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Skipping School
Since I don't want to maximize my chances of success in law school or anything like that, I'm off to spend the next 5 days in Lost Wages, NV (aka: Las Vegas). Did I mention I'm a gambling addict?
Oops! That was a lie. There's a wedding. In Vegas. Imagine that! I'm best man. And I made the promise to be best man long ago, so there's really no getting out of it now, no matter how badly I want to get to CrimLaw today to hear what PCrim has to say about retributive theories of justice. And I do want to hear it, because he's talking theory, and theory is where it's at, in a two turntables and a microphone rockage sort of way.
By the way, what I think I understand about the rich, creamy horseshit about holding people to rules we can't live up to ourselves is this: Coleridge was a servant of the law and felt he had to send a message that murder is wrong by sentencing Dudley and Stephens to death, but in his decision he encoded a hint to the queen that only she had the power to show mercy to these poor chaps, and that's exactly what she did. If it wasn't 5 a.m., I'd find the quote for you, but as it is, I'll leave it there and hope all you brilliant and knowledgeable people will tell me what you got out of the case or Coleridge's standard of law.
So posts probably be zero until sometime next week, when probably I'll flunk out of school, both because I'm missing two days of classes and because I don't have this software.
Have a great Labor Day holiday!
Posted 04:01 AM | Comments (2) | law school life generally
CrimLaw
First class in Criminal Law yesterday. The Prof is notorious for being, um, difficult—a hard-line, old-school Socratic method teacher. After 1 minute I could see why. He started off by calling a random name from his list of students, then he said to her: "Student X, I'm going to make a few introductory remarks and then I'm going to ask you to tell us about Regina v. Dudley and Stephens. Just a nice, friendly conversation. I'll be back to you in a minute."
And he proceeded to do just that. Student X was on the spot for the next 50 minutes, and she did a great job. PCrim seems to cross-examine students as witnesses to the reading, rather than simply asking them questions about it. I understand what intimidation is now, but strangely I also understand the value of it (I think). Forcing a student to perform like that puts them in a position they will likely be in if they ever decide to do trial work, so I'm guessing the experience will weed the trial people from the rest. If you enjoy PCrim's class, you might like to go into criminal work. Maybe. Whatever the value of this method, it created an electricity in the room that was almost palpable. I don't think anyone will be slacking in PCrim's class.
Best moment: Lord Coleridge (who wrote the Regina v. Dudley opinion) wrote:
We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and to lay down rules which we could not ourselves satisfy.
And PCrim's question for Student X in response to this was:
Is there a correct answer to that? PCrim didn't say. It sounds like rich, creamy bullshit to me, but I'm good at proving how little I know.
Reading for Crim was also great: Kant v. Jeremy Bentham, as in retributive justice v. utilitarian. Would it be plausible to say that this is another formulation of the contemporary binary between legal formalism (retributive) and legal realism (more utilitarian)? Just thoughts, but great stuff to sink your teeth into.
Off to day four....
Posted 05:55 AM | Comments (3) | law school
Rushblogging
Things I wish I had more time for at the moment:
- The lyrics to Howard Dean's "campaign song," which is called "We Can" by an artist named "Joanna."
- The Dean for America Sleepless Summer Tour, which I attended on Saturday in Falls Church, VA. Dave Weinberger blogged the event, some photos here, and you can download the audio here. (The official Dean blog is collecting all entries related to the Sleepless Summer Tour here.)
- Not for Sheep: Katherine is starting law school, too, and she says Wave if you need to pee.
- Does idealism motivate law students?
- Waddling Thunder's comments about private vs. public interest, which he follows up here and here. The only thought I have time for is that he seems to be saying that the only thing standing between civilization and anarchy is "private interest," by which he seems to mean "monied interest." That's one way of looking at history and we could debate all that I suppose but since there's no time I would just ask WT and everyone else: Do you have a private interest in a global environment that will sustain the biological diversity that makes our lives possible? Do you have a private interest in working for social justice issues like livable wages so that people don't have to live in poverty? Do you have a private interest in how the global population distributes global resources, such as oil and potable water? Private vs. public interest is a false binary.
- Sua Sponte's move from UC Hastings to a top-ten school by a body of water. Congratulations, and I hope she finds the fit at her new school that she felt she was missing at the old.
- Jeremy's collection of advice for incoming 1Ls—not to be missed.
And I'm sure there's lots of more greatness out there I'm missing or forgetting, but see, I don't have time, because of Torts. Torts requires too much reading, dammit. I'm off to Mohr v. Williams: ears, doctors, what fun!
Posted 06:33 AM | Comments (4) | election 2004 general politics law school
First classes, first impressions:
On Tuesday morning as I walked from my metro stop to the second day of orientation, the song on the iPod was "Nervous Breakdown Prevention Day" by Elevator Ride, and all day the lyrics running through my head were:
Interpret that as you may,* it seemed appropriate, and it may yet prove true, but I think it's safe to say at this point that the first week of law school served me with notice that this won't be easy. It may not be nearly as difficult as many people have claimed, but it won't be easy. That said, a few thoughts about the first classes:
Legal Research & Writing (Legresandwry?): Having a small group class like this is good, but the initial grammar "test" was ridiculous. The test asked us to identify whether certain marked passages were correct, or whether the suggested changes would be better. That's fine, but there were lots of mistakes in the text that we didn't have the option to identify or comment on. From this "test" I gather that the legal writing program here will encourage me to use the passive voice regularly (but apparently not always), it will be very concerned with what it considers the "proper" use of commas, it will praise me for my ability to use semicolons, and it will also reward me for the fact that I understand the difference between its v it's, effect v. affect, then v. than, etc. I'm realizing I may have to try hard not to be the English geek who argues over style and grammar with the TA and practicing lawyer who joint teach this course. When I taught business writing courses I told my students that they would do well if they wrote like I taught them to write, but that what would really matter in the "real world" was what their boss said. When your writing is going to judged by anyone, be it a teacher or a boss or the ultimate recipient, that person is your "800-lb gorilla" and you better do whatever he/she thinks is best, or you may find yourself getting squashed. I will try to take that lesson to heart now.
