Kimberly Wehle

We live in an extremely polarized world, where people are used to thinking in terms of rights versus wrong, winners versus losers, red versus blue, and even moral versus immoral. Increasingly, its difficult to discuss thorny topics with each other–and not just strangers, but also friends, classmates and family.

Building from her book, How to Think Like a Lawyer and Why, Kim Wehle explains how the craft of lawyering can help people bridge these divides and engage in conversations that produce connection and meaning. She breaks down the art of thinking like a lawyer into five steps, which include consideration of personal values and a commitment to compromise. Kim reaches out to audiences common sensibility and shared values as people, but leaves listeners with a very pragmatic roadmap for how to move forward in our complex world when so many issues divide us.

Learning outcomes:

1. Develop understanding of “grey areas” in complex decision making and analyses of divisive issues

2. Identify basic skills for gathering good information in the digital age for answering hard questions or engaging in difficult conversations

3. Identify core value systems and develop an understanding of how they can be used as guideposts in difficult conversations or moments of decision

The fact that Aristotle himself defined “justice” as the absence of “injustice” demonstrates how difficult it is for folks to agree on the definition of something so basic and inherent in human values. Yet justice is something that we all strive for—toddlers as young as one year old are keenly attuned to unfairness, and will react when things feel out of sync with their own sense of justice. In this talk, Kim Wehle introduces the notion of justice from the standpoint of social norms and the rule of law, with the aim of re-opening listeners’ minds to these foundational concepts as we face the challenges of the 21st century in a digital world.

James Madison, who many consider to be the author of the Constitution, believed there is a role for government in achieving justice, and that the key is to have a structure that makes sure no one person or group of people secure all the power. In her talk, Wehle invites listeners to revisit the founding generation’s assumptions about the modern democracy we all take for granted, and offers a framework for understanding government in a way that we can all get around to some degree, despite our differences.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Develop a working definition of justice that makes common sense

2. Understand how the structure of government operates to protect rights, regardless of whether the rights are written out in the law somewhere

3. Leave listeners with a commitment to engage in the world in a way that’s less reactive based on a deeper understanding of how institutional structures operate of foster rights

In the wake of Dobbs, Americans are deeply concerned about the trajectory of reproductive rights, and what it means not only for women and other people who can become pregnant, but also for the fate of other rights that we have come to assume are protected under the Constitution including right to marry, to use contraception, to choose our own healthcare, and even to decide on our own education.

In this talk, Kim Wehle traces the history of women under the law in the United States, and identifies some surprising facts—including, for example, that marital rape wasn’t illegal across the United States until 1993. She explains how this happened under the law, what it means for the law’s development around gender protections, and how the mythology surrounding Roe—including the claim that it was thinly reasoned—distorts the implications of Dobbs for other rights.

Kim engages listeners to understand the truth about what a constitutional right really is, so that they can engage in meaningful and productive conversations and practice self-determination around how they wish to live in the world both individually and collectively.