to just talk about your everyday life in a way that's not a giant bummer or a giant buzzkill.
When there's constantly this concern about safety, right? So I mentioned I had taught in Eugene. And so my wife stayed back in Atlanta because of her job.
And so I drove back and forth from Atlanta to Eugene eight times in two years, which is a lot of driving across the country, right?
Brandi: Yeah.
Em: And every time I did that, I was terrified of getting murdered at a truck stop for being in the wrong bathroom, right? So like every single time, well, I mean, just candidly, I would pack a bunch of Imodium so that I wouldn't go to the bathroom for the four days I was driving. I would share my location with friends anytime I stopped to go to the bathroom just in case they didn't hear from me, right?
Because it was just constantly terror for me that that was going to be a problem. Yeah. Because I was by myself, and I was in the middle of Wyoming.
And oddly enough, did you ever drive to Oregon, or did you fly like a normal person?
Brandi: I always flew.
Em: Yeah, that's the smart choice. But when you drive from Atlanta, you really kind of go on a hate crime tour through the country, which I didn't realize till I did it the first time. But you drive through Fort Campbell, and then you go through Lincoln, Nebraska, and you go through Laramie, Wyoming, and you go through all the terrible hate crimes that were really impactful on me as a young person.
And so that was heightening the fear for me. And I think the key thing is that whiplash, that two things at once, because while I am on this adventure, having my career dreams come true, looking at the beauty and glory of the scenery of this country, you know, listening to my little audio book and enjoying it, while I'm doing all of that normal stuff, I'm also terrified that I'm going to get murdered all the time. So it's holding all of that at the same time is challenging.
Brandi: Yeah.
Yeah.
So you mentioned being in Eugene as a professor. And so I want to bring up an essay that you had published while you were there, which I read the whole thing and I really loved it. I thought it was great.
Em: I'm so sorry. By the way, I'm so sorry you read that. I hadn't read it again until I sent it to you.
And I opened it up.
I was like, oh, it was disgusting.
Brandi: You crack me up, but it was really good. You've always been so eloquent and such a great writer, and so I'm not surprised that you're teaching, like, communication in some way. And so in this essay that's titled Embracing Failures and Employing Humility, you mention, as a legal writing professor, I tell my students to bring all of their knowledge and experience to my classroom.
I tell them to rely on their whole selves in their legal analysis. And like you were just talking about, all of these parts of yourself that weren't integrated, I guess what I'm thinking is that, like telling them to bring their whole selves has to be very healing. And I think that in general, society perpetuates that we don't do that.
We don't bring our whole selves to many of the places we show up. So I would love to know just, what are your thoughts on this overall about how healing this approach is, and not only for the individual, but the system you're working in?
Em: Absolutely. I think this is true in a lot of disciplines and a lot of parts of American culture specifically, right? There's this idea that you are one person at work, and then you're one person at home.
There's work, and then there's life, and we're trying to find the balance, right? We're always talking about work-life balance, as though they're conflicting and separate. But that's just not reality, right?
And I think, like I said, there's a lot of fields where this is true, but I think the law is one where it's really part of the mythology of the field, that we pretend to not be human when we're doing the work, right? So an example of this, just to use the writing example and the sort of communications example, if I were a trial court judge and I were writing an opinion and I was expressing something that I found or concluded, I would not use the word I in that opinion. I would say the court finds X fact is true.
So judges, even when they're writing opinions, refer to themselves, even when it's just them, as the court. So like there's never this, we are human beings, it's always, we're gonna separate ourselves, we're gonna step up to this like higher plane, I guess, and pretend that we are not human beings and we're just legal robots and work through the law. And you always hear politicians or prominent judges and lawyers saying, follow the law and the facts wherever they lead, impartiality.
But that's mostly fiction, right? We are human beings, we're not robots. And so we can't just use our brains like a large language model, that's not the point.
