John Valery White

John Valery White, Ralph Denton Professor of Law
John Valery White, Ralph Denton Professor of Law

What's the most important thing you are working on right now?
 
I am working on a couple of projects examining the place of rights jurisprudence in a world increasingly skeptical of the rule of law and given to instrumental arguments (political or otherwise) focused on outcomes for particular interest groups. While rights jurisprudence is often useful in these kinds of debates, the discourse itself eschews the very premises of rights jurisprudence – namely, the rule of law, commitment to just processes to achieve just results, and the independence of the judiciary on key jurisprudential questions. These challenges are acute in both domestic and international contexts where objections to human rights principles and processes have informed contempt for civil rights principles and processes domestically, and so forth. 

What is the most significant issue facing your field and how should it be addressed?
 
Across areas of law we are (very slowly) contending with the effects of social media and other aspects of a hyper-connected world, the result of which seems to be a questioning of legal processes. Whether it is the use of camera phone video in capturing use of force by police or the community of social media providing rape and harassment victims the support they need to come forward, our new media universe has been beneficial in many ways. However, a common theme of the resulting public discussion seems to be the view that the legal processes built to respond to these and other social issues are inadequate to the challenge, overly concerned with process, or even captured by powerful interests. That this is the growing impression of law in general and civil rights law in particular is a crisis that has emerged so rapidly few have had a chance to contend with it. The current mood is increasingly fatalistic and nihilistic with an often overt hostility to the rule of law and an impatience with its underlying requirements that I believe should trouble us all.

How do you approach teaching your favorite topics? Your least favorite? 

I try in both cases to try to capture what the court (or the legislature) was trying to accomplish and its means of doing so. Often courts’ means are not consistent with their professed ends and seemingly “good” opinions are really the beginning of the problematic decisions just down the road. I believe this approach is great for teaching but also provides the necessary critical distance to make even topics about which you are not otherwise interested quite fascinating.