wildlife and doctors

I saw this bighorn sheep on my drive out of the mountains. I did not want to leave it was such a beautiful day in the mountains. Now I am in the dermatologists lobby. I used to get annual checkups,but during my wayward twenties I have not been here in seven years. I guess its part of my growing up that I am getting the once over by my dermatologists. I wonder if doctors are more careful with lawyers? my doctor friends definatly have had the fear of malpractice instilled in them. how much could go wrong taking off a mole anyway?

vacation

my body finally gave out on me after a crazy past six week which included finals, a move to a new city, and a new job. I spent the bulk of the last two days asleep on my parents couch with a cold. It doesnt help that I am experienceing a bit of altitude sickness for the first time in my life. It is a bit frustrating to have grown up in Colorado and feel the altitude so much. It doesnt help that my parents live at over 9000 feet. The mountain views and the sound of the creek make up for it. I hope I am feeling better for the bachelor party tomorrow. Otherwise I am going to exercise a lotof self controll.

our puppy

It works. I sent this picturefrom my phone.technology is cool. And to think, I used to be a ludite.

what a week. . .

Where do I begin. So much happened this week. I cannot even begin to describe to you all of the new experiences, starting with Monday morning arraignments in a courtroom packed with defendants, attorneys, families, cops, crazy guys in cuffs. I mostly just watch and try to absorb as much as I can. I have not gotten to do much yet. I am restricted from speaking in court until my Rule-9 card is approved by the Bar association (a limited license to practice law.) I have been in court every day. I watched a whole jury trial, sat through lots of motion calenders, have already seen a criminal plead out on Monday and get arraigned again on new charges on Thursday, have been to jail twice, found out the punk-kid who got the not-guilty verdict in our jury trial lives in my apartment complex, and am researching about drug paraphernalia.

And that was just at work. I also had a chance this week to meet, and briefly chat with the governor at a fund raiser I was invited to. Also present were lots of lawyers from the county, city counsel members, the county prosecutor, and other politically involved citizens. After two years of relatively limited assimilation in Seattle, I feel like I am part of a community after only living here for only about a month.

Oh, did I say, I really like criminal law. Now, I know it is only the first week, but I think I am going to really enjoy this work. One of the things I like is that half the time you are still sitting at a desk, but the rest of the time you are standing up in court. I am still a bit intimidated. Things move fast. The judge gets through about sixty cases in just over an hour during a trial call or arraignment. I am definitely not ready to keep all the paperwork together on my own, but they seem to be phasing me in slowly. In fact, I am going to be on vacation next week. So before I can gather more stories from the world of crime, I will be back in Colorado for a week.

As for blogging, I am trying to set up mobile blogging from my cell phone, so look for that in the interim.

New Direction

I start my new internship tomorrow. I am a little nervous. Even though I was not completely happy with the work at my old job, I knew what I was doing, and I felt pretty successful in my work, but starting tomorrow, I am going to be in completely new waters. It is not correct to say that I know nothing of criminal law. I took the required criminal law class; my legal writing II appellate brief dealt with a criminal issue; and, I have been in law school now for two years. Even though I am starting at the beginning again in some ways, I more prepared for legal work now than I did at the beginning of last summer. On the other-hand, this is all speculation now. I will probably be writing here later this week about how I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

Besides being a little nervous, there are a lot of things I am looking forward to:

1. short commute. I only commuted from Everett to Bellevue for three weeks and that was enough for me. I am trying not to think about the fact that next fall I will still have to go to school. Is there some way I can skip my third year?

2. lots of court time. From what I can tell, I am going to be in court almost every day. We probably won't get any Paris Hiltons in municipal court here, but I am sure there will be plenty of drama. The other prosecutors I have met have lots of stories about defendants (mostly the stupid things they do.) I don't know if it is possible to do this work and not get jaded about crime. One long time prosecutor told me a story about how he saw an old man talking to child on the street one day and he was thinking "child-molester," but when he walked by he heard the child say "ok, grandpa."

3. connections. They tell you at the beginning of law school that you get your jobs from the people you know. That was not the case on the first job I got, but I had a little help on this one (I'll keep my sources secret.) Since I will be interning in Snohomish County/Everett, I am going to get to know other lawyers here, and I hope after I graduate I can get a job near here too. Apropos connections, tomorrow night I get join my girlfriends firm to dinner with the Governor. Our first question for her is going to be why it takes two and one-half hours to get a driver's license in this state. (now you know what I did Saturday)

4. a break from convincing insurance adjusters that $500 in property damage, and a two month delay before an injured individual seeks chiropractic care can still mean a person was severely injured. Anything can happen, but I am just ready to advocate for some different clients.

A shave and a hair cut

For those of you who do not see me on a regular basis were probably surprised to see my clean face and short hair. I have had that look for a while. It is part of my "look like I could fit in in a courtroom look," and it seems to have paid off. I was just offered a new job this afternoon. No, not at the firm that would not call me back. He did not offer me the job. I finally called after three weeks and he told me he offered it to someone else (thanks for letting me know.) Its the other job I applied for: law enforcement (darn, I should have kept the mustache, but then I might get mistaken for a cop.) I will be starting an internship at the City of Everett Prosecutor's Office next week. I should fit in as a prosecutor with the clean shave. It sounds like they will get me into court as soon as possible, which is exactly what I wanted. I will be mostly working on DUIs, domestic violence, and other municipal criminal violations, but it sounds like the perfect place to get my feet wet, and I no longer have to commute to bellevue. I am a little nervous, but I'll get over that.

New Look

Well, law-new-view has a new look. I will be making a few more changes, but for the most part, I think I am ready to go through the end of law school and into the bar. Other new features include the capacity to leave comments which never seemed to work with my last template, and searching all of my past post all the way back to the beginning of One-L.

I have been thinking a bit about the last year. It was a long and frustrating year. Was I worked to death as the saying goes? It did not really feel like it. I certainly did not spend as much time on law school as I did in the first year. On the other-hand, I can't remember a Sunday evening throughout the whole last semester where I was not working on either my legal writing or another paper. It was more relentless than anything else, and the fact that I had learned how get a lot more done with less work took some of the mystic out of law school. It was more like a problem that I simply had to work through. It was not especially engaging, but not yet entirely boring. I was law school's middle child.

Now a look ahead. I am looking for a new job, but I have not found anything that is both something I want to do and in the right location. I am commuting to Bellevue and working at the same firm I have been working at for the last year. I go back and forth with my feelings about work. Some days I really enjoy the work. I am getting much better at the work and it is still a lot of fun to settle a case. I have been there long enough now that I have worked on some cases from the very beginning when our clients were injured, through writing their demand and finally working out a settlement. I have a bit more independence now, and since I have been working full time, I have gotten to do some different tasks like draft complaints and edit interrogatories. I am looking for a job that will get me into court at least occasionally, but I am having the same problem I had last spring: lawyers do not call back. I interviewed twice at a firm, and then they told me they would have a decision in a few days. That was two weeks ago. I have called once and left a message with his secretary and also a voice mail. I still have not heard anything. At this point, I don't care if he offers me the job or not. I did want to work there, but that is simply rude and inappropriate. I already have a job, which removes some of the stress, but I simply want to know whether to tell my old job if I am leaving. Even if he isn't offering me the job, the lest he could do is return my phone calls and let me know.

Oh well, maybe I just don't understand how hard it is to be a lawyer and how your work is more important than common decency (add sarcasm yourself). I would like to think that even when I have my own firm, I will return phone calls. A week is understandable, two weeks and two follow up calls. . .???

Thanks blog for letting me vent my frustrations.

Quick Update

I am still in the middle of a blogging hiatus. Since the end of the spring semester, I have moved to Everett, gotten a puppy, and started working full time. I have a lot of ideas I want to blog about, but it will be a few more weeks until I have the time or stability to start writing again. Check back some time in June. Happy summer!

Note to Readers

Over the course of the next couple of days, I am going to attempt to merge all of my law school blogs into one blog so that all of the drama, the tears, the joys, the boredom can be found in the same place. You would think there would be an easy way to do this, but it looks like my new summer free time will be used copying posts from one blog to the next. We'll see how long that lasts.

Finished!