Contracts: The structure and apparent simplicity is appealing at the moment. "A contract is a promise or a set of promises that the law will enforce." Simple, right? Of course, that's just the tip of an iceberg, but so far the way PContracts (aka: PC, the professor) is presenting the info is making this the easiest class for me to follow at this point.
Torts: Oh. My. Gawd. For some reason I'm still trying to figure out, the first class was very frustrating. Prior to class we'd read several cases; in class PTorts (aka: PT, the professor) presented a hypo (for you sports fans, the hypo was the "sausage beater" case from last month) and then asked how many torts we could identify. No intro, no preamble, we were just expected to start applying what we'd learned from the cases to this new case. I found myself frustrated by the slow pace at which the discussion progressed as PT seemed to repeat or rephrase every response he got from the class. It seemed he didn't want anyone to feel stupid on the first day, so he took pains to try to make everything we said sound plausible, if not smart. But in hindsight I can think of other possible reasons the class seemed frustrating, primarily that I don't care about baseball or sausage races; I want to think and talk about serious issues like poverty and domestic violence and environmental degradation, etc. And I realize how stupid that sounds; I know I can't expect to just think about/work with cases and issues and questions that I deem important, and I know that this sausage beater case was just an example to illustrate points of law that I may someday want to apply to some case or issue I find more worthwhile. I know. Still...
At the risk of showing my age, I'm reminded of the early scene in "Say Anything" when Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) is dubbed the "keymaster" at a party and someone comes up to him yelling about keys and Lloyd grabs the guy and shakes him, shouting, "Chill! You! Must! Chill!" I'm working on it.
The other notable aspect of my first Torts class was the way PTorts had to wait and search for a woman to raise her hand; every time he asked a question, a dozen male hands shot up, but after calling a couple of men, PTorts would wait for a woman to raise her hand so he could call on her. I'm glad he did that to provide balance, but it's too bad he had to.
CivPro: PCP (aka: Professor Civ Pro) says he's not thrilled about teaching from The Power of Procedure: The Litigation of Jones v. Clinton, but that's what sounds like the best part of the course to me. PCP started with a mock "escalation auction" as an example of how litigation costs can spiral out of control, and that was about it. We're supposed to talk about Mayo v. Satan on Tuesday, so I'll have more to say then.
That's it. There's not much to say because not much has happened. So far the biggest challenges are case briefing (I'm writing way too much for each case) and the social scene. For whatever reason—differences in age, life experience, interests, or whatever—it seems the only people I've had good conversations with so far are those who are older than I am. My typical conversation with a law student so far goes something like this:
Q: So, where you from?
...
Q: Oh. What school did you go to?
....
Q: Oh. Have you been out of school for a while, or did you come straight here?
....
Q: Oh. I'm gonna go see if I can meet some other people.
Sound like fun? Oh, it is! On Friday I got home and pulled a cold beer from the back of the fridge. It was a special beer because it was one a friend of mine had made and given to me last spring before I moved to DC. I've moved many times in my life, so leaving friends and making new ones is not a new experience, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a hard thing to do. Pouring that beer was like pouring a glass full of nostalgia, and as I took the first drink I thought of all the great friends I had in Illinois, and for a second I thought I was going to cry. What the hell was I thinking moving here and starting law school!? But then I remembered: those aren't friends I had, those are friends I have, and instead of lamenting losses, I drank a toast to them. (I love you guys!) Then I smoked some video crack played playstation. It's all good.
Maintaining perspective: It's only been a few days. I'm confident the social aspect of law school will get easier as time passes, even as the difficulties of the academic aspects increase. Everything will balance in the end.
*Aren't those the best lyrics? Elevator Ride will provide the connoisseur of lo-fi, indie guitar rock with massively amped rockage, which you can hear for yourself by downloading the free mp3s at mp3.com.
Posted 04:06 PM | Comments (6) | law school
Amazing Congratulations
Congratulations to Reichen and Chip, winners of the latest circuit of The Amazing Race on CBS. The couple claimed victory for gay people everywhere, and they earned it—especially against the subtle homophobia of second-place-finishers, John and Kelly. Of course, some people won't be too happy for Chip and Reichen, but the rest of us can be thrilled about the serendipitous synchronicity that put a married gay couple on national TV for 8-10 weeks just as the Supreme Court was striking down U.S. anti-sodomy laws. Not only that, but as Heather Havrilesky noted last week on Salon, they seemed to be the most compatible, well-adjusted, and likable couple on the show.
Rereading that article also reminds me of the irony in the fact that the team that made each other the most miserable on this season of the Amazing Race may have been the self-proclaimed virgins who have dated for 12 years, Millie and Chuck. They crashed and burned a few weeks ago and seem destined for eternal unhappiness if they insist on staying together. Meanwhile, Chip and Reichen will have $1 million with which to show each other the depth of their love. Perhaps there is justice in this world, after all.
Posted 07:14 AM | Comments (5) | general politics life generally
Oriented
The final day of orientation was the day the faculty and upper level students tried to get real about what law school was about. We learned we should be working 60 hours/week as law students (including class and study time), and that this was considered a normal work week for most people and should leave us plenty of time to have happy and full lives. Um, excuse me!? Have you ever heard of the 40-hour work week? Guess not.
The day began with a student organizations "breakfast" where I was glad to see there's a good mix of options for those inclined toward public interest and social justice. The Equal Justice Foundation, the American Constitution Society, and the National Lawyers Guild were all represented, plus there's an Environmental Law Association and a group called "Street Law" that sends law students into DC public schools to teach kids about the law. It's not AU's Marshall-Brennan Fellowship Program, but it's a start.