And we can't make good decisions, we certainly can't make good decisions that affect other human beings without employing our humanity. So that's the systemic part, right? I think, you know, when we talk about the law, people think about the law as a separate force that exists, but it's not.
The law is entirely made up by people and enforced by people and perpetuated by people, and it is just people making stuff up. And reminding ourselves that all of it is just us trying to figure out how to govern ourselves is really empowering in a way, and it's also demystifying, right? Because when you remember that these are just human beings making all these decisions for the same reasons that human beings make all of their other decisions, it becomes, I think, a little bit less frightening.
It becomes less inaccessible to everyday people. And I think that that's a huge thing, right? So an example, right?
I've done a lot of bar prep tutoring because the bar exam is a nightmare. We could record a whole podcast about that. But a big part of that test is a multiple choice exam, and it's really poorly designed, and they're phasing it out, thankfully.
But I've worked with a lot of students on this, and so there's a question that I've worked on with a lot of students that starts with the phrase, a visibly intoxicated man enters a tavern. And so my students start reading that, and they start thinking through the legal rules. And the whole question is basically about when can a bar owner be liable for over-serving somebody who then goes and gets hurt or hurts somebody else, right?
And so I have the students read the question, and they read a visibly intoxicated man enters a tavern, and then they read the whole question, and they're throwing around all these legal phrases, and they're trying to remember the specific rule they've memorized from the flash card. And then I stop them, and I say, read that again, but say a drunk guy walked into a bar. And then they read it again, and they say a drunk guy walked into the bar, and then they get to the end of it, and they say, have you ever been to a bar?
And they say yes, because they all have. And then I ask them where the room is that they keep all of the people that are too drunk to leave. And they're like, I've never seen that.
And I'm like, then you know what the right answer is. And then their little minds get blown, because they're trying to find the flash card answer. But if they just integrate what they know from law school with what they know from being humans in the real world, it all makes sense, right?
But so many of my students have this idea that they have to leave all of that behind and only think with their law school brain. But that's the opposite of true. The best of any, I think, profession are folks that bring the full width and breadth of their experiences to whatever they're working on.
I mean, I know, I would be, I would know where near be the professor I am if I hadn't flung pizzas for a decade. I wouldn't understand many of the concepts that I teach about if I hadn't had to do that and talk to a bunch of different audiences in my everyday life.
Brandi: I love your answer there. And I also noticed that you do keep using the word integrate. So I feel like integrating is really important to healing.
What does integrate mean to you and how do you even start to do it?
Em: That's a great question. I think, you know, and that's something that I've struggled with for so long because I think whiplash really describes a lot of my adult life and before that. But I remember really clearly all the years that I was selling in pizzas, I would get in my car and I was often like listening to a podcast or the old iTunes U, May It Rest In Peace, where you used to listen to college classes streaming on Apple.
And so I would be in my car delivering pizzas, listening to Supreme Court oral arguments or some kind of really nerdy thing, then get out of the car and go into the rough and tumble environment of the inside of a fast food pizza place, right? And then get back in the car, and then I'm like an intellectual again. And so there was always this back and forth, and finding that integration has been one of the most difficult things, I think, for me.
A big part of it, I think, has just been refusing to play the game more than I have to. And in a way, I think that being trans has helped me because I just haven't had the bandwidth to code switch on other stuff, right? So I'm so busy, and so much of my bandwidth has been taken up by trying to fit in or make other people comfortable with my gender presentation that I have not had the space to worry that I'm being too extra in any other realm.
And so in a way, I've just kind of brought it. But I also have understood that so much of it, I think, is just wisdom that comes with time. I think a lot of that integration comes with recognizing the parts of yourself that aren't actually in conflict with each other.
Brandi: Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Like the parts of yourself that aren't actually in conflict?
Em: Yeah, yeah. I mean, one thing I've struggled with a lot is like shame, right? I was raised by a very sort of waspy, you know, the harder you work, the closer to God kind of parents.