About 15 minutes ago, I printed out my Medical Liability take-home final. That means I am finished with the semester. I do not have the same sense of relief as at the end of my 0ne-L year. On the other hand, I am not completely exhausted. I have done a better job of striking a balance between my personal life and my school life (some times I think too good of a balance) and in a lot of ways, not that much will change. I have been working through finals, and now I will just be working full time. It is true that I am not taking classes this summer, and for that I am very happy. I need a break from school before I can face the last year, which by all reports is just an excuse for the law school to rob you of another $25,000.

Blogger's Life

For you faithful readers, you can tell I have been in a bit of a slump with this blog lately.  I am rethinking exactly what I want to accomplish here when I pick up with my 3-L blog.  I will blog a bit more to wrap up this year, then take a bit of a hiatus from thinking about law school, and will hopefully be back in the blogging business with a new look and new enthusiasm at the beginning of June. 



I would really appreciate from any of you who read my blog regularly any thoughts you might have on what works and what does not work. Are there topics you would like to see more of or topics I cover too much.  As law school life because lest, well, important, I am considering using this as more of a political/legal blog. On the other-hand, some of my best writing has been about the mundanities of law school. I would like to get more regular about my posting, which means I need to be more enthusiastic about the topics.  Any thoughts? 



In the meantime, I have been gathering some interesting reading on blogging that I will share with you:



A story on blogger etiquette

A story about a blogger journalist who is taken seriously.



An, somewhat related, the first supreme court opinion which included a hyperlink to a video. You can find it at this site, and the case is Scott v. Harris.



I have to get back to studying for my evidence final. 

Con law continues

I may be done with Constitutional Law of Terrorism, but that class just seems to live on.  John McKay is in the news again, and terrorism will be in the news long after this prosecutor scandal is over.  In some ways, I wish that class would just keep going on.  It was not unusual that there would be major news directly related to the topic of conversation for the day, such as a supreme court opinion or a major news development.  I have also never seen so much online discussion on a class website before.  It is rare if one or two people ever post in the TWEN discussion section, but for this class we had people posting several times a week and often in response to each other.  I think this indicates a need to continue having discussions on terrorism and the many constitutional issues it creates.  I'll have to see if there is some way to keep the discussion going. 

An all-nighter puts me three down, two to go

I pulled my first all-nighter of law school last night. It was probably avoidable, but I had too good of a weekend to regret anything now. In fact, I find that as I worked through the night on my treason and terrorism paper, I was enjoying law school about as much as I have all semester. This has been a very disjointed semester, and I have not been able to get excited about my work until these last minute spurts of engagement. I believe I have been writing about this two-L slump for a while now and today, on two hours of sleep, and two finals still ahead of me, I do feel I am being worked to death.

I had my appellate argument on Friday afternoon, which was probably the best part of legal writing all semester. After 15 weeks of working on the same case, all I had to do was get up in front of a bunch of wanna-be judges (local attorneys) and discuss the most important issues. It was actually quite enjoyable, which is just further proof to myself that I want to be in a courtroom. My forensics class wrapped up last Wednesday, and a few hours ago I turned in my paper for Constitutional law of Terrorism. All I want to do now is sleep. The worst thing is that my computer has been acting a bit weird for the past couple of days and now I am just hoping it will get me through the week. I don't really need any notes off of the computer because for the two classes I have left, I have pretty much stopped taking notes in class. I also don't brief cases anymore or make outlines and with Legal Writing II this semester, there were many a days when it was lucky if I had done the reading for evidence. I guess that means I have five days to learn everything for the exam.

I have had a hard time knowing what to write here lately. I think it reflects my general malaise with law school. I am in the process of looking for a new job right now, so I don't even really have much enthusiasm for my work. I am not unhappy there, but I am going to be moving north and I want to make the commute easier and maybe work for an attorney who gets into the courtroom more often. The key to the personal injury mill that I work at now seems to be to stay out of court. It works for her and I have leaned a lot, but it is time to move on. I am going to miss that job, but I have been bored there for a couple of months cranking out the same negotiation letters to adjusters. I still enjoy that game, but I would like to mix it up with some real court time, especially since I can qualify for a rule 9 (limited license to practice law under the supervision of an attorney) after this semester.

Again, I do not know what to write about. Maybe the lack of sleep is affecting me. I felt great all through the night and was really enjoying the mental puzzle of whether or not treason could be used as an effective tool in the war on terror. I will be posting my paper online here shortly if anyone is interested in reading it. I was actually quite pleased with the final product.

I am boring myself here, so I won't make you read anymore.

Some Legal Advise

I wanted to pass on some of the advise for law students and young lawyers that I have heard lately. As the semester wraps up, professors are attempting to teach us what we actually need to know for practice--something that might have been missed amidst the mass of information we had to learn during the semester.

At lease a half-dozen times in the past month, different people have given me the same advise, so it must be important: make nice with the clerks. I have repeatedly heard that your best friend in court is the clerk and the nicer you are to the clerks, the better you will get along. Several people have also said that buying them a Starbucks gift card at Christmas will go a long way.

Secondly, I have been told to do the hardest work first. This is not so much legal advise, but good advise for pretty much any difficult task you have in life. The difficult projects are always going to be there, so it is just better to get them done first.

Finally, the oft repeated phrase of my evidence professor: "the other side is smarter and better prepared than you."

Blame Game

In the wake of Monday's tragic shooting, lots of people have been quick to look for someone to blame. Could the police have done more? Could his professors have done more? Could the university have done more? It is not as if people did not try and help Cho Suen-Hui. Professors tried to speak with him and get him into counseling, his roommates tried repeatedly to get him involved in their life, and he was even committed to a mental hospital for some time (read a good summary of the details here.) I think when it comes down to finding someone to blame, I cannot find anyone but Cho himself. This kid was very very disturbed. People knew it, but he had learned a way to keep them away. His roommates and teachers eventually accepted that it was not possible to even get close enough to help, but no one imagined that he would be so violent.

Of course, in hindsight, you can always see things that could have or might have been done, but what strikes me, is that our culture has such deep respect for individual freedom that we pretty much let people be who they are unless they are causing other's harm. I am sure Cho is not the first English major who turned in disturbing writings. Some turned into famous writers. We live in a country that gives individuals the freedom to write what they want no matter how disturbing. We value this freedom so much that we allow students to keep writing such stories, albeit with concern. Of course, individual freedom does not extend to the freedom to harm others, but the fact that Cho was living in the dorms amongst other students shows how accepting we are of people who are clearly painfully anti-social, disturbed, weird. I wish someone had been able to get inside his head and alter the path of his life. It is clear that people tried, but if anything is to blame it is not that students are mean, bullying, teasing, and cruel as was cited for the Columbine shooting, but rather that students were too accepting. I saw an interview with Cho's roommate last night and he said he just kind of accepted that Cho was who he was and let him go about his business.

America has received a lot of bad press in the last six years, but when it comes down to it, we are the most accepting people in the world. You can be who ever you want to be in this country and that freedom is incredibly important to us. Cho did not understand this and it is his fault he felt so much anger. He is the only person to blame for these tragic killings.

2-L Dilemna

I feel a bit of a quandary right now. I don't feel the same enthusiasm about the law that carried me through my first year and part of the second. Maybe this is simply the 2-L doldrum before seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My 3-L friends are all talking about graduation. Yes, the terror of the bar exam looms silently over their graduation party plans, but there is an overwhelming sense of relief when they talk about law school. We, the 2-Ls, law school's middle child have only another year of school ahead of us.

Work has also not helped. I have only been able to work a day or a day and one half each week all year long. This places limits on how involved with work I can become. It feels like I go in, spend a few hours remembering what I was doing, do a little bit of work, and then am gone for another week. One thing I look forward to this summer is being able to work 5 days a week.

Until then, all I can do is just push through the next three weeks. I have to write a 25 page paper on treason and terrorism, give my oral argument for legal writing, take my evidence exam, and write a take home exam. If the end of this semester goes as past have, I will probably be blogging more frequently.

Apropos blogging. We had a panel of journalists in our constitutional law and terrorism class yesterday. One of the journalist made reference a couple of times to those uncredible bloggers. I do not claim to be journalism, but as a blogger for the past couple of years, I feel a bond with those other self-made publishers and it is interesting to see how those in traditional arbiters of information feel threatened by rogue writers. However, one thing bloggers could probably use is some editors. There should exist a consortium of bloggers who also function as editors for each other's works. The same logic applies for movie directors who produce their own movies. (did you see that horrible Kong!) Without editors, we tend to just ramble on, so I will stop now.