The rest of the day consisted of advice from upper-level students (most of which I've heard and discussed here before), and advice from select faculty, much of it along the lines of the Dean's welcome: We have an obligation to use wisely the power we are going to gain in law school. A highlight was superstar Jonathon Turley's entertaining performance in which he argued that the difference between good lawyers and crap lawyers is that the good lawyers like what they're doing. According to Turley, the secret to being successful in the practice of law is taking time early in law school to explore your options and find the area of law that excites you the most, rather than following the hordes into the area of law that pays the most. Amen to that.
The day was capped with a "Dean's Reception" featuring free finger food, punch, beer, wine, and all the awkward conversation you could stomach. It didn't take long for me to get my fill of that, so while I suspect the hordes spent their last evening before the start of classes conducting various bonding and mating rituals (lubricated, I'm guessing, with generous amounts of cold beverages), I spent mine at Politics and Prose listening to Jim Hightower explain why he's optimistic about the potential of the grassroots to reverse the avalanche of bad policies being created by the Bush administration and a spineless Democratic party (also known in Hightower-speak as "wobblycrats"). It was a good talk, made better because the crowd was huge and lively. I found myself thinking how refreshing it seemed to be out of the law school and in the "real" world. Then I realized: School hasn't even started yet and I'm already glad when I can get away! Should this tell me something?
But I'm not going to dwell on that. The transition from a life of leisure to a life of work and responsibility is always hard, regardless of what comprises that work and responsibility. Class starts today—in a couple of hours, actually—and I'm ready to go. One of the first cases we had to read for Civil Procedure was US ex rel. Gerald May v. Satan and His Staff, in which the plantiff
Plaintiff alleges that by reason of these acts Satan has deprived him of his constitutional rights.
I'm not kidding. I can't wait to hear what the professor has to say about this. To quote the exuberant opening line from "No One's Leaving" by Jane's Addiction ("Ritual de lo Habitual"): "Here we go!"
Posted 07:27 AM | Comments (2) | law school
Orientation
After two fairly full days of welcome speeches, tours, and standing in line to fork over money for books and to get pictures taken for multiple IDs, I'm beginning to feel fairly well oriented. A quick rundown of the highlights includes:
The Dean's Welcome Speech: Yeah, it was the usual hot air about how great we all were and how great GW is and how happy GW is to have us and how happy we should be that GW let us in, yadda yadda yadda. Interesting facts: GW turned down more students than applied to any other law school except one; 26 people applied for each available seat. CNN's "Crossfire" (which CNN films at GW) wouldn't give the law school all the tickets it wanted to the show because Crossfire claims GW students only clap for guests on the left. My class includes a professional quarterback from the Canadian Football League and someone who formerly worked as an executive secretary to Donald Rumsfeld and as a social secretary to George Bush.
But while those are interesting facts, the best part of the Dean's welcome was what he said about the opportunities and responsibilities of a law degree, which might be best summarized by this statement:
The Dean concluded with a surprising, two-part "homework" assignment. First, we should visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum—start at the beginning and read only the legal edicst posted on the wall. "You'll see, brick by brick, how lawyers and judges participated in the creation of that system." The lesson is that lawyers are capable of doing extraordinary evil.
The second part of the Dean's assignment is to read or see the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird. He explained that there were two scenes in particular toward the end of the book that he hoped would serve as "guiding beacons" for our careers in law. The first is when a character is found stabbed to death, and while others try to claim it was an accidental death, Atticus Finch explains he won't accept that because he wants to be able to look his kids in the eye. The second is at the end of the book's major trial; although Atticus loses, he's given everything he could to save the life of a black man wrongly accused of rape, and as he leaves the courtroom the community stands in respect of what he's done. The Dean's takeaway lessons from these two scenes were:
Ok, maybe they're a little sentimental (aka: cheesy), but those sound like pretty good guiding beacons to me.
Another Dean (there are many) followed the Dean, and gave us many additional pieces of wisdom from "great thinkers," the best of which were:
and
Mandatory Financial Aid Session: This was great fun—two hours of really bad powerpoint slides. The gist of it was you should have no more than three credit cards, check your credit record and make sure it's clean, and everything you spend now is borrowed against future income. "That $3 latte you buy today really costs $100." That's putting things in perspective.
Locker rentals: We get to share! How fun! Yes, this is very high school, but it's not even that because the lockers aren't big enough for one person's books and coat and computer and whatnot, let alone the stuff of two people. What are they thinking?
Library tour: Twenty minutes of talk about which computers to use for what, where and how to print and copy things, how to get our laptops connected to the internet, etc. Oh, and there's some books over there.
Lessons in Case Briefing: Helpful, thanks. It doesn't seem to be a big mystery, but we'll see.
Academic Integrity talk: Fifteen minutes of "don't lie, cheat, or steal, because, well, it's bad." And if you lied on your application materials, you better fess up now 'cause it'll only be worse for you later if you don't. Check.
Faculty panel discussion on International Human Rights Issues: This was terrific. Professor Steinhardt opened with this message: Myths that human rights law is unenforceable or "not real" are "based on a pathological misunderstanding of the world." What followed was a crash course in the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which gave federal district courts jurisdiction over civil actions by aliens for torts committed "in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Steinhardt explained that since the Filartiga case, much has changed in the way the Alien Tort Claims Act has been used to enforce human rights. Plaintiffs are naming additional defendants, including sitting and former heads of state, those in positions of command and responsibility, multinational corporations when they're enmeshed with governments in ways that require human rights violations for profit (Unical, Talisman), and U.S. state and municipal officials. Plaintiffs are also alleging new types of torts (transboundary abductions, war crimes, genocide, slavery and slave-like practices, terrorism, prolonged arbitrary detention and disappearance), and the types of plaintiffs have changed—there have even been successful human rights class actions. Unfortunately, both Professor Steinhardt and his colleaque, Professor Murphy, seemed to agree that the real difficulty in improving human rights around the world is the almost "visceral resistance to international law." Gee, I wonder where that comes from....
