Merit and Hierarchy as Functional, Not Moral

Hierarchy is an unfashionable word. It carries with it the faint odour of arrogance, of exclusion, of something rigid and immovable. In modern discourse, it is often treated as a problem to be solved rather than a structure to be understood. Yet law school, with its quiet insistence on ranking, evaluation, and distinction, reveals a more complicated truth. Hierarchies do not simply exist because they are imposed. More often, they emerge because they are functional.