University Life

The Virginia Tech shooting today is horribly tragic. Maybe I feel more disturbed by this tragedy because I am still attending University. I have always enjoyed the quiet sanctuary of a University. There is still a piece of me that longs for the professorial life, and I spent almost all of the last 12 years in some way connected to a University. I cannot imagine how those students, especially those who live on campus, are feeling tonight. Even after the threat is gone, that sanctuary has been punctured. I do not know what is going on lately with these shootings. In the last couple of weeks there has been this shooting, the shooting at the CNN building, the shooting at the University of Washington, and a couple of months ago at the mall in Utah. Is this a trend? Or is it that we simple hear about these events immediately through the channels of modern media? My thoughts are with all of those who lost loved ones and friends and all of the students in Virginia.

Legal Writhing

My legal writing brief is due tomorrow, so I haven't been doing much more than that in the last couple of days. The problem I am up against now is that the school has placed an unrealistic page limit on our brief. I was looking through some Division II criminal briefs as examples and most of the briefs are over 30 pages and only cover two issues. We are expected to cover three issues and do it all in 25 pages. I know it is because the professors do not want to read more than that, but it is an unrealistic expectation. I realize that there is something to be learned by forcing conciseness and courts do not like excessive wordiness, but I definatly cannot get all my arguments covered in 25 pages. I have already cut two whole pages of text and have a page and one-half to go.

I'll admit it; I suffer from a specific writer's malady that makes cutting down tough. My ego is wrapped up with my writing, so when I cut out whole sentences, I feel like I am cutting something important out simply because I wrote it.

I should take some lessons from our new Chief Justice, John Roberts. In his first dissent for the court in Massachusetts v. EPA, he wrapped up his views in 14 pages. Granted, justices have more leeway in dissenting opinions because they do not have to worry about being binding. It is simply a place for them to say how the rest of the judges got it wrong, and he dismissed the case based on standing. Regardless of the merits of his global warming opinion, his writing style is wonderful. He is very concise and easy to read, especially compared to Steven's majority opinion. The other thing that worries me about Steven's opinion is the creation of a new basis for standing, a "special solicitude" for Massachusetts. Robert's called this "an implicit concession that petitioners cannot establish standing on traditional terms" Id at 44. The majority creates a new standing doctrine without citing any precedence. Maybe this is revenge by the liberal justices for the court choosing Bush as president in 2000, or as one blogger said, this case should be renamed Bush v. Gore's Movie.

Weekend Update II

Before the weekend gets too far away, I wanted to finish the posts I have been meaning to wright about it. On Saturday I celebrated my 30th Birthday. It was a great night. I invited a bunch of friends to come bowling with me (to get in the mood of the year I was born.) Even people who did not think they were going to bowl got on the rented shoes and rolled. There is just something so fun about knocking things down, especially when you throw in your friends and a bunch of pitchers. I must be getting old though, because I didn't end up in the gutter by the end of the night. I have learned recently that it takes a lot more out of me if I drink too much, so I have been taking it easy.

Also, now that I am getting older, I thought I should get a more clean cut hair cut. I had the barber chop off that mop that was growing on my head recently and I got rid of the mustache that was also taking us back to 1977. I almost look courtroom ready, but alas, I still have more than a year of school. It seems like too much school. I saw a friend from high school this weekend who started medical school the same time I started law school. He was out here during a break after finishing the first portion of the Boards. He is done with the classroom aspect of his education. What? Maybe you didn't read that right. Yes, in medical school, they understand that practical education is as important as classroom education. Law schools have not quite learned that. I think its because they don't want to give up that third year of tuition money, but from what I can tell, the third year is pretty much a waist. And it would be a lot more helpful if that year was used as part of a full year apprenticeship. I do not think anything will change any time soon, because the only people with the power to make that kind of change are people who have already completed law school and the bar exam. They simple do not have any motivation to make things more efficient.

I better get back to legal writing. I am going to a Mariner's game tonight, so that means I will not be getting anything done this evening. However, even at this late point in this semester, it is important to take a night off and to something fun.

We're number 2!

All of us who have legal writing this semester are under the thumb of our appellate brief. Our school prides itself on having a very good legal writing program. I have no doubt that there is some truth to that. We used to be number one. Even Harvard uses the textbook written by the professors in our department. But this year we fell a spot to number two. You can tell that some of the teachers and the administration had its pride hurt a little bit. When they sent out a school-wide e-mail with the new rankings, they included a rationalization for how we could have slipped a spot: the number one school hosted the major legal writing conference this year, so that must have been the reason they were number one. How else could Mercer University, who no one has ever heard of, have beat us?

It is probably good that they got a bit humbled. When you are number one, you stop working as hard. For example, I asked my legal writing professor to explain why you only put facts after the when clause of an issue statement. Her first response was: that's what the book you are supposed to be reading tells you to do. I was a little shocked. I know what the rule was, but I was still making the same mistake, so I was hoping she could explain it. Normally I like her hands off attitude, but it bugs me that I should be doing something simply because the book tells me to do it that way. However, in the end, that seems to be what legal writing teaches you: how to write the way you are supposed to write because we tell you what the rule is. It does not require thinking per se. It requires creative plagiarism.

Weekend Fun: Part 1

It was a busy weekend. Friday night was the mock trial competition. We did exactly what we wanted to do: good enough to put the experience on our resume but not good enough to qualify for regionals--i.e. third place. It was actually a lot of fun and got me even more enthused to get in an actual courtroom. It takes so much energy to do a good job at trial. Not only do you have to be very prepared and have thought of so much prior to even walking through the door, but you have to be constantly listening to your witness to make sure they give you the answers you want and to your opposing counsel to make sure they are not asking questions they should not be asking. My favorite part, however, was the opening and closing. I like the performance aspect of being in front of the judges. I like using timing and emphasis to keep their attention, draw them in, and hopefully see that your theory of the case is more reasonable than your opponents. I also had a really good partner, and my girlfriend did a wonderful job as a witness. At one point she had the whole panel of judges laughing at her character.

(if you read this post earlier today, I apologize for the strange " " that appeared in the text. I seem to be having some bugs with my blogging software)

random

I came across these two separate articles that seem to be related. Both speak about space junk falling from the sky, but neither of them mentions the other. The link? Fark.com



Space junk falls on airliner

Space junk falls in Somalia



The Gods and the internet must be crazy!

Is School Over Yet?

It is getting harder and harder to stay motivated for school.  I can only imagine how ready I will be for law school to be over next year.  A colleague of mine just came by and said he felt like he was living Groundhog day and my girlfriend woke up this morning and said in half-consciousness but full earnestness: "isn't it Sunday?"



For those of you who read this and who go to school with me, stop by the Men's Law Caucus table and buy some baked goods for our bake sale.  We are also selling those cancer bracelet things to support research for testicular and prostate cancer.  One student already came up and said she has a friend who had testicular cancer and how goes by the nickname "one-nut." 



In other news, the prosecutor  scandal keeps going on.  I  had the opportunity to go have some beers with McKay last week under the auspice of discussing paper topics for his class.   We did not talk about the scandal at all and it  seems like he is ready for this whole thing to blow over; although people at the bar were buying us beers, so I didn't really complain.  We mostly talked about terrorism and whether or not it is a serious problem.  I did not think there was much debate about that and most of the public debate was on how to deal with terrorism, but it seems some people do not think terrorism is that big of an issue.  At a different event this weekend, I was accused of being Dick Cheney, because I said the issues of terrorism and the law will be important and changing for most of my legal career.  It has taken over four years for some of the prisoners at Guantanamo to get charged and sit before a commission.  Considering that fact, I do not know how anyone thinks these issues will go away anytime soon.  This is an important and changing area of law exactly because terrorism exists now as a particular form of violence against civilians which has grown in our fast moving media environment.  Never before could a band of armed rebels bomb a nation's soldiers thousands of miles away from home and have the news reach millions of citizens within hours.  Terrorism, as we know it, is only possible because the means of communication allow terror to spread. 

