Hard Questions About ‘Soft Skills’

This Essay celebrates the life and scholarship of Professor Deborah Rhode by centering her pivotal contributions on character and leadership in the legal profession to the national conversation about criminal justice reform. Deborah unmasked the systemic deficiencies in identifying and informing the character and leadership necessary for the institutional actors of the criminal process. Her contribution to the national discourse requires reformers to ask hard questions about the essential soft skills of those individuals tasked with providing legal representation to the most marginalized among us. As scholarship by transformational scholars and mentors like Deborah Rhode often does, her work inspires conversations about what it means to be an institutional actor in the criminal process.

It also leaves a roadmap for those fortunate enough to have worked and learned from her to pursue answers to these questions. Her legacy speaks to both those who seek to advance justice through their practice of law and those who advance our understanding of law by researching the institutions tasked with ensuring systemic integrity in a criminal process that is increasingly coming under criticism.