Jeanne Price
What's one of the most important things that the law library is doing right now?
The law library has undertaken a project to capture how the Boyd community has responded to and managed during the pandemic. We hope to collect documentation (in all different kinds of formats – videos, photographs, text, haiku, Twitter posts, whatever) that captures the Boyd community’s spirit and grace in responding to our current circumstances.
We’re asking students, alumni, faculty, and staff to share their tweets, Instagrams, blog posts, etc., by (i) adding the hashtag #OurBoydStories2020 to those posts; (ii) sending an email to OurBoydStories2020@law.unlv.edu with thoughts, poems, photographs, videos, screenshots, etc.; and / or (iii) uploading videos, photographs or other files directly to Box at /our-boyd-stories-upload.
We hope that by preserving memories and capturing a time that has challenged us all we will create a space that reflects the community’s character and strength and that will give us all something to look back on.
What are you working on now?
Apart from library tasks (we remain virtually open and available to take reference questions and provide research support) – which I revel in – I am also looking at language in the context of the opioid crisis. There are few areas where language is so weighted with connotation and judgment and where so many different stakeholders have substantial interests in using language in a particular way to achieve particular ends. While other disciplines have recognized the power of language in dealing with substance use disorders, law lags behind. Our statutes, regulations, and court decisions all too often employ language that stigmatizes these conditions and emphasizes intractability. Legal language too often contradicts any notion that individuals affected with these disorders might have the autonomy and strength to rehabilitate. I am thinking about what steps we can take to encourage legislators, judges, and other government entities to take more care in describing substance use disorders and the people affected by them and to learn from other disciplines.
When students ask you what they should read outside the required textbooks and other law-related books, what do you suggest?
Law students – well, make that all of us – need relief and diversion and it’s always healthy to get outside of our own bubble and gain some perspective (especially now). Books and authors like Edwidge Danticat (Claire of the Sea Light), Orhan Pamuk (Snow), J. M. Coetzee (Disgrace), and Tea Obreht (The Tiger’s Wife) take us away; they tell a great story and they envelop us in a place and time outside of ourselves. When you come back to the real world things that were once overwhelming are less so and it’s easier to take a deep breath and know that this too shall pass.