Perhaps the mistrust will abate just as fast. Maybe, in a year or two, my students will go back to writing on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand answers when the exam question hypothesizes missing evidence.

But maybe they won’t. Maybe I’m seeing not a blip but a trend. And that would constitute a problem. My students are training to be lawyers, and lawyers, for better or worse, run the country. Many of my students will be legislators, administrators and judges. Their views of law enforcement matter.

And here a peculiarly ironic dissonance arises. My students, for the most part, are a liberal bunch. That makes them, among other things, enthusiasts of the regulatory state. But if they increasingly mistrust the police, it’s hard to know who’s supposed to enforce all the shiny new laws they hope to enact.