Happy Holidays!

It is done. Finals are over. Can you say anticlimactic? But it's a wonderful thing, nevertheless.

And now it's time for me to head off to the Mitten (Michigan) and the Mountains (Montana) for family time. I'm looking forward to reading some good books, playing cards, and probably eating way too much great food. Holidays are wonderful, aren't they? I hope yours are.

I'll leave you with Golum W. Bush (flash animation) who says:

http://flash.bushrecall.org/It's the ring ring, and the bling bling, and the power thing, and the right wing!

Also, if you haven't heard of it already, don't miss Bush In 30 Seconds —over 1,000 30-second commercial produced by folks around the country to highlight the most important reasons they think we need a new president in 2004. Hours and hours of holiday cheer.

God bless us everyone! See you in 2004!

Posted 05:11 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Post-Crim Stuff

CrimLaw is history. For now. Although the exam was no picnic (6 questions, 5 of which had two parts each), it didn't feel quite as onerous as torts and contracts. Now, like Transmogriflaw, only one exam remains: CivPro (a.k.a. "that juris-my-diction crap"). By noon tomorrow, it's all over.

Meanwhile, there are many more interesting things in the world than Civil Procedure, don't you think? For example, following up on last weekend's big news:What does the capture of Saddam mean? Alternet has a bunch of good articles on the subject, including an argument that the media orgy (Saddamania!) was obscuring a lot of other important news, like the Halliburton fraud scandal, for example. William Rivers Pitt voices the sentiments of many when he says we caught the wrong guy: Where's Osama? But Pitt's bigger point is that the current instability in Iraq and the fact that all those American troops are there makes the place a playground for anyone who would like to attack the U.S. by killing Americans; Saddam's capture doesn't really change that. And Robert Scheer basically sums things up:

As far as I can tell, catching Saddam is not going to fix Iraq's economy, build a functioning democracy, prevent a Sunni-Shiite civil war, or bring back the Americans and Iraqis who have died and will continue to die at the checkpoints, home invasions and while driving their Humvees down the nation's roads.

This was the basic gist of Howard Dean's comments on the matter in his national security address, delivered Monday in California. Dean said the capture of Saddam is a great thing, but it doesn't change the fact that Bush's unilateral foreign policy has angered and frightened the world, making the U.S. less safe, not more. It sounds like some people don't like hearing this (no permalinks, look at entries for 12/14-15), and Dean's opponents continue to try to tar him with the "irresponsible" or "incompetent" or "unrealistic" or even "delusional" brush. Lieberman's got the best soundbite with the accusation that Dean's fallen into a "spiderhole of denial" if he doesn't think Americans are safer w/Saddam in custody. Howard Kurtz rounds it all up in depth (again, no permalinks so look for today's looong entry).

Only time will tell who's right. I think Dean will again be proven correct in the long run, but it may not have been wise to make this question ("Is America safer w/Saddam imprisoned?") an issue. The real issue is whether America is safer in the long run as the world's bully, or if it's safer as the world's leader and peace-maker through dipolomacy and international cooperation. The funny thing that Dean's critics seem to want to ignore is that Dean isn't necessarily saying we should not have gone into Iraq, or that we should not have captured Hussein; he's simply saying we did it in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons, and that's why all this violence isn't accomplishing the goals it's supposed to accomplish.

Enough with the political analysis, already. There are other important things going on. For example, Sandra was the Sole Survivor—hooray! Did she tip off her friends that she might be the winner so they could make money betting on her? We'll probably never know. Once thing we did learn from this season (something that diehard discussion board readers probably already know) is: There are really only two rules in Survivor: 1) You can't hit anyone. 2) You can't conspire to share the money. That last one explains everything; the show really is like "real life"—there are lots of structural barriers to cooperative action.

In the "there's still hope" file, did you hear about the shoe company that gave its employees a Christmas bonus of $1,000 for every year they've worked at the company? That would be SAS Shoemakers, which doesn't have a website that I can find. Why can't more companies be like this? Treat employees well, produce a good product, share the profits with the workers and the community—it's not so hard, is it?

Ok. Must think about CivPro.

