MONDAY – On September 23rd, 2019, during the weekly after school Model United Nations (MUN) meeting, high school social studies teacher Jordan Finch invited Dr. Mohsen Al Attar, an associate professor at the University of Warwick, to give a talk on “Law and Disobedience.” The talk tackled stigma surrounding crime and the righteousness of the law, approaching the topic through the popular marijuana debate.

Holding positions at a variety of institutions, including the University of Auckland, McGill University, and Queen’s University Belfast, Attar left his career as a barrister to join legal education, using a contextual rather than doctrinal approach to teaching law.

The lecture opened with an anecdote questioning how the law disadvantages minority ethnic, gender, and status groups. Attar asked students whether civil disobedience is always a morally repulsive action, utilizing three anecdotes to inspire discussion.

Attar then set the scene for students, recalling the time when he was running for London’s City Council and was asked for his opinions on cannabis regulation. He outlined his thought process, thereby showing students the various divergent laws on cannabis. He began with Singapore’s laws, punishing consumption of cannabis with jail time and trafficking with execution. He signified the existence of a bulk of countries, unsure of how strictly they should regulate cannabis. Attar then switched to the opposite end of the spectrum, outlining Uruguay and Canada’s liberal celebration of marijuana.

He expressed his confusion at this wide spectrum of laws, then proceeding to put marijuana into context within the United Kingdom. At the United Kingdom, cannabis was strictly prohibited. In light of this ban, Attar began telling the story of a mother who traveled to Canada, bought some cannabis oil, and gave them to her 13 year old son who suffered from severe epilepsy. From then on, the child did not suffer any seizures until their cannabis supply ran out. Unfortunately, the mother was caught at border inspection, thus triggering a widely covered court case, representing the marijuana controversy.

The talk ended with Attar shifting his focus back to the stigma surrounding crime, discussing broader principles of shifting individual morality versus the state’s morality, and leaving the question of civil disobedience up to the students. Many found this talk inspiring, including Kerry Li ’22.

“It was persuasive in the sense that he used recent cases where people might side against the law, but I found the true insight to be his connections to the greater principles of law after the stories,” Li said.

After his talk, Attar shifted gears to a question and answer session with the students, covering his career as a lawyer. Students found this section of the lecture particularly useful, as Attar outlined his own career and gave insight into applying to law school, differentiating between schools that take a doctrinal approach such as Oxford versus those that take a contextual approach such as Warwick. “I found it really insightful how he transitioned from a barrister to an educator for honest, moral reasons,” said Jonathan Wu ’22.

However, Wu also felt that the talk lacked a connection to MUN as a whole. “MUN is a club to find solutions to current problems under the UN organization,” he said. “Though I recognize that individual decisions may vary, which is what he talked about, I’m more interested in the general scope of public perception than individual behavior.”

Li disagrees with this statement. “I personally believe that MUN isn’t merely about international affairs and the principles the UN upholds, but the fostering of critical thinkers,” he said. “I also believe that policy is inseparable with theory, so learning about the ideologies that go into policy making is also crucial to MUN for me.”

Attar concluded his talk before the second half of the MUN meeting, where a mock debate on international law took place. He left delegates pondering about the ways in which laws affect the ways in which we construct our personal morals, how the law is imbued in our culture, state, family relations, friendships, and social status quos.

“The purpose of the law is not to punish, but to educate.”