Crossfire: Although the law school wasn't able to get as many tickets as it wanted, it did get some and I was able to be in the audience for yesterday's show. I'd never seen Crossfire before and after only a minute or two I understood why: It's a complete waste. For those of you who haven't seen it, let me explain: The show pits partisans on the right and left against each other to "debate" important issues; however, since the show only lasts 15-20 minutes (lots of commercial breaks), these partisans only have enough time to lob soundbite bombs at each other. There's no real debate, and important issues—like what the U.S. should do about the mess it's made in Iraq—get reduced to simplistic yes/no, black/white binaries like, this:
It sure would be neat if we could reduce this to a yes/no equation, but we can't. Crossfire seems to do this with every question (the guests repeatedly attempted to pin each other down with simplistic questions like this), which makes it utterly useless, as far as I'm concerned. Why do people watch this show?
Computing: Trying to use a Mac at PC-only GW remains the biggest hurdle to a smooth transition into this student's life in the law. As detailed elsewhere, GW is trying to standardize on Cisco's LEAP encryption system for its wireless network, which I thought would be fine because Apple's Airport supports LEAP. But GW also uses the WatchGuard Authentication system and I think that might be preventing me from connecting. My computer gets on the network ok, but I can't seem to access the Internet. And even if I can get online, there's still the question of printing. GW uses the Pharos print management system, It looks Mac-friendly, but GW may not have set it up to be. I haven't checked with GW's support folks about any of this, but after the response I got when I asked about using a Mac before, I'm not optimistic.
Note: If you're a GW law student who has used or is using a Mac at GW.... help!
That's it. Orientation ends today with breakfast with student groups, a student-led "survival skills" seminar, and a similar faculty-led "survival" session that I think is going to be more comic relief than substantive advice. If I hear any good jokes, I'll let you know.
Finally, let me come out of my self-absorbed shell for a second to say: Best of luck to everyone else starting law school in the coming weeks!
Posted 07:27 AM | Comments (3) | law school
Amused and Rested
We survived Six Flags without incident. The Batwing was a little disappointing, really, but still plenty thrilling. Ranked in order of ability to make you feel queasy were:
But really probably the best rides for just great fun (w/out threatening to make you sick) were the old wooden coasters, The Wild One and Roar, and the new smooth, high-speed equivalent, Superman. The water park was also fun, but that's where the lines were, so we didn't spend a lot of time there.
Notes for if you want to go: If you want to order tickets online you'll save $10/person, but you have to do it far enough ahead so that the tickets can be mailed to you. Parking is $9, and that's pretty unavoidable. If you plan to dip in the water park, inner-tube rentals are $6/ea. You don't have to rent a tube to ride the slides, but you'll wait much longer if you don't. Total cost for the day for two people, including two meals at Subway (the healthiest option in the park, it seemed): approx. $110.
And with that, it seems my life of leisure has come to an end. I'm off to law school orientation, trying not to think too hard about what a lack of respect GW has shown by refusing to tell us what time orientation will end today. I do have a dog to walk, people! Oh well. As Beanie said when I complained about this before, I better get used to it. All my time are belong to them.
Posted 07:09 AM | Comments (1) | life generally
Get Your War On, DC Punk
In the ongoing saga of the country bumpkin (me) trying to take advantage of all that DC has to offer, I forgot to mention the joy that was ours the other night when David Rees, the satiric mastermind behind Get Your War On, spoke at Politics and Prose. He shared the bill with Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkens, authors of Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital (reviewed here). At first the pairing seemed a bit odd, but it turned out to be a nice combination since punk is all about alternatives to mainstream culture and GYWO is certainly that. But mainly L. and I were there for Rees, who impressed us as an amazingly deadpan comic; if you think his comics are funny when you read them on the screen, imagine having them read aloud to you in a crowded room. It was almost like a form of therapy.
Since I knew that proceeds of his book go to landmine relief efforts in Afghanistan, I've wondered how Rees makes a living. Someone asked that very question and the answer is he's now creating GYWO for Rolling Stone magazine, so he's finally making some bank for his brilliance. You can also give cash to him directly through the paypal link at the bottom of his comics page. Read the comics, throw the man a few bones for those laughs. Buy the book and help make Afghanistan safer. Everybody wins!
In a related vein, we also went to see "The Weather Underground" at Visions Cinema:
It's an incredible film about an incredible time and phenomenon in U.S. history, and provides invaluable lessons about the best (and worst) ways to bring about political change in a "modern" (really postmodern or postpostmodern or whatever) society. Short lesson: Violence against the state only gives the state license to use increased violence in response. See also Sept. 11, 2001.
Toward the end of the film, Naomi Jaffe, a former member of the Weather Underground, says something like, "even though we didn't achieve our goals, I think what we did was worthwhile because it shows future activists what's possible; it provides a history of resistance and activism that future revolutionaries can build on." And the thing is, she'd be right except for 98% of the planet, the Weather Underground never existed. History belongs to those who write the history books, and if history books ever mention the Weather Underground, you can bet they do so as minimally as possible and in the context of words like treason, radical, insane, tiny fringe, etc. Have you ever heard of the Weather Underground?
Finally, to come full circle, in addition to being one of the authors of Dance of Days (mentioned above), Mark Andersen is also the founder of Positive Force, a DC activist group. Andersen will join Sam Green, director of "The Weather Underground" (the movie) for a Q&A about the movie and about activism on Aug. 23 at visions. You know, if you want to boost your countercultural cred. a teensy bit, it could be cool.