Spring Break

This has been the least spring break of spring breaks. I worked for four days last week and spent the fifth working on my appellate brief for legal writing. I did get away to the beach last weekend with my girlfriend. It rained most of the time, but we did get to walk on the beach and had a jacuzzi in our room. It is always nice to get away for a few days and give your life some perspective.



Since my last post, the prosecutor scandal has only grown. Professor McKay has promised to spend some time this week in class answering our questions, so I look forward to having the same opportunity as the senate had without needing subpoena power. Professor McKay seems to have changed his stance a bit since the first time he talked with us at the begining of the semester. At that time, he claimed that he wished to simply step down quietly and was not going to make a big stink. I heard him on the radio a few days ago talking about how he believes the wrongdoing necessitates an investigation from congress or an appointed federal prosecutor. I want to ask him if this change of tone came about because of what he has learned in the last months or because of the media attention he has received. Even though he held a relatively important position as a federal prosecutor, being in every newspaper in the country brings a whole other level of fame. Did the fame change his mind about the scale of wrongdoing?



The political atmosphere right now is highly charged and it seems like we are surrounded by scandals. Politics has always been contentious, but with modern communication, we now know about every power struggle that takes place in Washington. The Valerie Plame/ Scooter Libby/ Dick Cheney drama just keeps going on, and this federal prosecutor "scandal" seems to be gathering steam for no other reason than that there is a general sense that there must be something more to this.



I have said this before, but part of a legal education is an education about politics. In my own experience with small scale politics at school when we established the Men's Law Caucus, I have learned that it is possible to make something feel scandalous simply because you believe there must be something more to it. What is it that excites us about a scandal such that we almost want the scandal to explode, expand, and become even more controversial. Does it make us feel more important? Where we once might have brushed a conflict with another off, when put inside a political pressure cooker and when we get some attention for what we are doing, the conflict is all of a sudden escalated to a scandal. Then we are involved in something that feels all absorbing and and essential to our identity. I am not sure this is always a good thing. It is easy to loose track of reason when we are too tied up in a scandal. Is it really the case that a scandal reveals some hidden truth? Or is a scandal just the magnification of a human conflict because of focused attention by a lot of people who previously did not care one wit? In the law, the court tries to even the playing field of opponents such that even controversial cases are subject to the same legal principles. A scandal seems to me to be a controversy where the public no longer evaluates with reasoned principles.

Prosecutor to Professor

In our Constitutional Law and Terrorism professor's own words, he was subject today to the "seemingly unbridled powers of the legislative branch." As pictured above, our professor, otherwise known as former U.S. Federal Prosecutor for the Western District of Washington, John McKay was called to Washington today to appear before a Senate Judiciary sub-committee. The most interesting part of his testimony that I watched this morning on C-SPAN was his comment that he and his fellow prosecutors would have stepped down quietly if it had not been for the Senate making a big stink. He also stated that he did not think there was a Federal Prosecutor, currently serving or in the past who would give in to pressure of the executive or a Senator and sacrifice their prosecutor's independence. While I am not sure I can fully believe that statement, human nature what it is, but I certainly know it is true for him. We have had guest speaker after guest speaker in his class that have all described Mr. McKay as one of the most brilliant, innovative, and ethical U.S. Attorney's to ever serve. These compliments were not simply bestowed by other government employees but by the lead federal defense attorney for Washington who stood repeatedly on the opposite side of the courtroom from Mr. McKay. I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to be one of his students and Seattle University is very lucky to have snatched him up for a professorship. I do not know what kind of deal they have, but the school should seriously consider making his position permanent.

Most Senate hearings are the same. Each Senator is given ten minutes. The first eight minutes they usually use to fill with their own thoughts in the form of a long winded question. Then the answer comes and in most cases, I am sure the answers have been mulled over long before the hearing. Remember that in situations such as the hearing today, you are looking at possibly four of the countries greatest criminal prosecutors. They are unlikely to fumble an answer. It is the same way with nominations to the federal bench or when Condoleeza Rice testifies.

One thing I have had further reinforced from following this story is that you should never get your information for the media. From what I have learned from McKay and from the assistant U.S. attorney that taught our class today is that McKay was fired for a political reason when he had a disagreement with a higher up in the department of justice. This in itself might be unfair and a loss for their office, but it is hardly unusual. He has a political appointment and people get fired all the time because they prove incompatible with a person higher up in the chain of authority. Now, on the other side of this issue is the change to the PATRIOT Act that allows the Executive to appoint temporary Federal Prosecutors indefinably, thus circumventing the Senate confirmation process. For this we really have the Congress to blame because they let this slip into the Act and are all upset now that the Executive is exercises the power that Congress gave it when the PATRIOT Act was amended. Yes, it sucks that the DOJ feels it necessary to get rid of their political enemies, but it is Congress that let them.

(I am going to be a little selfish here and say that this whole thing has worked out really well for me because McKay is now teaching. I also get the feeling that McKay is pretty happy with the teaching gig).

Read more about today's hearing.

Feeling Better

I am feeling much better today. I spent Thursday afternoon and most of Friday in bed again and by mid day Friday my fever had broken. I don't have my full energy back, but I no longer feel sick. All this means that I have to face law school again. I was able to get some work done while horizontal, but I am not sure how much actually stuck.



Mostly I read the trial transcript for the appellate brief I have to write in Legal Writing, which was pretty entertaining. It seems like criminal defense attorneys are the only attorneys who are pretty much allowed to blatantly lie in the court. The defendants were charged with methamphetamine manufacturing. Neither took the stand, but during his closing argument, the attorney for one of the defendant's kept going on that there were many other plausible arguments for the chemicals that were found in his small trailer. For example, he was a pack-rat on a mission to clean up the world, which explains why he had a mason jar full of coffee filters testing positive for psudophedrine residue. Also, it is equally as believable that the chemicals found that are normally used in meth production could have been used for cleaning rocks-a legitimate purpose; and my client could be a rock collector! Did the attorney really think the jury was going to buy that argument. I am sure the defendant was sitting in the courtroom and I doubt he looked like your rock collecting type. (come to think of it, isn't rock collecting a thing pot smoking hippies do? That association wouldn't help him though) Those two "other possible stories," which were supposed to raise a reasonable doubt in the jury came along in a string of possible stories, which would only lead me to think as a juror: "this guy is just making this stuff up."



Can you tell I am writing from the State's perspective? The interesting thing about the case, the real case, is that I am pretty sure the guy was cooking meth, but after being convicted by the jury, his conviction was overturned by the appeals court because of bad cops (improper search). This raises a question that we, as a nation and as lawyers, have been struggling with for a long time: why should we allow a criminal to get free just because the cops showed up at his place and entered inappropriately? On the other-hand, I like the idea of cops not being allowed to come into my apartment for no apparent reason. I guess in our constitutional balance we allow some guilty men walk so we don't innocent men are not charged and we can all be more secure in our person and possession.



Well, I better go start doing my research for this rather than just keep blabbing on. Happy weekend y'all.

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working sick or sick of work?

I am working from bed today. After two days of sleep, I tried going to class yesterday, and it took almost everything out of me. I haven't been sick like this in years. My girlfriend keeps telling me I just have to stay in bed if I want to have any chance of getting better soon, but I don't like just lying here watching advertisements for Binder and Binder, Social Security Disability Advocates. I did that kind of work last summer, and I know that the $600 a month one can get from Social Security Disability would not be enough to live on. Still, it is hard to get focused on school again. I just picked up the trial record for the appellate brief I have to write in legal writing and wonder if I am ever going to be able to do this work day in and day out.



I am at a difficult point in my studies. Thus far I have been carried along on the spirit of naive curiosity. I knew so little about the law when I first started. I don't think I knew the difference between a law and an ordinance, let alone what a summary judgment was. The whole thing was such a mystery to me that it was exciting. I felt like I was learning a whole new way to see the world that I had not previously explored. Let's just say, the honeymoon is over.



It is not that I now find the law boring. Rather, I find it overwhelmingly complex and difficult. There is so much detail that I have to learn that I feel I have lost touch with my initial excitement. I must be experiencing what those students who always wanted to be lawyers experienced during the first year of law school: this stuff is technical, often very dry, and requires an immense amount of work to be successful. It is no longer enough to just be curious. If I am going to learn this stuff, I am going to have to want to learn it. Unfortunately, I am not blessed with one of those brains that can simply learn information for the sake of accomplishing the task at hand. I am the type of person who has to feel that what I am doing has meaning.