But then, what's the point? Mixtape Marathon says law professors seem to let their satanic tendencies loose when grading law school exams, leading to a situation where students get bad grades when they think they performed well on an exam, and good grades when they think they performed poorly. So MM has a question for law professors:

Query (to use language to which your kind is accustomed): Given this information, how can it possibly be said that law school exams are an accurate measure of a student’s knowledge? How is a legal “education” accomplished if students can never be sure whether or not they actually understand the material? Let me explain. In law school, a student can make it through the semester, really feeling confident about his coursework, only to discover, by proclamation of one grade, that he did not understand anything after all. Conversely, someone may think, “Golly gee, I don’t get this stuff and I didn’t really work at all in this class. I’m screwed,” and end up with an A. What, may I ask, is the function of such an academic system? And where might a student who is rewarded for studying less and punished for studying more get the motivation to study at all? Might she rather decide to watch Joe Millionaire and alphabetize her cd collection? (Don't strain yourself. The answer is: yes, she might).

So aren't I better off not studying? No, probably not.

But one more thing before I go: Yesterday JD2B posted links to some new blogs by Michigan law students, and while I don't have time to check them all out, at least one is definitely worth repeat visits. Glorfindel of Gondolin is an MD working on a JD who supports Dean, registers as left-liberal on the political compass, and links to this cool political map with fascinating analysis of how the 2004 election might shape up. Great reading.

Oh, and Think Inc. is a philosopher who doesn't like capitalism, so you know she rocks.

I think I went to the wrong law school. If I'd studied harder for exams I might have a chance of transfering to Michigan (or Temple or Columbia). It's certainly a thought. But now: Personal and subject matter jurisdiction, venue, pleading, and joinder. This is doable. By noon tomorrow, it will all be over.

Posted 09:17 AM | Comments (4) | election 2004 law school

Professorial Quotes

Studying for finals means going through my notes, which are excessively detailed. The excess makes it hard to sift through for what's important, so in the future I won't be taking notes like this, but the benefit of so much detail is that I captured a few choice comments from my professors. The best two are from Prof Torts, who, for the sake of context, is a graduate of the U of Chicago law school (bastion of the law and economics school of thought), a former Scalia clerk, and a dedicated proponent of Judge Learned Hand's "BPL" cost-benefit analysis—Prof Torts seems to think we should apply the BPL to every situation possible. He even went so far as to spend an entire class period arguing that HMOs should be allowed to dictate (a.k.a., "withhold") medical treatment on the basis of the BPL, and to introduce cost/benefit evidence as a defense when patients die and the HMO doctors get sued for malpractice. Doesn't that sound like a great idea?

So anyway, here's what Prof Torts says about tort law generally:

Tort law is social engineering. It's like the common law version of the big bad government agency trying to regulate your conduct but without all that bad administrative overhead.

Ah yes, government is mischief. Is it true that the more money you have, the more you loathe the government?

Now here's ProfTorts on government today and how politicians feel about the BPL:

Both left and right now accept that cost/benefit analysis must be undertaken, even when it's hard to find numbers. When it's hard, we just have to proceed as best we can. Inside the beltway cost/benefit analysis is increasingly reigning supreme.

I'd like to make an argument that this goes beyond "bare non-disclosure" of information to the contrary and borders on fraudelent misrepresentation, but I'm done with contracts for the semester and we've both got better things to do. Oh, but speaking of contracts, ProfContracts was a bit lighter, if not more encouraging:

"Legal research is boring and takes a lot of time, but it's a lot different when you're being paid by the hour. That really changes everything."

This is a great example of the kinds of jokes 4 out of 5 of my professors made all semester—jokes about the shortcomings in the law or the practice of law, with punchlines about how those shortcomings don't matter because, well, what matters is money! Ha ha ha! That's so funny! Not.

<mini-rant>
Approx. 500 new recruits begin studying law at GW each fall. A certain percentage are almost certainly going to law school because they'd like to make the world a better place somehow, not just for themselves, but for other people, as well. These 500 students then spend the next three years sitting in lectures punctuated by jokes suggesting the legal world sucks and the one thing that makes it palatable is cash. Many of these jokes also involve admissions that the law is patently unfair in some way; the punchline? "You don't have to worry about that because you'll still get paid!" So, after three years, how many of those 500 law students do you think will have given up on making a positive contribution to society? Why should they care about anything other than making money when their profs keep telling them that money is what really matters? Yay!
</mini-rant>

But one of my professors did not make jokes about scrupulous lawyers making money from injustice, and that was Prof CrimLaw. Instead, he told us to look for those places where the law seems unjust, or where society doesn't seem to be working as well as it could, and to ask questions and to try to come up with answers. On the last day of class, Prof CrimLaw made some self-deprecating comments about how law professors like to hear the sounds of their own voices, then he gave us some "wise words" to think about, including this semi-joke:

Statistically, law students have a better chance of becoming criminal defendants than criminal lawyers.