Now, for something completely different, L. and I are headed off to Six Flags (MD) for a day of mass consumer debauchery of the junkfood and thrillride variety. It's my last day of "freedom" before law school starts, so I figured I'd go out with a bang, of sorts. Batwing, here we come!
Posted 08:15 AM | general politics life generally
Fair and Balanced Friday:
Whoops! Friday was Fair and Balanced day in response to response to Fox v. Franken. See also "Freedom of Expression."
Posted 07:42 AM | general politics law general life generally
Deregulation Destroyed Power Grid
Why is the cause of the massive U.S./Canada power outage such a big mystery? Hmm. How about we follow the money. Bush and Cheney deregulated energy markets, which allowed Enron to go nuts, destroy the life savings of thousands of investors, and drive the state of California into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, energy companies around the U.S. were busy cutting workers, foregoing maintenance of plants and infrastructure, and basically milking every last dime they could out of the system while putting as little as possible back into it. It's the old profit maximization thing that capitalism is so good at, and profits at electric companies have been getting pretty maximized.
So now the grid goes down and everyone is asking why. The people who know why are the power company executives who have laid off maintenance workers and ordered managers to cut costs in order to maximize profits. Those execs know that the grid went down because they ran into into the ground so they could make more money. But of course, they can't just say, "Well, we basically destroyed the grid in the last couple of years to boost our bottom lines, so this was bound to happen." Instead they say, "Um, we're going to study the matter, but what we do know is more deregulation would be a good thing!"
Don't believe me? Read this story from 2001 [link via Buzzflash]. It recounts what management and labor said about energy deregulation almost two years ago. Management (and Bush/Cheney) said:
Labor said:
Now just ask yourself: Who was right? And who should we listen to as the debate over how to "modernize the grid" heats up?
Posted 12:41 PM | Comments (1) | general politics
Countdown Lowdown
Law school starts Monday with three days of orientation, and to get things going the Dean has dutifully posted a "welcome letter" (link may require password) to the GW website to stroke the egos of the school and its incoming students:
I guess we should feel pretty good about that, and I guess I do. But really, as usual around here, ambivalence reigns. I'm excited to get started and the pre-big-new-thing jitters have begun, but I'm also sad to leave the life of leisure I've enjoyed all summer. Another way to put that is my ass has gotten lazy and the start of school means I have to get off of it and doing something with my life. Ah well, all good things do come to an end, don't they?
Question for others familiar with law schools for whatever reason: Is it common for schools to withhold the orientation schedule until orientation begins? All GW has told us is that we should show up at 9 a.m. Monday and that orientation will last three days. That's great and everything, but it's not very helpful for people who have things like kids, jobs, or any other obligations at all. I'm a big lazy bum so I don't have much happening, but I was going to see the dentist next week and can't really make an appointment because I don't know what my schedule will be. Of course, I have no clue about my class schedule, either, so planning anything after Monday is basically impossible. The reason I wonder if this is common is that it sends a message that your life is over when law school starts, or at least that your time belongs to the law school and is no longer within your control. "All your time are belong to us," GW seems to be saying. Do all law schools take this kind of approach to their incoming classes?
Maybe I'm more sensitive to this because GW's computer policy strikes me as imperious, as well, so I fear I'm seeing a trend. I guess I'll find out soon enough....
Posted 07:33 AM | Comments (7) | law school
Congratulations, Liable!
Hooray for Elle over at liable for her successful transition from Blogger to Movable Type. Not only does the new and improved liable feature all the benefits of MT (robust and reliable comments, rss feeds for those who use aggregators, etc.), it's also been completely redesigned for your reading pleasure, and it now resides at a cool new domain: curiousgirl.org. Don't forget to update your bookmarks so you won't miss any of the fun of following Elle's progress through the wilderness of law school.
Posted 07:06 AM | meta-blogging
Ani Rocks
ani difranco played a terrific show at Wolf Trap last night. Best lines from her new song, "Serpentine":
Ain't that the truth. Ani has kindly made more of her goodness available for download with her poem in response to 9-11-01 and the aftermath.
Hamell on Trial opened the show with good humor, high energy, and amazing guitar strumming. I got a good laugh out of "I Hate Your Kid," and I'm still wondering how one guy can get so much great sound out of one guitar.
Wolf Trap itself is quite possibly the best concert venue I've ever attended. Open air venues are usually great fun, but Wolf Trap lets you do it in style by letting you bring just about anything you want onto the lawn. We took a picnic and a cooler full of wine and beer and had ourselves a fine time. Highly recommended.
(Note: If you're transportationally-challenged or just prefer to rely on mass transit, the shuttles between Wolf Trap and the metro line work great and I think Wolf Trap tries to schedule events to end in time for you to make the last train into the city. At least they did with the Ani show....)
Posted 08:08 AM | life generally
ABA Defends Civil Rights
Despite my criticism yesterday, the ABA isn't all bad:
Posted 07:06 AM | Comments (1) | law general
The ABA is Broken
According to a recent study by the ABA's Commission on Loan Repayment and Forgiveness, law school costs too much and it's hurting the legal profession [link may require subscription]:
No kidding? Here's what the ABA recommends to change the situation:
More law schools should create their own loan-forgiveness programs, along with scholarships and fellowships for students who choose public-service jobs.
State and local bar associations should create or expand loan-forgiveness programs.
Here's a better idea: Make law school 2 years instead of three and put a cap on tuition. I'm sorry, but when most law school classes hold 150 or more students, I can't see how the costs of professors' salaries and infrastructure could require each of those students to be paying $30k/year for the privilege of being in class. You could also eliminate the costs of doing legal research by creating a public domain research service that will put Lexis-Nexis out of business, which would cut costs dramatically for both law schools and practicing lawyers. I'm sure there are other ways the system could be reformed, but judging by this report, the ABA doesn't seem too serious about it. Tell me again why the ABA exists?
Oh yeah. The legal world and I are going to be best friends, aren't we?