Lying in bed with aches and a stuffy head really gets you thinking about why it is you are doing what you are doing. Would I rather be doing something else? No. I have tried other "careers," and I can tell you that you run up against the same wall. I am up against the wall that separates armatures from professionals, getting by from solid accomplishments. This is not just a legal challenge but a challenge in myself to commit to something and do it the best I can. Maybe getting sick will help me get over this hump. As Nietzsche said:

“Enduring habits I
hate... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my
misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect,
because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through
which I can escape from enduring habits.”

I feel like I have been going non-stop since this semester started. In fact, I feel like I have been going non-stop since law school started. So much so that I was not so much learning this semester but getting through. I feel like being out of the look sets me at a new starting point and maybe I will escape through the back door and begin to feel less overwhelmed by the mass of information I need to absorb.

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Sick Day

I have not taken a sick day like today in many years. I have asleep most of the day, only to awaken for some food and to walk the dog. Usually I can pull through the couple days a year when I get sick and make it to school, but this time it was too much. I think I have been fighting this for a while because I first starting feeling the symptoms a few minutes after I sent in the final copy of my Brief for legal writing last night at 11:00 P.M. It was a downhill slide from there. I must be in the mid-two-L slump. Life as a lawyer still feels very far away, and I do not feel like school is getting me very prepared. I am going through the motions, but I don't feel like I would know what I am doing if I was out there practicing. Maybe it is a good thing then that being a lawyer still feels far away.



The problem with legal writing is that you spend 8 weeks working on the same brief. If you make mistakes, you don't get to really learn from them because you only really write two briefs in the semester. It seems like it would be better if we spent less time on each brief and wrote more of them. Over the course of last year's legal writing class, I wrote four memos, and the last was considerably better than the first. That was the result of making mistakes on the first two and having an opportunity to start from the beginning on later memos without making the same problems. With this kind of learning, repetition is the key. I will stop complaining about legal writing now. Complaining about that class at law school is endemic. You would think we would all be more appreciative considering we supposedly have the number one legal writing program in the country.



Time to go back to bed. This has been too much thinking for my sick head today.

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Group Work

I am inherently averse to group work at school. I rarely study as part of a study group, and when I do, I do so only on a limited basis. It is not that I don't think groups can be helpful or even productive, but that is often the exception rather than the rule. I have said this here before, but there are people in law school who really shouldn't be there. A girl in my medical liability class responded to the professor's question about whether medicine was an exact science by saying: "Um, like, isn't that what we are learning in this class?" I wonder how she got into undergrad, let alone law school. Of course I want everyone to learn and be successful at law school, but there comes a point where you have to watch out for yourself. If that student asked me to be part of a study group I would decline without hesitation.



Group work can be a pleasure, and I am excited about my group for my forensics class. Everyone in the group is very intelligent, does their work independently, and when we get together, we do so for a limited amount of time to focus on the task at hand. It can work. The law, probably like most professions, requires skills of both independent work and group work. No one can get through law school alone, but for any group to work, each person has to bring a relatively equal amount of knowledge to the table, albeit different knowledge. We all see different things and focus on different aspects of a case or a project and by combining the different views, we all know more. You would think that with all of the cut-throat pressure of the One-L year, some of the idiots would have failed out and you could put a good group together with about any set of students. Not the case, and the same is probably true in practice.

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Disclaimer

It has been a while since I have blogged about blogging, but I think it bears repeating the purpose of this blog. I blog with my real name, so that I can take responsibility for what I write. After all, the contents this blog are nothing more than the thoughts of a single person, me. They do not reflect the beliefs or positions of my employers, my law school, my associations, or any other person. Nothing that I say should be taken as an accurate representation of anything other than my own personal thoughts. Because I blog with my real name, I am very aware of the consequences of my words, and I have stood by the policy that I do not say anything here I would not feel comfortable sharing publicly through another medium, such as a good old fashion conversation in person.

While this blog has been primarily a one-directional conversation, I am always open to hearing your comments. Unfortunately, the comment function is still broken and I am very limited in my computer skills. Therefore, if you would like to leave a comment, e-mail me at hiltops@gmail.com and I will post your comments to the blog. I will only exert so much editorial control as the blogger comments would let me. (keep or delete) Again, thanks for reading.

Men's Law Caucus and Other News

I apologize for the long neglect of this blog. I have not gone this long between posting since I began blogging. There are multiple reasons for my absence, the major one being law school. Sometimes it simply takes up all of my intellectual energies. My reservoir of resources was spent on establishing the Men's Law Caucus, which required two appearances before the Student Bar Association Board, a meeting with the Deans, a meeting with the Women's Law Caucus, a meeting with our to-be faculty advisor, and lots of politicking. The work paid off. Not only were we approved along a 12-1 vote with two abstentions, but we earned the respect of the SBA board by our respectful and persistent submission to the Boards, sometimes hostile, questioning. No previous group has been submitted to such scrutiny, which can be seen in one of two ways.

Either we were victims of some sort of reverse discrimination. Or we are simply on the cutting edge, which always creates resistance. I do not feel in any way like a victim. That might in itself be an indicator that things are still pretty good for an upper middle class white male. I would rather think that the lively discourse was the result of our little organization being on the cutting edge. We are pushing the envelop, so it seems quite normal to me that we would be treated differently. I am unsure if the difference in treatment should amount to "discrimination." It might in the most technical sense, but part of the reason we set out to set up this organization was to stir the soup. We like the shock value of out name and we think the shock has been productive in furthering the conversation on gender at law school, in the profession, and in personal relationships in general.

On a somewhat related note, I won the pot at our regular poker night. It is nice to win, and I will never turn down the $35 I took home after a night of fun, but winning is not really the point. The point is to get together with a bunch of friends who are very busy and have an activity that allows us to keep our minds busy while we laugh and relax. It was during a poker night that we decided to start the Men's Law Caucus after all. In the end, the organizations main purpose is based on this premise: the law should be fun. Yes, the law is very serious. Peoples lives are sometimes in your hands and often their money, their home, or their business, but it is a very fun profession. Like poker, sometimes you will loose, and sometimes you will make it big, but what would be the point of all the work if it was not fun?

I will trying and write more often. Until then. . .

Nothing Specific

I do not have anything specific to write about today, but it seems like a long time since I have written. In the meantime, I have received all of my grades. I stopped short of submitting an article along the same lines as my last post to the Prolific Reporter (our law school weekly publication) on the advise of someone who knows much more about university politics than me. I am happy with this discretion. I can get away with a lot more in this blog than in the more public forum of the PR, and the last thing I need is to piss off a bunch of law school professors. If I am going to do that, I am going to take some precautionary steps first like suggesting my late grade fee plan to the administration. Maybe that can be one of the projects of the new law school group that I am founding with some other students: The Men's Law Caucus.

Our school already has a Woman's Law Caucus, and while they admit men , they are decidedly focused on issues of women in the law, which is a good thing. There are also lots of other groups, 32 in all, that fulfill the needs law students who either have a specific political leaning, interest in a particular area of law, or who share a certain ethnic identity. There is, however, no group for students who are not politically active "ethnic" students interested in the study of business law (for example). I heard that some students at the University of Washington started a Men's Law Caucus, but it became somewhat controversial because they never went through the official process for starting an organization and printed up a bunch of t-shirts that could be interpreted as mocking the Woman's Law Caucus. While I do find it kind of amusing when I tell people we are starting a Men's Law Caucus, my intention in helping found this group was not to mock. I talked with a lot of students who said they wanted to be involved in a law school group for the camaraderie, the networking opportunities, and for their resumes, but did not know where they fit in with the other groups. So we are just a law school group for a law school group's sake!

What I did not forsee is that this group is basically shaping up to be a fraternity. Never did I think I would be part of a fraternity; although, never did I imagine I would be a lawyer. On the other-hand, I am very excited, and I think it is going to be a lot of fun. We are planning a charity poker night event, a charity run, and possibly a law school "Man of the Year" talent show. We also hope to sell Men's Law Caucus briefs with the words "Case Briefs" printed on them (law school joke.) Look for them coming soon!

We go before the Student Bar Association board next Monday and ask for approval. The only thing we have left to do is find a professor who will be our faculty advisor. In that, I am very grateful I did not piss off the law professors by proposing a fee for turning in late grades.