And it was very intense focus on achievement, right? And performing at the top all the time. And so when I fell short of that, even when it was about things that I didn't personally care about, I would be haunted by that shame forever, right?
And I think that really taking a look at what was going on inside my head and realizing that, hey, I feel shame because I'm not living up to somebody else's hopes and dreams for me. But in actuality, I didn't want to do that thing anyway. And so there's nothing objectively wrong with doing something, quote, unquote, poorly.
It's all about my priorities and my motivations. And so maybe what I want is in conflict with what somebody else wants for me, but keeping clear about am I applying my own expectations, my own desires for myself, or am I trying to apply somebody else's desires onto my life? And that's where the conflict is.
Usually once I'm narrowing in on what is it that I actually want for myself, everybody agrees inside me, right? And so there's much less conflict. And I think just recognizing that I am a person that is deserving of grace, just as much as I think everybody else in my life is, allows me to realize that the parts of me that are in conflict are the parts of me that want to engage in negative self-talk or denigrate myself or make myself feel small, because that's in conflict with who I am and what my needs actually are.
Brandi: Okay. And not to get too far off into left field here, but how were you able to sort of suspend, I don't want to use the word care, but like how were you able to stop caring about other people's expectations for you? Or do you still care and you still just do something else?
How does that work?
Em: I've been to a lot of therapy for that. Lots of lots of therapy. Yeah, so definitely lots of therapy.
Also, again, going back to my terrible essay, a lot of failure, right? A lot of things that I've experienced that, according to somebody else's expectations, are failure that I can now recognize were just experiences that made me way stronger. And sort of realizing that those expectations were wrong about one thing made it easier for me to understand that about other things, right?
I kind of think about this similarly about when I was growing up. I knew that I was queer. I knew that there was nothing I could do about it.
I also knew that that was sinful and I was going to go to hell. But I also knew that there was nothing I could do about it. And so I kind of figured out that that didn't make sense with the ideas about spiritualism and God that I had.
And so that really was a moment for me where I realized that my parents were wrong about something big having to do with me. And that was really liberating in a way because I was able to recognize that they can be wrong about lots of things having to do with me. And that was helpful for really understanding that I get to make up my own life and that other people are not always right.
And that also I have no idea how other people view me, right? I have my fears about how other people view me. But most of the time, those fears are going to be way worse than the reality.
And if I can't know how anybody actually views me, then I can't worry about it as much. So accepting that I'm just making stuff up makes it easier for me to ignore.
Brandi: Well, thanks for sharing that. And it's just, okay. So I'll just go ahead and pivot into a question I have for you, where you had said to me before we came on this interview that you train new lawyers during a time that the rule of law and the public's relationship to the law is under tremendous strain.
And you sort of alluded to this earlier, but can you take us deeper into this statement?
Em: Yeah, absolutely. So I think this is true for me, this is true for a lot of people that I both know in real life and also just read and respect the work of, right? There was a moment that I think I can pinpoint to the like 2018 to 2020 period, but there's been a real sea change, I think, in the way that the public and the legal community views the rule of law.
I could blame it all on former President Trump, but I don't think that's quite fair because I think it's actually much bigger and deeper than that. But I think that the default position for most folks, even folks of very, very contradictory judicial or political philosophies, but the default position used to be that the law and the courts and the system are doing their best to neutrally apply the law without fear or favor and without political gamesmanship. That for the most part, everybody is operating in good faith in the system to do as impartial legal work as one can and really try to get it right, legally and outcome-wise.
That shifted, and it shifted very, very quickly. I think it was starting to shift over a long period of time, probably a very long period of time, if I'm going to trace it back really far, then I would go back to the decision in Bush v. Gore from the United States Supreme Court that decided the election.
I think that started a lot of the sort of splintering here. But it really came to a head with the Dobbs decision. I think that was a moment when a whole lot of American folks recognized that what we all have kind of viewed as the inexorable, unstoppable march toward progress is actually not inevitable.
