When joint degree student Justin Muzinich and Tara Helfman ’06 first considered starting an op-ed publication at the Law School, they envisioned their peers and faculty as their primary audience. A non-partisan publication focused on current issues, they reasoned, would be a means of fostering political dialogue within the YLS community.
But Opening Argument quickly found legs beyond the Law School’s courtyard and classrooms. By its second issue, the publication included opinions on U.S.-U.N. relations penned by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Member of Parliament Tony Colman. By the third issue, the publication found its way into the dossiers of the Senate Judiciary Committee just as its NSA surveillance hearings were beginning.
Each issue of Opening Argument tackles two current, hot-button public policy topics. Though Opening Argument takes aim at controversial subjects, its editors hope to create discussion without being divisive.
“We want to foster an exchange of views where different sides can be debated openly and given equal treatment,” Helfman says. “We want to shy away from people assuming staunch viewpoints and talking only to their own camps. What we’re trying to do is bring all of the camps into one eminently readable and concise publication.”
The questions posed by the co-editors are frequently inspired by email, classroom, and student lounge discussions. In fact, an email thread that began on the 3L listserv after a YLS student asked a question on C-Span gave Opening Argument its first topic—diversity in judicial nominations.
“We really try to keep our ear to the ground as far as what’s going on, what people are talking about,” Muzinich says.
Among the issues Opening Argument has debated: the Law School’s stance on military recruiting; the Alito nomination; the economics and employment policies of Wal-Mart; the South Dakota abortion ban; and energy policy.
Opening Argument’s form follows its function as the publication’s philosophy of pluralism guides both its graphic design and editorial content. Inspired by Mark Twain’s Diaries of Adam and Eve, each issue is designed with a double-sided layout, ensuring its topics receive equal treatment.
Diversity of both viewpoint and experience are the editors’ key criterion in selecting contributors for the publication. First-year law students’ opinions are frequently printed alongside those of senators and business leaders as the academic and vocationally oriented alike are invited to weigh in. The issue that tackles Wal-Mart, for example, includes a rather theoretical contribution by Richard Epstein ’68 and a more operationally oriented opinion written by Wal-Mart’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Eduardo Castro-Wright.
It was Opening Argument’s third issue (which simply asked contributors “Is NSA wiretapping good policy?”) that garnered the most attention from outside the Law School. Contributors included Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz ‘62, Senator Conrad Burns, Yale Law School Professor John J. Donohue and several YLS students. The issue, in fact, had just been printed when it was included in briefing materials for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the eve of their NSA hearing.
Besides that unanticipated audience of policy makers, the editors’ greatest reward has been seeing Opening Argument being read and discussed at the Law School. “Some of the best reactions have been from people who hold staunch viewpoints and who are sometimes surprisingly grateful for having had read a well-written, opposing viewpoint,” Helfman says.
The other reward, Muzinich adds, has been the positive response and financial support Opening Argument has received. Every good publication has its fairy godmother; Opening Argument’s came in the form of the Zelia P. Ruebhausen Student Fund established to foster student and faculty intellectual exchange.
Though Helfman graduated this past May, she plans to stay involved in Opening Argument. “Justin and I both feel a bit proprietary over this,” she says. “We started Opening Argument with a commitment to first-rate content, and we’ve striven to provide exactly that, issue after issue.”