Late Grades

Some days I feel I am getting ripped off by my law school. When all is said and done, my legal education is going to cost me the price of a small house in some states (probably not Seattle because of the out-of-control housing market.) I realize that I am getting a pretty good product for my money, and after I have passed the bar, start working, build a successful practice and work honestly and hard, a law license can be a license to print monety. However, that does not mean that I should not expect the highest quality from my professors and my school.

If you think back a month ago, I was just finishing up my finals. As a matter of fact, I took my first final six weeks ago. With the exception of extreme weather, which is a real possibility this winter, or sickness, if I showed up late for any final, I would be failed in that class without exception. Whereas the standard for students is quite high, our esteemed professors live under a somewhat more relaxed standard. The deadline to turn in grades was last Friday, and it is not unusual for the registrar to take some time trying to sort out grading curves and such, but I would expect to have most of my grades by this point. Not so. I am lucky to have two of my five grades. I talked with a student today who hasn't received any grades yet. There are some classes where this situation is shameful; I hada class with 9 students in it and we all turned in papers 5 weeks ago and we have not received grades yet. Also, this class is not even curved, so the grades cannot be held up in some administrative process. The only answer is that the professor has simply has not finished. (I found him totally incompetent to teach, so I don't know why I thought he would be competent to grade our papers)

I propose a new system. I even understand that several law schools already have this system in place. For every day that a professor is late in turning in grades, he/she will be charged 100 dollars to be placed in a fund for student organizations. Every students who completed a course has already fulfilled his/her contractual obligations of paying the university, attending classes, and taking the final, but in this bargain, the deans, the administrators, and the professors have all the power-- at least for the meantime!

Winterland

We are having wild weather here in Seattle this winter. The city is covered in snow again. It seems like schools are closed at least one day a week for the last two months and I have been wearing my warmest winter clothes that I never even unpacked last year. I feel like I am back in Colorado again, which I prefer to last January when we were in the middle of 30 days of constant rain. The only real inconvenience I have had to deal with is the ice sheet I have to pass on my walk to school. It was almost impossible when I walked to campus yesterday in my dress shoes to give my first oral argument for legal writing. I thought it went pretty well. I do not really have a problem getting up in front of others and talking. It is not much different than teaching, and same rule applies: the better prepared you are, the better it goes. That is the same principal that applied to working in restaurants; there, prep takes much more time than actully cooking. The difference with the law is the proportions. An oral argument before the appeals court is 10 minutes long, and most lawyers would be commiting malpractice if they did not spend at least 10 times that amount of time in preperation, and most probably spend more like 100 or 1000 times that. Well, I better go start preparing. . .

Court Rules!

If you could not tell from previous posts, I began law school with a certain innocent ignorance. Not having had much experience with the law, luckily, I had very little understanding about how the law actually worked. Also, until recently, I had not exhibited any interest in the legal profession, and I still find myself asking: "how did I end up here?" No matter how I arrived half way through law school, I am glad to be here, but to be honest, I do not feel I know that much more now than when I started. At least I am smart enough to know that is both true and false.

It is true that I am still quite ignorant of how one would prosecute a law suit through the legal system. Sure I am more familiar with some substantive theories of liability and the basic procedural framework, but the day to day experience of court feels very foreign. It is false because if I really look back and compare what I know now with what I knew the summer before entering school, it is quite staggering. Although less ignorant, I still feel quite innocent. I am still amazed at the legal method for resolving conflicts. When you consider the intensity of conflict that can arise between two parties, it is shocking that the law actually works. This trick seems to stem from several aspects of the law that allow for resolution. First, the evidentiary rules limit the facts that parties can actually argue. Having to introduce only relevant evidence, the conflict is condensed to be more manageable. Secondly, while the law does change, in many ways, the law is the law. Parties must argue to either conform or differentiate the facts from the law, but before a case gets to the level of appeals, the judge must apply the law. Finally, everybody has to follow the rules; otherwise, it would not work. Your client may hate the opposing party, but as a lawyer, you can only make any reasonable argument why you should win. Your power comes from knowledge, persuasion, ethics, and creativity and not by pure force (knowing the judge probably helps).

All of this might see painfully obvious. I guess I am trying to come to terms with the legal profession that I am becoming more and more enamored of. On the other-hand, I still feel very intimidated by this profession. It may sound simple, but that does not mean that it is. Right now, the time when I will feel comfortable in a court room feels very far off. Tonight, these are just the ramblings of a tired law student at the end of what felt like a very long week.

Semester Preview

I am just about to head to class for the beginning of a new semester. As much as last semester was focused on the more philosophical and theoretical questions of the constitution and policy, this semester is going to be a focus on the nitty-gritty details of contemporary litigation. I have legal writing again this semester, where I will be preparing pre-trial and appellate briefs and making oral arguments. I am also taking evidence and forensics, which I will hopefully be able to put to use this summer after I get my Rule 9 certification (a limited license to practice law prior to passing the bar and under direct supervision of an attorney.) Unfortunately, because I am doing plaintiff's work, we do whatever we can to resolve claims before they ever see a court room. Still, the statutes are about to run on a bunch of our cases, so I might get some court time after all.

I do have a couple of substantive courses to balance out the procedural emphasis of this semester. My medical liability course looks fairly interesting. My doctor/med school friends have already put in a request that I fall on the defense side of that issue. Then there is the class I am most looking forward to, constitutional law and terrorism. Our professor is the U.S. Attorney for the Western States and we are going to have a lot of really interesting speakers in that class. I am sure I will be tying in some of the topics from that course to posts on this blog. It is nice to have a class that is so contemporary as to be in the news daily. We are Reading Hamdan v. Rumsfeld for the first class and meeting with the former defense council for detainees in Guantanamo.

Looks to be an interesting semester. I will keep you all updated as it shapes up.

Happy New Year

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who reads this blog. It means a lot to me that someone besides myself finds my thoughts interesting enough to keep checking in--I have no choice but to stay tuned. I am currently enjoying my break away from school and from spending time on the computer. I will begin posting again regularly this weekend and I hope to post 2-3 days a week during the coming semester. Again, happy New Year and come back soon for new and evolving thoughts on my law school experience.

Heavy Environmental Impact

A study at the University of Illinois by Sheldon H. Jacobson found that 938,000,000 extra gallons of gasoline are burned each year because Americans are overweight. How about getting some of those overweight Americans off their rumps and onto bikes? It would help their health and help environment, right? Well, it might help their health; however the healthier they become and the longer they live, the more carbon emissions an individual puts out. In a study that came out last July, bike commuters actually produce more carbon over their lifetime because they live longer. Sometimes, you just can't win for loosing.

Half Way

Believe it or not, I am almost half way through law school. The almost consists of finishing my constitutional law take home final, but I do not have much more to go. I just handed in my 25-page paper surveying governmental programs dealing with homelessness, which you can download here if you are interested. It is definitely not my best work. The class was a lot of fluff. We went on three field trips, and when we were in class we either had guest speakers or watched PBS documentaries from the late 80s on dislocated populations. I have never done so much research on the Internet for a paper before. I went to college at a time when teachers still frowned upon using the Internet for research, but I think things have gotten a lot better since then. People were afraid they would not be able to verify information, but now that so many legitimate sources publish their information on the web, it seems archaic to go to the library and root through volumes of journals. Anyway, I will post again this weekend with a semester wrap up.

Getting to know your Justices, and yourself.

This semester has felt very different from all of last year. There was something so intense about the One-L year, as if all of life was wrapped up in law school. I am still studying a lot, but last year at this time I do not remember ever forgetting that I was at law school. I worked last Friday; I went out to dinner tonight; I watched a movie last night, and during all of those activities, I kind of felt like I was just living like a normal human being. Sure, I have not had a weekend where I did not study for at least 4-5 hours per day, but I am not behaving all that different than I would if I was simply working. I guess this means I am “thinking like a lawyer” – working on weekends – and that I have learned to find some balance in my life.