Posted 09:52 AM | Comments (1) | law general law school
Racing to the Bottom
Phillip Greenspun's brilliant satire strikes again, this time on the subject of unfair trade policies. Greenspun asks: "Why can't we buy a Chinese house at Walmart?"
Yeah, why don't we do that? But really, why do we keep messing around? While we're clear-cutting Canadian forests, why don't we just invade Canada, enslave the populace, and force Canadian labor to build us anything we want? Think of what we'd save on shipping!
Posted 09:24 AM | general politics
Kucinich via Lessig
FYI: Dennis Kucinich is guest blogging on Larry Lessig's blog this week, as Lessig announced here. I'll be curious to see whether Kucinich comes across as more friendly and approachable in writing than he does when speaking.
Posted 09:22 PM | election 2004
Yes We Can!
If you don't have kids or friends with kids, you may not have heard of "Bob the Builder." Bob's a cartoon construction worker/handyman who works with his team of animated tools to, well, fix whatever needs fixing. Bob's theme song is called "Can we fix it?", and the song's chorus answers that question with an exuberant, "Yes we can!" (Click here to hear the song.)
I think of that song sometimes when I read transcripts of speeches by some of the Democratic presidential candidates, or when watching them respond to questions at various forums, such as the one that just finished tonight in Philadelphia. Listening to these Democrats fall over each other to demand universal health care and to condemn "right to work" laws as anti-union, "right to be exploited" laws is like taking deep breaths of fresh air after being under water for way too long. For the last three years Bush and Co. have made all kinds of noises, but most of them seem to have been either lies or attempts to scare their audience, or both. Now, instead of fear mongering and nothing but rhetoric designed to strengthen the corporate class, the Democrats are touring the country talking about ways to take care of all Americans, not just those who are already plenty taken care of. Democrats like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley Braun, and even John Kerry have given me a great deal more hope in the Democratic party and also in the prospects for the future. Can we really do something about the problems in our world? These candidates are standing up and saying "Yes we can!"
For example, at this most recent forum, the candidates addressed the question of global trade justice, and most of them said something along the lines of: we need to have smart trade that puts workers first. Of course, this is what you'd expect them to say when speaking to the Sheet Metal Workers International. But some of them went beyond the empty rhetoric of "we need to take care of workers" to talk about specific ways to do that, and just hearing their ideas made me think for the first time about the possibility of making trade fair via treaties and governmental regulation rather than via grassroots activism. Sure, college students can get together to demand their schools buy only sweat-free products, but progress by such methods is slow, at best. In addition to such efforts, why not build social justice into our trade agreements? As one of the candidates said, we shouldn't allow any products to be sold in the U.S. that are made by child labor, or by any workers without basic human rights, such as a reasonable wage, health care, reasonable working hours, real and enforceable workplace safety, etc. Nor should we allow the importation of any goods made in countries where manufacturers do not use sustainable environmental protections. If the U.S. built these kinds of regulations into its trade policy, the rest of the world would quickly follow suit and the entire world—both humans and their environment—would reap the rewards for generations to come. Under the reign of Bush, the idea of building social justice into trade policy is a farce. Under one of these Democratic presidents, the issues will at least be on the table, and that's a start.
Can we live in a better world with less inequality, less human suffering, and a healthy environment? Keep listening to the Democratic candidates and remember what Bob the Builder says: "Yes we can!"
-----
Just a couple more random thoughts from the SMWI forum:
- Gephardt is not electable for one reason: He doesn't use active verbs. That may sound silly, but language matters and Gephardt's language is all half-measures. Listen to him and you'll hear "I tried," "I worked," "I think," etc. Those verbs don't show confidence or achievement, they only show effort. Do you want a president who can get things done, or one that tries hard? Gephardt would be more convincing if he used verbs like "I did," "I built," "I succeeded," "I know," etc. But he doesn't.
- Moseley Braun needs to address the audience and not the moderator at forums like these.
- Lieberman is all jowls. The poor man is like a poster-boy for a face lift.
- Dean may be the most electable simply because he's really the most handsome. L. thinks so. I think he also comes across as the most trustworthy straight-talker, but the handsome thing is probably more important.
- Kucinich would reach orders of magnitude more voters if he'd just relax a little and concentrate on sounding reasonable and measured. He's got beautiful ideas, but he seems unable to convey them at anything but a fever pitch. A fever pitch is great for emphasis, but it gets tiresome pretty quickly when it becomes your primary means of communication.
- Kerry looks and sounds presidential, but the way he loses me when he dances around the question of why he joined his fellow Senators in abdicating Congress' constitutional responsibility to decide whether to use military force. Kerry and Gephardt (and Lieberman, but he's not a serious contender) are compromised on this issue and the only way they could plausibly get around it is to make the case that they were mislead by the Bush administration, right along with the rest of us. Instead, both echo Bush and Co. about Saddam's history of being a bad man. Sorry, that's not good enough when soldiers are dying every day.
- Sharpton just rocks the house every time he speaks. He kicked off with a jab at Ah-nold: "Schwarzenegger is an impostor. I'm the real terminator: I want to terminate the Presidency of G. Bush, terminate John Ashcroft, and all the people who are taking away our democracy." (That's a paraphrase.) He also whipped out a great analogy to explain how Bush and Tony Blair convinced their countries to commit troops to go to war. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but Sharpton said something like, "What Bush told us about Iraq is like me telling you we have to get out of this building because it's on fire. So we all get outside and you say, 'Where's the fire?' And then I get my friend Tony Blair to come by and say, 'The fire doesn't matter; you needed some fresh air anyway.'" Sharpton's closing statement was priceless—you should be able to access it from a link here, but it involved a story about his grandmother telling him that the only way to get a donkey to move is to slap it, and ended with Sharpton saying "I'm going to slap this donkey all the way to the White House" (or something to that effect). Trust me, it was brilliant.