And we can indeed go backwards, and we can indeed lose rights and progresses that we've gained as a society. And I think that that really made a lot of folks cynical about the law and the process and the ability for the justice system to hash things out in any kind of fair way. Because I went from having to beg students to consider the legal realism end of things.
I went from having to try to temper students' naivety or optimism on some of these things with like, well, remember, not everybody's acting in good faith. Sometimes you're going to get something like that. I went from that to the total opposite of having to beg students to recognize that legal precedent means something and that the rule of law still means something and that it's not totally just a political free for all.
And that has been an incredibly fast shift in terms of attitudes about the rule of law and the court system. And so I find myself in a position of trying to empower young students to believe that they still matter, that the law still matters, that lawyers still matter, and that you can still make a positive change, even in the face of having to every single day basically rewrite decades of law school courses because the Supreme Court and other courts are changing things really fast.
Brandi: Yeah. Well, real quick, to clarify for our listeners, the Dobbs decision you're referring to, that's abortion rights, correct?
Em: Yeah, that was the decision. And out of a case in Texas that overturned the precedent of Roe v. Wade that guaranteed the right to an abortion.
Brandi: And so you're saying that that was a big part of the shift?
Em: Absolutely. And you may remember that decision was leaked months in advance of it actually being issued by the court. And the week that it was released, I had to basically have a special office hour because I had so many of my students coming to me in tears, basically saying, does anything mean anything?
Should we drop out? What is happening with the law? Is there any purpose anymore?
It's tricky to want to say, yes, we need you, but also I'm not so sure.
Brandi: Well, so my next follow up question for you was going to be, does the rule of law still mean anything?
Em: It absolutely does. It does. And that's part of the thing about being human, right?
And sort of toggling. We all pay attention to the big sexy stuff that gets decided by the Supreme Court. We all pay attention to the big political issues.
Every single day, justice is administered in this country by really nice ladies and gentlemen and vaides and gentle thems who just go to work and do their little jobs every day and go home for not much pay and not much thanks. And they keep us all safe. They keep us all protected.
They keep our constitutional rights protected. And we just don't ever pay any attention to them. And I think that's probably for the better, because the less we pay attention, the more they can continue to just do their jobs.
But yeah, my wife is a public defender in Fulton County, Georgia, and she does not deal with political issues on the political level at all. She clearly deals with the ramifications of political decisions. But she doesn't engage in political lawyering in any universe.
Her work is making sure that the state can't lock people up without proof and making sure that people that need services, like mental health services and drug treatment, get it. And that's really what our justice system does every day. And that's the bread and butter.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's wrought with problems, but it absolutely still matters. And I'm a firm believer that the system only improves when people who are interested in improving the system get involved in the system. That's the way to make it better, is for more of us to get involved and not just throw up our hands.
Brandi: Yeah. Well, which brings me to, we are sort of at a time in our society where it feels like lots of different systems, such as the justice system. I mean, there are others too—banking, housing, you know, all these systems…
Em: Health care.
Brandi: Health care, yes, are just breaking down.
So what do you think law, like what place does this system have in our future? And do you have a vision for how it could be better?
Em: Ooh, that's a big question, right? And I think it kind of depends up on how far out we want to prognosticate and catastrophize. Right?
Because I can go all the way to the last of us, societal collapse, like we're forging new communities, and then we've got to create new systems of law. And that opens up all kinds of opportunities and interesting things to think about. I think that we're probably not headed quite there.
I think that we are looking at some more years and decades of careening off this cliff and feeling like we're getting closer to collapse. This is the major shift that I've had to do in my mind. I had a really long conversation with a friend of mine who's a federal prosecutor who's been thinking about a lot of these issues as well.