As to the law and my life, I learned recently that a former Supreme Court Justice came from my hometown and went to college at my alma mater, the University of Colorado: Justice Byron White. That is about where our similarities end. He was a professional football player with the nickname of “the whizzer,” and he tended to vote with the more conservative wing of the court–he joined Rehnquist in dissenting in Roe v. Wade. As a Kennedy appointee, he is further proof that you never quite know what you are going to get with a justice. O’Conner, who wrote the Casey opinion essentially upholding Roe was appointed by Reagan, so for people who are freaking out about the two new appointees to the court, history tells us to just wait and see; often justices do not act on the bench as we think they might. Still, in my inquiry into the personalities of the Supreme Court, I was excited to see that Fort Fun had produced a SCOTUS justice (Supreme Court of the United States). After learning that the rumor of Kip Winger growing up in Fort Collins was untrue, he grew up in Denver, I did not think there were any famous people from our little outpost on the boundary between the mid-west and the west. Around Seattle, everyone talks of their golden judicial child, Justice William O. Douglas– a decidedly more liberal justice.

Heeding my own words, supra, I do not want to simply reduce any justice to a single categorical description of liberal or conservative. One thing I have learned this year is that most Constitutional law questions are more complicated than a simple either/or category. By the time a conflict has moved its way through the lower courts, it has been stripped of much of the detritus of the individual facts, but unhinged from those facts, what remains is often a very difficult to answer question, such as trying to figure out what is meant my “liberty” in the 14^th Amendment’s “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” With such a daunting task, it is good that the court has justices with different perspectives and a good sense of humor.

Getting to Know your Justices

Check out this video of a discussion with Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia. These two justices represent the two major opposing perspectives on constitutional interpretation. Who seems to make more sense? The discussion is particularly void of any specific factual scenarios, so you get constitutional interpretation without the baggage of an individual case. What is interesting is not only the places where they disagree but also the beliefs and perspectives they share. Also, thanks to my faithful reader J. for pointing out some legal humor in a recent Supreme Court Opinion, Lopes v. Gonzolaz, where Justice Souter quotes Alice in Wonderland:

Reading §924(c) the Government’s way, then, would often turn simple possession into trafficking, just what the English language tells us not to expect, and that result makes us very wary of the Government’s position. Cf. Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U. S. 1, 11 (2004) (“[W]e cannot forget that we ultimately are determining the meaning of the term ‘crime of violence’”). Which is not to deny that the Government might still be right; Humpty Dumpty used a word to mean “‘just what [he chose] it to mean— neither more nor less,’”5 and legislatures, too, are free to be unorthodox. Congress can define an aggravated felony of illicit trafficking in an unexpected way. But Congress would need to tell us so, and there are good reasons to think it was doing no such thing here.6

You can see here how Souter is employing his own method of interpretation to determine what the statute is talking about. I wonder if I can quote Alice in Wonderland in my finals? Probably not. Supreme Court Justices get a bit more leeway.

Weird Al Yankovic-Bob

One thing about finals is that you actually have quite a bit of free time. Sure you have to study, but without class, that still leaves time to find funny videos on youtube, such as this Weird Al Bob Dylan parody made entirely from palindromes.

The Leaked Memo

Have you noticed how much of our information lately comes from leaked memos? This morning, a leaked memo from a senior vice president at Yahoo is getting a fair amount of air time. The so-called "Peanut Butter Memo" comes on the tails of the leaked Rumsfeld Memo, the leaked Hadley Memo, the Downy Street Memo, and the list goes on. Doesn't this all seem a bit suspicious? Is a regular press release not sufficient anymore? Or do we have a different reaction to a leaked memo? Is it possible that we think that a leaked memo is somehow more truthful, because it was meant to be kept secret? Have we all become so cynical that we believe the information the government and corporations holds from us is more true than the information they tell us straight out? There may be some truth to that, but I am not buying this leaked memo trend. What better way to get the media to jump all over your press release than to call it a leaked memo. For the last six years, many people have been talking about how secretive the Bush administration has been, so I do not believe that all of a sudden they are having a problem keeping all of their internal memorandum from reaching the public. In the modern information era, whoever controls information, controls the power, and the disseminators of information are very sophisticated in framing their information so that we not only receive the information but also the method to interpret it; that is the goal of any good propagandist. According to this new trend, the next time I hear "leaked memo," I am going to think, "now here is some information they really want me to know."

Finals

This is what finals feel like.

Psychodrama

I came across an interesting article about the use of a psychological technique called psychodrama during trial. Essentially the lawyer works to make himself more vulnerable in order to elicit an emotional connection with the jury. In my last post, I spoke about the use of humorous rhetoric to enhance the power of one's argument, but what about creating an emotional response? Are there limits to the use of humor or emotions? Is it OK to use personal stories of loss and tragedy during voir dire to elicit emotional reactions in the potential jury? To see who will cry? To see who remains stony cold? During my two days of jury duty, one of the criminal defense attorney's spent about 15 minutes leading us through a discussion about how different people make decisions. Do we use our minds? Did we think decisions should be logical or can we use our emotions to make decisions? Do we listen to others when making up our own minds? She was simultaneously trying to feel out the jury pool and trying to inform us of the way a jury should come to a decision. She wanted us to understand that a jury does not make a compromised decision (as is sometimes the case in other venues) but rather a unanimous decision.

The boundary between emotions and logic is an interesting question and I think I will give it some more thought in the coming months. The law requires logic so that we can have equal application. Emotions are too subjective to be used as legal standards, but emotions clearly have a place in the law. More to come. . .

Snow Day and Legal Humor

We had a snow day yesterday! It is true that school was cancelled, but for a Colorado kid, it hardly felt like a snow day. In my neighborhood, we had less than an inch of snow, but in the north-west, it is not the snow that shuts the city down but the sheet of ice that covers everything. The most dangerous part of my travel outside the apartment yesterday was getting down the stairs in front of my apartment which were also covered in ice. Unlike childhood snow days, I spent most of the days studying. I did take a break to sneak downtown for lunch. The city really was shut down; I have never had such an easy time finding a parking spot. I could have had my pick. So, even without the snowmen, having a snow day was pretty nice.

School is back in session today, and since we are heading toward finals, I will not have many breaks for the next three weeks. You may see more posts like my previous one which consists of video clips I have been viewing as distractions from studying. It is important to keep perspective on this whole process.

If you have been reading for a while, you will know that I have had several posts on the topic of legal humor. My general thoughts on this topic have evolved. I no longer think, as I did during my one-L year, that the law does not have a sense of humor. While it is not necessarily easy or appropriate to compare the law to literature or drama, this does not mean humor is absent. Sure, the law is clearly different. Where literature has a metaphorical affect on human behavior, the law has actual effect. If you are sued and you are found liable at court, you will have to pay. Nothing in literature has this kind of power. However, you will only be paying if you do not win, and because one of the most important aspects of handling a case is making good arguments, humor may very well have a place in your toolbox of argumentative tactics. The use of humorous rhetoric is not just the province of bold and creative trial attorneys; there are even examples in the writings of Supreme Court Justices. No matter how we feel about Justice Scalia's style of constitutional interpretation, he is without a doubt the most colorful justice on the court, and his opinions are often the most entertaining to read. I was reading his dissenting opinion in the law school affirmative action case of Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) when I came across a fine example of his sarcastic humor. The Majority upheld the University of Michigan's use of race as a factor in creating a "critical mass" of diversity in their law school admission decisions. Scalia responded, including this passage:

. . .If it is appropriate for the University of Michigan Law School to use racial discrimination for the purpose of putting together a "critical mass" that will convey generic lessons in socialization and good citizenship, surely it is no less appropriate - indeed, particularly appropriate - for the civil service systems of the State of Michigan to do so. . . . And surely private employers cannot be criticized - indeed, should be praised - if they also "teach" good citizenship to their adult employees through a patriotic, all-American system of racial discrimination in hiring. The non-minority individuals who are deprived of a legal education, a civil service job, or any job at all by reason of their skin color will surely understand"

This use of humor is cutting and its purpose is not necessarily to make you laugh. He uses humor to make his argument, but by using this type of rhetorical tool, he manages to make his argument both more accessable and more enjoyable to read. If you ust ask about any law student, they will most likely tell you that reading an opinion from the Consevertive Scalia is considerably more entertaining and engaging that an opinion by, for example, the former liberal justice William Brennen. Unfortunatly for Brennen, even if you think you agree with him, you may not be entirely sure because you have no idea what he is talking about in his opinions. Humor clearly has a place in the law, and I wish more justices and lawyers infused their rhetoric with it.