Posted 09:15 PM | Comments (3) | election 2004
Happy (Belated) Birthday, ai!
It's official. As of last Friday, August 8, 2003, ai was officially one year old. I'm not sure how I missed it; time just flies when you're having fun, I guess.
A lot has happened since that first post, and, all things considered, it's been a great year. Thanks to those of you who have been kind enough to stop by from time to time, and thanks double and triple to those of you who have shared your thoughts via email and comments. Blogging is usually enjoyable, sometimes it's even therapeutic, but it's at its most useful, satisfying, and rewarding best when the conversation flows both ways. So I hope you'll keep reading ai and I hope even more that you'll keep telling me when ai is full of it, whatever "it" happens to be.
For those of you who feel like a scroll down the page and a stroll into the recent past, feast your eyes on the newly functional "ai one year ago today" feature a couple of screens down in the right column. There you'll find a daily reminder of what ai was all up in your face about at this time last year. Try it; it's fun!
Here's hoping ai will be around another year from now to look back fondly at my first year in law school. Which reminds me, is that countdown looking a bit scary or is it just me?
Posted 11:13 AM | Comments (2) | meta-blogging
Missed Opportunities
Why didn't someone tell me about Brickfest? Maybe because you don't know what it is. I didn't either until I heard a brief mention of it on NPR this morning. A quick search revealed that
And it just happened this past weekend at George Mason University in Arlington. Aside from a few fun hours many years ago spent wandering among the fantastic creations at Legoland in Billund, Denmark, I haven't been a very active or dedicated AFOL, and now I've missed a perfect chance to make up for my infidelity.
*sigh* I miss all the good stuff. (Come on, you know you loved your legos (or "lego bricks," as their maker wants us to call them) when you were a kid. Didn't everyone spend hours—nay, days!—building fantastic futures out of little plastic bricks?)
Posted 08:57 AM | Comments (1) | life generally
$2400/week
That's right: some law students are making $2400/week!! this summer interning for big firms in NYC. It says so right here (scroll down to August 4), but since I don't see permalinks or archives I'm just gonna quote the story because it's a good story and worth saving for posterity:
Friday was the last day of work for the summer associates here. They're like summer interns but they don't do any work. They get paid $2400 a week (not a typo) and get taken out to fancy dinners and fancy lunches. It's how law firms recruit you before buying your soul.
Friday night I got into the elevator with one of the summer associates. We were both leaving for the night. He had a folder in his arms so I leaned over and looked in jokingly, asking if he was stealing office supplies on his last day.
Sure enough, there were 5 or 6 legal pads, 4 post-it note pads still wrapped, and a box of pens.
Now, it's not that my firm can't afford it. It's just that this guy was making $2400 a week and still found it necessary to steal some fucking pens.
And his stupidity was astounding. NOBODY steals office supplies on their last day- you're supposed to steal them the day before your last day so nobody notices. I can't work with an attorney that dumb.
So now I have to decide whether to go and report this asshole to the recruiting people. But I think that I should take care of this problem like a true attorney: don't snitch on him but make his life a living hell when he eventually comes to work for this firm.
So see, you can be an absolute idiot and still almost pay all your law school bills just by working for three months in the summer. Um, are there strings attached?
Posted 05:51 PM | Comments (2) | law school
SelectSmart Fun
If you're a little overwhelmed by the number of candidates running for President in 2004, try the SelectSmart Presidential Selector. Just answer a few questions and the selector will try to tell you which candidate has views most similar to yours. It even ranks, on a percentage basis, how much you agree (or disagree) with all the other candidates in the race.
My own results weren't wildly unexpected. Selectsmart says my top ten candidates would be:
- Green Party Candidate (100%)
- Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH - Democrat (93%)
- Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (90%)
- Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL - Democrat (83%)
- Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (83%)
- Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (75%)
- Socialist Candidate (75%)
- Leahy, Patrick Senator, Vermont - Democrat (75%)
- Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO - Democrat (74%)
- Lieberman Senator Joe CT - Democrat (73%)
I'm surprised to see Lieberman rank higher than Sharpton, but whatever. And since the Green party hasn't even fielded a candidate (that I know of), and since neither a Green candidate nor Kucinich has a realistic chance of winning, it looks like my top choice is Dean, which is what I was thinking anyway. He's not ideal, but hey, if this SelectSmart thing is right, he's at least 90% ideal (for me), which is pretty darned good.
What does your top candidates list look like?
Posted 08:42 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004
Dude, You're Getting into Hell
If you buy a Dell, do you enter computer hell? Of course not, at least not about 75% of the time. The other 25%, well, you're taking your chances. At least that's what it sounds like from Andrew Orlowski's description of "the finance capitalists' model of what a technology company should be." [Link via Scripting News] In a story about a possible (rumor-only) partnership between Apple and Sun, Orlowski writes:
I guess that means approximately 100 GW Law students will be returning their spanking new, law-school-mandated computers in the next few months. Gotta love that GW computer policy. I mean, it's great that the law school puts the welfare and convenience of its students first.
Posted 07:45 AM | law school mac geek
Anonymity III: We'll miss you, O & N!
The law student blogging community is saying a sad farewell to Open and Notorious, which is ceasing (or has ceased) publication. [Link via FalconRed] Apparently, there were people who didn't appreciate o and n's attempt to give a candid (and often humorously scathing) picture of several students' experience of law school. According to "learned foot," one of the site's authors:
This may have been building for some time; the o and n crew took down their archives some time ago and they don't seem to even offer permalinks to individual posts (which is clever, because the structure of those permalinks would allow people to find additional archives, if any remain online).