I think that up until or between maybe the mid-90s to around the Dobbs decision, most folks thought about law as a force for progress and as a vehicle for advancing civil rights, as a vehicle for advancing the development of society, as more of an empathetic functioning group of folks. My view on that has totally pivoted to where now I view the role of law as holding the line. So no longer do I look at the legal system as the vehicle for moving us forward.
I'm looking at the legal system as a vehicle that can stop us from moving backward. And really trying to reframe my thinking of that has helped me feel less cynical. Because if the goal is to move forward and if that's the only thing the justice system can do, then I think we're all going to be really disappointed for a long time.
But if we think in terms of what does today demand, and I think right now, to bring us full circle, if you look at the attacks on trans rights across the states, if you look at the attacks on books and the education in general, the whole concept of being educated as being attacked. And if you look at that kind of thing, I think really recognizing that the role of the justice system now needs to be to hold the line and stop further backlash, stop further retreat, can help reframe what we're looking for out of the system, temper some of our disappointment, and help us apply targeted pressure to the parts of the system that can really play that role.
Brandi: Yeah, the self of the law is changing. The identity of the law is changing.
Em: Absolutely.
Brandi: The justice system, that is.
Em: Yeah, absolutely. And that's true, I think, figuratively and literally. I mean, if you just look demographically at who participates in the system over the last three, four decades, it has become a much, much, much more democratized, diverse group of people.
And so the physical identity of the system is changing just as well as the metaphorical or literal identity is changing. And that's the whole point, right? We've got to bring our whole human selves in.
And the more we do that, the more the system is going to match the people who are involved in it.
Brandi: That makes a lot of sense. And so you mentioned earlier that you talked about if there was societal collapse, then new systems of law would have to come in. But can we build new systems or transition to new systems without societal collapse?
Em: So that is a delicious question. And many people are going to disagree about this, right? This is like the fundamental disagreement, I think, within particularly left-leaning politics.
But more and more, it's kind of a divide-and-right-leaning politics as well. Basically, the tear it all down and start over crew or reform and rebuild from where we are, right? And I think a lot of folks are going to say that the system as it exists is unreformable and that there are barriers and incentives baked into the system that cannot be reformed or changed, and we must tear it all down and redo it.
I am not one of those folks. I am a believer in reforming the system as we have it now. And that's not for pie-in-the-sky kind of Pollyanna reasons.
I am not naïve. I recognize that we can't tear it all down and rebuild it the way we want it to be. And I recognize that there are things that we cannot just reform out of the legal system.
But I also am a realist. And I think we can talk about tearing it all down and starting over again all day long, but that's not going to help people right now, and it's going to hurt a whole lot of people in the meantime. I think that a lot of folks look at the system as it is now and say, the odds are too stacked against us.
The tables are too weighted one way. It's not fair. There's nothing that can be done.
I'm just not going to participate. I just threw my pen across the room. You're welcome.
But when I talk to, for example, my friends that are prosecutors who are asked all the time, how do you participate in this evil system? How do you sleep at night? And their answers are, if I wasn't there, these very real things would be happening, and I am able to stop them.
I think that the debate is imagined benefit versus real benefit to real people right now. And so I have seen some really positive movements and seen, especially if you take a long view, right, and we look many decades in the past to now, talk about the identity of the law changing. I think there's definitely room for all of that to continue to reform and get better.
I think one of the beautiful things about our colonial, negative, inherited, terrible British system of precedence, and starry decisis, as we call it, is that that can change over time pretty easily. As we make new decisions, that becomes the new precedent, and we can keep developing in a way that I think is harder when you've got a system that's just code-based or rule-based, right? We're really focused on kind of the development of law in our system, and I think that gives us some opportunities to reform things that we would not have otherwise.
Brandi: So that feels like a hopeful note. Is it safe to say that you feel hope?
Em: Absolutely. I'm super hopeful. And that's, you know, I think that's that integration, right?
That's what we've been talking about this whole time, because I am at the same time holding some of my biggest fears for our society that I've ever had with that hope, right? And those things don't conflict with me. I am terrified for our society.
