Jack Balkin organized a panel at the Yale Law School reunion this weekend.  Reed Hundt, Jonathan Blake, Michael Levine and I were on the panel.  The title of the panel was 'Global Connections,' which I think signaled to each of us that we could talk about anything we wanted to.

I decided to talk about networks, music, and death.  Reed talked about the decline of law over the last three decades.  Jonathan talked about international law firm practice.  And Michael talked about aviation regulation.  Jack said nothing (but should have).  It was really more like a potluck than a panel.  We all had a fine time.

I had two messages, really, to put across.  And one plea. 

The two messages were:  (1) the importance of networks that are permitted to evolve and create order (cf. hierarchies), and (2) a sense of optimism about the future. 

The plea was:  "Reunions are a time for reflection, and of course we all think about death -- that guy looks like hell, we say to ourselves, but I'm doing all right.  We need to live with the constant awareness, as Bach did, that our existence is not only finite but always in danger of ending suddenly.  Hope resides in the worthwhileness of what our lives have been.  By joining and strengthening interesting global networks we cause order (and thus, evolution) to continue.  Even if it's out of our control. 

So: be the link to someone else.  Be the link that causes a phase change to occur and a miraculous, giant, useful cluster to emerge."

I'm not sure what Dean Koh is getting at with his focus on globalization.  I'm of course supportive of maintaining the law school's strength.  But making a truly global law school would require reinventing the school from the ground up, and I don't think anyone's interested in doing that. 

The admissions office is good at finding top-flight people who are quite similar to the people who have been there in the past (but are much more talented than the older generations were).  The professors are good at writing down groundbreaking legal ideas.  Yale is the smallest law school in the country.  In order to become a key "global" law school, you'd have to admit different kinds of people, teach different kinds of things, hire different kinds of professors, and operate on a vast scale.  How do you get from here to there? 

If anyone can do it, Harold Koh can, and I'm behind him.  But I got the sense this weekend that not many people understand what he wants to change, and how.  In my next entry, I'll suggest some steps that the school could take to get from here to there.