Things you CAN'T do when you're NOT in a pool

This is why I have always liked swimming. I know this video has nothing to do with law or lawschool, but I find it hilarious and this blog could use a little break from teh serious posts.

Problem with comments?

It has come to my attention that there have been some difficulties leaving comments on my blog. This is an unintentional programing glitch. I welcome comments and hope that this glitch has not posed any problems (I am flattering myself here.) I am trying to sort it out, but I am running up against the limits of my own computer knowledge. If you wish to comment, you can always e-mail me at hiltops@gmail.com and I will add it to blog as a seperate post under a title "Comment on '_______'" I will not edit comments any more than I would if it was left as a normal comment. Hopefully this will be resolved shortly.

What's in a name?

There is a reason I blog under my real name. Certainly, there are some risks. What I say in this blog is out in public, which means that I have to take responsibility for what I say. If I blogged under an anonymous moniker, I might write about other thoughts or topics, but the purpose of this blog has always been to chronical my thoughts about law school that I would normally share in a non-Internet forum with friends and family. The blog is simply a different medium. Many people share much more personal information on myspace or facebook than I ever would think of posting to the public, but maybe they are more open in person too? On the other-side, there are also some bloggers who feel their personal safety and privacy would be jeopardized if they used their real name. I think this concern is real, unfortunately. There are some creepy people out there who are looking to abuse innocent disclosures of private information. Therefore, I think I try to strike a balance between putting myself out there under my real name and keeping back those thoughts that would jeopardize my privacy or my job marketability in the future. If I feel good about what I write and a future employer reads this blog and does not like what he reads, it is unlikely I would want to work for him anyway. This is one of the perks to blogging under my real name. By being honest with the world, I am inviting the world to be honest with me, and I believe this standard works out best in the long run. The legal profession requires a standard of honesty and a lawyer plays a dangerous game when he begins to act in less than honest ways. So, I think this blog is a good place to start.

Not all lawyers will understand this. There are bad lawyers. Some are crooks, but others are just stupid. That is the same with all people. On the Internet, for example, there are plenty of crooks, and there are even more people who are just acting stupid. One of the behaviors that is rampant on the Internet is dishonesty. The medium is simply conducive to such behavior. Not all of this behavior is necessarily bad or harmful. Some of it is quite intelligent, creative, or funny. The Anonymous Lawyer phenomenon, that fictitious chronicle of a big firm lawyer, is both intelligent and hugely entertaining. The author's anonymity was part of the charm, and none were harmed by the deception. Another example of creative deception from television is Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report. He plays a fictitious character and part of the humor is getting interviewees, who are not playing a role, to say ridiculous things that play into the Colbert character. I find this show both hilarious and brilliant, and I lay much of its success on the good naturedness of the humor: the guests who are made to look like fools are in on the joke! The "dishonesty" is necessary for the humor, but no one is really deceived and everyone gets to enjoy the laughter.

Compare that to the humor of Sacha Baron Cohen, the mind behind the character of Borat. His humor is inherently disingenuous and cheap. Not only does he rely on dishonestly to make anonymous individuals look foolish, but because this is really more mean-spirited than comical, he has to rely on scatological jokes to make it work. Who doesn't think poop jokes are funny? This means it does not take much talent to get people to laugh with a poop joke. What separates a true comedic genius like Stephen Colbert from Sacha Baran Cohen is that it would be very difficult to emulate what Colbert does. The humor of Cohen on the other-hand is regularly, although admittedly less successfully, recreated by thousands of thirteen year-old boys in prank phone calls. In a prank phone call, the joke is one-sided; If the caller is successful in pulling off the stunt, his actions are harassment and can actually be quite frightening. If the caller is unsuccessful in pulling off his character, then he just looks pathetic.

Before I get to far off on that tangent, I should pull the narrative of this post back on topic. The telephone, the Internet, television all provide new opportunities to deceive. Deception is a necessary ingredient to fiction or drama, but there is a distinction between deception used for entertainment and art and deception used to harass. The new mediums of communication allow greater opportunities for both, but I think most people understand the difference. Borat is certainly funny, but Cohen's humor is not legendary and will soon be forgotten. I do not really feel sorry for his "interviewees," because I am sure they all signed releases before letting their images be used for the film. Unlike art, the law does not, and should not, rely on deception. It relies on good arguments, and it is the lawyer's role to make sure that those arguments are grounded in fact. This requires the highest standards of honesty, and it is for this reason that lawyers are disbarred for acts of dishonesty, in both their professional and personal lives. That is why I blog with my real name -- to say what I mean honestly and to take responsibility for my words. If people wish to critique what I say, they are free to do so, but as I enter into this profession, I expect the same standards of honesty from other attorneys. I do my best to stay away from those incapable of living up to the standards and responsibility of the profession. I like my deception in the form of a novel or some good comedy.

more thoughts on politics

I wanted to add some thoughts to my previous post (see below) concerning voting malaise. That post was written in a more stream-of-conscious fashion than normal and I did not give the topic its full thoroughness. I think everyone who can vote, should vote, and any law student who does not vote has yet to realize just how much politics will affect his/her career. No matter what area of law one decides to practice, from criminal law to real estate transactions, your practice will be effected by politics. The court is an apolitical institution, but everyone knows that judges are humans, and even if they are just following the law, following the law might be different depending on how you interpret the law. In a recent article, our new chief justices, John Roberts talks about how the "high court does not have political preferences," but he has an uphill battle to convince most Americans. The decision in Bush v. Gore did not help, splitting the justices along the lines of what we know of their party affiliations. Even if one's practice nave takes a lawyer into court, it is unlikely you will never deal with some government agency (i.e. Land use regulations set up by the Department of Ecology or the E.P.A.) The heads of those agencies are appointed by the President (federal) or the governor (state.) Those political appointments affect the atmosphere of an agency and have real life ramifications (The new head of the EPA for our region is a former Dow Chemical executive. Whose interests do you think she will favor?) If that is not proof enough that the law is tied closely to politics, let me remind you of the branch of government that makes the laws: the legislature! We now live in an era where the law has become almost entirely a creature of statute. Those statutes are written by the legislature, and the legislature is put in office by our votes. Not only should we all be taking an interest in politics at the federal level, but also at the state--at least enough interest to read a bit on the issues and vote.

Clearly, when you represent a client and in following the laws, we are bound by the laws or a valid constitutional argument that the laws should be overturned. There will always be laws that we, according to our political beliefs, find repugnant. I do not think that everyone should have the same beliefs (although it would be nice if everyone agreed with me) but I think it is incumbent upon lawyers to have a basic understanding of the current political climate and to participate at the most basic level in that political system. It is important for your clients that you understand how and why laws are made and what forces may affect their change.

I think I can put this topic behind me for a while , at least until the '08 election season, which should be in full swing come January.

Voir Dire, Part I

My lack of posting is not the result of being impaneled on a jury; rather, after loosing two days down at the county courthouse, I have been playing catch-up. I did however get to sit through voir dire (the process through which attorneys and judges choose a jury from a pool of individuals) for two trials, one a murder trial and the other a drug possession trial. More than being a distraction from law school, my two days were very educational. I learned a lot by watching how the attorneys handle the pool of potential jurors, and in addition, I learned a lot about the cross section of my community that was randomly pulled for jury duty. I will try and sum up my observations in the next couple of posts:

First, more people than you would think have been victims of a violent crime. 65 people were called for the first trial, a murder/ robbery case. Around 20 people were released right off the bat because of hardship. Most of those individuals either had trips planned during the next three weeks (or so they said) or were small business people/ commissioned salespeople whose livelihood would be greatly affected by missing three weeks of work. From the 45 or so who remained, at lease five had had a gun pointed to their head at some point in there life. When one juror was asked, she replied "which time. . .I have had a rough life." The attorneys were asking these questions because there was a gun involved in the case. The former cop sitting in front of me described multiple occasion of looking down a barrel, and one tall bearded fellow had been an environmental activist who pissed off some loggers. Several others relayed their experiences in private, but this list only included those involved in gun crimes. There were others who had been kidnapped, beaten, robbed, held for ransom, etc. I must have led a sheltered life. I understand that this supposedly random section of society did not include those who had already found their way out of jury duty, but I think more people than we normally think have been victims of crime.

more to come. . .