THIS ISSUE OF Virginia Lawyer is dedicated to our Diversity Conference. Our bench and bar must reflect the rich diversity of our community in order to function properly and maintain the public trust. For this, and countless other reasons, the Virginia State Bar celebrates diversity. We live in a time when diverse ideological camps seem more polarized than ever. Yet, viewed in the context of history, this is really not the case. America has always been a crossroads of competing ideas and ideals. The evolution of our democratic experiment requires orderly, open, honest, and respectful debate and critical evaluation of widely varying viewpoints. By their nature, debate and evaluation involve words.
Read more of this article here.