I'm terrified for the future. But I also am hopeful because I see that that terror is mobilizing people, because I see that that fear and these sort of sea changes are making people think bigger thoughts than they would have before and are bringing folks together in a way that they haven't before. And so I think anytime we've got this extra heightened fear, extra dread, there's opportunity for increased hope.
And, you know, I have those conversations with my students who are feeling cynical about the law and feeling hopeless. And then I see them graduate and they text me and tell me that they've got a job where they're making things better. And that continues to fuel my hope every day.
Brandi: Good. I feel like this is a great note to end on. I'm so glad that it was hopeful.
But let me ask you, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think is important to share?
Em: I saw a UFO.
Brandi: Yes!
Em: I saw a UFO in Smyrna, Tennessee. It's the whole reason why I was going to come on the show in the first place. I didn't feel like I should plug it.
Brandi: I know. I didn't quite know how to work that in, but what did you see?
Em: Oh, worry not. I'll mention it. Okay, so I lived in Smyrna kind of close to that air base.
My backyard kind of butted to that air base. So I was in my bedroom at the time, which is now my mother's closet, FYI.
Brandi: Whoa, that's cool. That's a big closet.
Em: It sure is. Sure is. So I was in my bedroom, and I was looking out the window into my backyard.
I was probably 16-ish, right? So we're talking about like 01-ish. And I saw like a diamond-shaped plane type thing.
And it had lights on all four sides, but not in the middle. And it like flew over my backyard, not directly over, but like from a distance sort of, right? Over by the air base.
And then stopped mid-air and then reversed. And at first, I was like, maybe that's some kind of like secret army thing that they're developing, right? Because I was like rational even as a 16-year-old.
And I was like, surely it's not a weird UFO. It's probably some kind of secret like military thing. I have been waiting for nigh on 25 years for that technology to come out.
Nope, still not there. So I have no idea what I saw, but it was a diamond-shaped flying vehicle that stopped and reversed.
Brandi: Was there anything else, like was that the only time you ever saw one?
Em: Yes.
So the one and only.
I remember it clear as day.
Brandi: Yeah. Were you scared?
Em: No, not at all. I was not at all scared, which I think is why I remember it. And I never went to that was aliens.
I was always like, well, there's got to be something normal, some normal explanation for that. But as time goes by, I'm like, who's the UFO? I'm more and more convinced every year.
I don't think our Air National Guard base in Smyrna was capable of that kind of technology.
Brandi: Probably not.
No.
But I don't know. But with all the stuff that's coming out, like with the UAPs and the stuff with the Navy, I mean, I believe it. I believe it.
Em: Well, listen, as everything gets closer to collapse, I'm much, much, much less skeptical of everything.
Brandi: Well, me too. Well, thanks for sharing that. And really thank you for coming on and talking about all this stuff today.
It's been, even though it's sort of a heavy conversation, I really enjoyed talking to you and hearing your perspective on it all. So thank you.
Em: Well, it was truly a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on, Brandi.
Brandi: Last thing, how can our listeners find you and your work?
Em: Probably your best way is just to Google me and get to my professional bio school page. So just M Wright, E-M, W-R-I-G-H-T. I'm on the Twitter machine at M underscore R underscore Wright.
Links and Resources - Episode 106
Embracing Failures and Employing Humility essay by Em Wright
X (formerly Twitter): @em_r_wright
Sponsors and Affiliates - Episode 106
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CREDITS: Original intro and outro music by Ryan Sauls. Episode creation, editing, production, and graphics by Brandi Fleck. Sound effects from zapslat.com. Bio and photos provided by Em Wright.
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Hi, I’m your podcast host, Brandi Fleck. I’m a recognized communications and interviewing expert, a writer, an artist, and a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. No matter how you interact with me, I help you tell and change your story so you can feel more like yourself. So welcome!
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