As a parting gift, "Learned Foot" offers some excellent advice to law students everywhere:
Yes indeedy, it's all about the rockage. And maybe we can take away one more lesson from Open and Notorious: If you're going to blog law school, decide in advance whether you want to plan to be in it for the long haul, or the short term. If you're in it for the long haul (meaning you hope to be able to maintain your blog through law school and perhaps beyond), you'll have to be more careful about what you say. This doesn't mean you can't tell it like it is, but it does mean you have to be prepared to stand by what you say if anyone—including a professor, an administrator, another student, or a prospective employer or other colleague—decides to ask you about it.
If you're in it for the short term (meaning you don't care too much if you have to abandon your blog at some point in the future), you can say whatever the hell you want. Still, if people learn of your identity, you might, as Ricky Ricardo was so fond of saying to Lucy, have some 'splaining to do.
In some ways Open and Notorious seems to have lived up to it's name perfectly. They were open—about what they thought, if not about who they were. And because of their "openness" they became notorious. Unfortunately, that notoriety has forced them to become permanently closed.
Is it better to burn out than fade away?
Ah, nevermind. Just remember: "it only depends on how much rockage you have."
Posted 02:03 PM | Comments (1) | law school meta-blogging
DGLS and Anyonymity II
Dylan Goes to Law School is another new-to-me blawg by a soon-to-be 1-L. Dylan nails the whole anonymity question: Basically, trying to remain totally anonymous (and worrying about whether you're succeeding) is just too much trouble. Meanwhile, if the casual observer doesn't know you are you, that's no big deal either. I've been waffling on whether it's inconsistent of me to continue posting as "ambimb" if I'm going to claim I'm not concerned about anonymity, but as Dr. X. wisely pointed out in an email, there's
Thanks Dr. X. I quite obviously couldn't have said it better myself.
Posted 01:42 PM | Comments (2) | law school
Joke for John
I think JobforJohn would like this joke from the latest installment of Get Your War On:
Posted 01:10 PM | general politics life generally
Takin' it to the Streets
In today's installment of Democracy in action, please see JobforJohn.com:
Later the same day I heard that President Bush's economic team would be doing a bus tour through Wisconsin and Minnesota this week touting Bush's tax cut and its prosperous economic effects.
"What a bunch of BS. I'd like to give their PR tour a dose of reality," is what I thought. So I packed up the minivan and decided to follow their bus around the countryside and talk to whoever would listen about the real facts--that this economy stinks, and Bush's tax cuts are making it worse.
Go John, go!
Posted 12:36 PM | Comments (1) | general politics
The Anonymity Question
Jeremy Blachman has some good thoughts on anonymity vs. full disclosure for law students who blog. This is percolating elsewhere, as well. For example, Undeniable Dilemma is a new-to-me blog by another soon-to-be-One-L who wonders, why all the secrecy?. What I wonder is if an undeniable dilemma is anything like an ambivalent imbroglio... I'll have to read more to find out.
The more I think about it, the more difficult it is for me to understand how anonymity can even be a real question for bloggers. Does anyone really think they can keep their identity secret? It seems to me that the only way to do so would be to make your posts so abstract and general as to be nearly empty of real content, and if you did that, what's the point of having a blog in the first place? ai is about as anonymous as it can get, which is to say, not very. My thinking is that casual readers don't really care about who I am; knowing my name or my measurements or my place of birth (which I think I've blogged about before) or whatever would not really be meaningful to the average reader. Therefore, none of that information is on this site (although I'm sure it's discoverable to those who really wish to find it). But anyone who knows me in "real" life (aka, meatspace) can easily put two and two together to connect me with ai, and that's fine. I've always tried to stick to the maxim that I'll only write things that I wouldn't mind saying in public, or to the people directly concerned. If I'd be embarrassed or ashamed if people connected me with the things I say, I shouldn't say them at all.Those are the rules I'll continue to try to live by, so if you happen to see me at GW this fall, please say hello—I'll be the guy with the iBook.*
Elsewhere in law school discussion, Unlearned Hand thoughts on the ongoing debate about computers in the law classroom have generated healthy comment thread.
And on the subject of computers in the classroom, I think this blog is evidence that American University's Washington College of Law is pretty Mac-friendly—its author is the Mac specialist in the law school's computer lab. Rank better mean *something,* is all I can say.
* Full Disclosure: Due to GW's draconian computer policy (i.e.: "Buy the Dell laptop we recommend or you just may burn in hell forever and flunk out of law school in the first week."), I imagine I'll be one of the few using an iBook at all. However, I won't have it everyday; since GW uses Windows-only software for its legal writing course and for exams, I'll be carrying an old Dell on days when I know I'll be needing to run that software.
Posted 01:32 PM | Comments (8) | law school meta-blogging
A different kind of Trifecta
Howard Dean gets a big publicity boost this week—he's on the cover of the three major news magazines, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. I haven't had a chance to read any of the stories yet, but if it's true that there's no such thing as "bad press," this coverage should give Dean another boost.
(If you missed the whole Trifecta "joke," you can read more about it here and here, or just Google for "trifecta Bush".)
Posted 12:40 PM | election 2004
National Gallery of Art Cafeteria: Observations
Observation 1: There's something not quite right about a 6-8 year-old boy wearing a suit and tie. The rightness is even more questionable when he's sitting with a man (his father?) who seems to be wearing an identical suit and tie. Suits and ties are just wrong. Suits and ties on 6-8 year-old boys should be criminal.
Observation 2: The waterfall that looks like it's always about to stream right through the window is very very cool. The reflective, stainless steel ceiling and lights in the back portion of the cafeteria is very very uncool. What were they thinking?
Observation 3: A Handspring Visor Deluxe combined with a Targus Stowaway Keyboard is a much more chic and, um, novel way to write a novel than is a slightly worn Apple iBook. Damn! Out-teched again!
Question: Which came first: The glass pyramids at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris, or the very similar (if much smaller) glass pyramids in the courtyard between the east and west wings of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.?
Posted 04:59 PM | Comments (1) | life generally
