As Trump Takes Office, Invoking a Fighting Spirit

Jan. 22 has always been a significant day in our home. Significant for me because it is my wife’s birthday. Significant for my wife because it is the day Roe v. Wade was decided. The link between these events had added significance to her because Roe was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court by Sarah Weddington, a young lawyer who was born in Abilene, Texas; a town 50 miles south of the flyspeck West Texas hamlet where my wife grew up. It was as if this confluence of events was providing her a path for her journey through life.

The path she wound up taking eventually led her more to academia and writing than to a lifelong legal practice, but before leaving the practice of law, going to film school, and ultimately spending 25 years teaching and writing about the intersection of law, film, philosophy and popular culture, she spent 10 years in the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office. As I contemplate the first Jan. 22 in 38 years without the presence of my wife, who died of a brain tumor last year, it is her time in that office that reminds me why in the age of Trump it is so important to honor the goals of those whose philosophies are often reflected by the criminal defense bar.