Gee, why would that be? And if it's not actually true (it probably isn't), why would it even sound plausible? See mini-rant, above.

ProfCrim went on to advise and encourage us to take CrimPro, since it's important and will teach us the kinds of things people expect you to know when they hear you're a lawyer. And he finished with a call for us to take seriously what we learned this semester. A rough paraphrase (at the time we were discussing the insanity defense and had just finished readings about the case of John Hinckley shooting Ronald Reagan):

I hope you appreciate the complexity of the issues we've covered this semester. The government has an awesome power to hurt people, or stigmatize them, or punish them, and that's something you need to take seriously. When and how should it use that power? I never felt more proud to be an American than the day John Hinckley was acquitted. That someone could shoot the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world and be acquitted was a testament to ideals of justice and the strength of our criminal justice system. Some people say cases are stories; if that's true, then you, as lawyers, may get to decide what the morals of these stories are. Remember that.

My transcription doesn't adequately capture what he said, but you get the idea. ProfCrim was joking when he said he had some "wise words" for us, but those don't sound like so much of a joke to me. The main point is how starkly these sentiments contrast with those of ProfTorts and ProfContracts. I'll certainly be taking a closer look at a career in CrimLaw, but first I guess I better try to pass the final exam...

Posted 07:19 AM | Comments (5) | law general law school

Happy Monday

Monday's are better when they don't include class or finals. Sure, there's always studying, but... Today is an extra-good Monday, in light of yesterday's big news. But what to say that hasn't been said? This is good—a recognition that taking Saddam alive rather than killing him on sight was a testament to American ideals of justice and due process.

Beyond that, since the media orgy (capture porn!) started yesterday morning I've been longing for some perspective. What does Saddam's capture really mean? The talking heads keep saying "this changes everything" and I've even heard some calling Bush's statement yesterday a "victory speech." So "winning" this war means capturing Saddam? The goal of the conflict changes so often I just can't keep up.

But the talking heads have incredible power. Friday night's study break (my life is really just one big study break; I should talk about breaks from breaks, which is the time I actually study) was a screening of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," an incredible documentary about the attempted coup in April 2002 against Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected leader of Venezuela. The coup was led by the upper-middle and upper classes, neither of whom like Chavez because Chavez's basic goal is to redistribute the proceeds from Venezuela's vast oil resources among all Venezuelans, rather than allowing a small elite siphon those profits for their personal gain, which has been the status quo for the past century. The leaders of the coup used Venezuela's private television stations to convince people the at Chavez was a brutal dictator; the tv stations told outright lies and lied by omission—showing only certain clips edited to make Chavez look as bad as possible, while withholding footage that made Chavez look good. There's evidence that the U.S. backed the coup, but of course, the U.S. officially denies it. At any rate, the coup failed, largely because the mass of people who voted for Chavez demanded he remain in power. Today, Chavez does remain in power, and his efforts to redistribtute Venezuela's wealth more equally among all its people continue.

The point? Simply another illustration of the powerful role the media can play in defining an event. Just something to think about as you digest the constant stream of pronouncements on what the capture of Saddam Hussein means to you, the U.S., the U.S. presidential race, Iraq, or the world.

And while you're digesting all that, consider something you're probably not going to see on tv—Michael Moore's perspective:

Stay strong, Democratic candidates. Quit sounding like a bunch of wusses. These bastards sent us to war on a lie, the killing will not stop, the Arab world hates us with a passion, and we will pay for this out of our pockets for years to come. Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to our national security.

It's brash and bold, and definitely polemical in the current context. For a slightly less abrasive take on what Saddam's capture might mean outside of the media frenzy, leaders in other nations are expressing hope that it will mean a quicker return of Iraqi sovereignty. Finally, the Washington Post already has poll numbers on how the capture affected Americans' perceptions of the war, Bush, etc. Interesting, but probably not worth much so soon after the fact. Only time will tell. For now, I hear the siren song of CrimLaw...

Posted 08:25 AM | Comments (3) | general politics life generally