Inaugural Message
Everything At Issue | Substack
Dear Reader,
For around a century, American attorneys were taught that the gold standard of legal practice was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s crystal ball. We were taught to transmute the power of the secular prophet into cold, hard cash; to read judicial opinions like tea leaves in exchange for worldly rewards. Those of us who can read the proverbial writing on the wall can profit from playing prophet.
But the path of the prophet is often challenged by black swans. Black swans are world changers we don’t see coming. They are anomalies that exasperate and delight us with an endless capacity for surprise. Look around. The evidence is everywhere. We are living in a world made by black swans.
Like Eve Babitz who disputed Joan Didion’s doom prophecies, black swans are the “freakish, beautiful outsiders”[1] who endeavor to unsettle our fated dooms. When they manage to inspire others to sublime pleasure, causing a potential disruption of the standing order, black swans “[b]ecome art, not decoration.”[2] In Hollywood, especially, the self-enchantment of world changing art was always challenged, but never defeated by our “ever-present fear[s] of total disaster (earthquakes, fires, random murders).”[3]
The dooms we long to resist and the hopes we dream to chase are linked at the hip. Yet, the prognostications of doom that are presently flooding into America from all the world are beginning to grate. Perhaps the doomsayers ought to hush and make space to wonder about the many Babitzian black swans presently flying up from the ashes — conspicuous — aflame.
To spot a black swan before it changes the world is merely the tearing of a secular veil in order to see what is underneath. Revealing a modern-day Babitz as she takes flight, like Natalie Portman depicted above, may paradoxically interrupt her nature as a black swan. But it may also help her survive by emphasizing or even facilitating her actual nature as a phoenix, muse, or some other characteristic of greater importance.
Eventually, the tearing of such veils in the public discourse may be revealed as the very reason why the Supreme Court is presently tearing up its own institutional foundations. The sacrilege currently spewing out of the Court may simply be its attempt to get back to basics—the “original” plan according to them. The offerings of Everything at Issue will flow comfortably through the Court’s radicalism in 2020s and beyond by exposing black swans to public discourse.
Public discourse is welcome in this space, including respectful disagreement and civilized argument. Any content placed here will be intended to enhance the public discourse occurring in other spaces. Some content may plug or refer to other works I have written or contributed to, but all works created or published by me are solely in the public interest.
I have not, individually or as the writer and curator of Everything at Issue, profited from or been the recipient of research grants or any other institutional profit incentive program. I am not affiliated with any agenda-driven outfit, news organization, political party, or educational institution. I am completely independent and all my views are my own.
I own and run a virtual law firm SchroederLaw currently based in Hollywood, California. I anticipate that disclosure of client interest will be rare. However, if for any reason I comment about a SchroederLaw client’s matter, or a matter that a client has an interest in, I will disclose the fact of the interest in the content. I do not publicly comment on client matters or matters related to my clients’ interests without informed written consent, and only when it is in the interest of my clients to do so.
Yours Respectfully,
Joshua J. Schroeder, Esq.
[1] Eve Babitz, Black Swans : Stories 195 (1993).
[2] Id.
[3] Id. at 50–51.