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DC Touristing
Ed. note: The following post was composed sometime in early March, but I never posted it for some reason. I'm posting it now b/c my family is in town and we're seeing the sights.
One of the benefits of going to school in D.C. is, of course, being in D.C. with all its monuments and museums and national treasures and whatnot. In a small attempt to appreciate some of that cultural/historical goodness, I took a tour of the White House yesterday with a small group from my section at GW. (The first-year class at GW is divided into four large sections of approximately 100 people who take all classes except legal writing together, plus one night section of equal size.) It was fascinating but short; the public is only allowed in a very small part of the building.
Humorous note: It was cool out, so I was wearing a jacket that just happened to have a "Dean for America" sticker on it. I believe I was in the Green Room and I asked one of the guards if she could tell me anything about one of the paintings on the wall. Rather than answering, she looked at my sticker and said, "It's pretty brave of you to wear that in here while George Bush is president." I didn't know what to say. How are you supposed to respond to that? So I just said, "It's a free country last I checked," and tried to smile politely. The guard also smiled and then looked up at the painting and began her well-rehearsed speech about it. Lesson: Be sure to prominently display your support for Democratic candidates if you take a White House tour. The guards enjoy the diversion.
A few ideas for when people visit you in D.C.:
Take them on a tour of the White House. Not very practical because you need a group of at least 10 or more and you have to sign up way in advance.
More practical might be: Tour the capital building! You have to line up in the morning of the day you visit to get tickets, but you need to write your Congressperson in advance of your visit if you want tickets to view the actual Senate or House chambers. I'm told it's well worth it.
Law students and their families might especially enjoy a tour of the Supreme Court. (more info)
And, of course, all those museums. I wouldn't recommend the zoo right now, though. Bad stuff happening there. Tragic, really.
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Posted while listening to: The Golden Age (Live) from the album "Garage D'Or (Disc 2)" by Cracker
Posted 07:28 AM | Comments (5) | law school life generally
That's that.
The Property final was not so bad as I'd feared. I was still too fuzzy on when and how benefits and burdens of covenants run with the land, and maybe too squishy on the remedies available to a commercial tenant for breach of either express or implied warranties, but you know what? It doesn't matter now. It's done.
One thing though: Prof Property asked a policy question based on the Barry Bonds homerun ball question—should the kayaker who catches the ball get to keep it, or what about others who put work into trying to get it, or should it belong to the batter or the ball park or the baseball team or the government? It was a good question and fun to answer because it called for us to think about what we're protecting via property law, and why we might protect it. These are good questions to ask. But I was thinking as I answered, why is this question based on such a meaningless scenario? In fact, why are nearly all law school cases and hypos (except in crim law) based on such meaningless things as a coffee company's rights? What about a homeless person's rights? What about a single mother's rights? What about the rights of Guantanamo detainees? Why doesn't law school ask students to think about things that matter? By focusing almost entirely on middle class and business interests, law schools end up allowing students to ignore vast swaths of society, and then we wonder why poor and traditionally "underserved" groups don't have more and better legal representation. Broken system.
But more on that another day. I have a week of vacation with the famdamily (my sis arrived last night and my parents arrive today), then the job starts. All fun ahead. Meanwhile below is a list of links I haven't had time to read or comment on, but which are worth a look and which I hope to return to later. Enjoy!
- Professor Smith on law review.
- Dubitante's analysis of the law school study group curve. It sounds exactly correct to me.
- Salon's review of Bruce Sterling's new novel, The Zenith Angle, which sounds like a sci-tech thriller of sorts.
- Salon's article about Morrissey, who has a new album out recently. (I was a huge fan of Bona Drag and Viva Hate, somewhat less of Kill Uncle and Your Arsenal, and then I kind of lost track of what he was doing.)
- The Waddling Kitchen's menu for harried students. I'm not so harried at the moment, but there are some awesome ideas here. If WT ever decides to bail on law, he's definitely got a future in food—cooking it and writing about it so that you want to cook it, too. [link via Buffalo Wings]
- Jeremy on lawyers' self-loathing and on the debt v. public interest dilemma. May I suggest the two are connected? I hope to write something more about this soon. (See also Scheherazade's thoughts on the issue. More humor from Jeremy here. This guy is brilliant.
Posted 08:28 AM | Comments (14) | law school
JD v. MBA v. PhD/MA
Greg over at Law is Fun, who recently finished 2L finals, offers up a detailed comparison of life as an MBA student vs. life as a law student. I know next to nothing about what business grad school is like, but I can tell you how law school differs from my experience in English grad school:
Reading: I've found the reading in law school to be generally much more tedious, especially in CivPro and Contracts, but less so in Crim Law and Constitutional Law. I'm sure that varies by person.
Class: Law school classes are a complete waste of time compared to English grad classes. In my first year of law school, I've spent 15 hours/week in class. A typical week in grad school included about half that. Of course, I was always teaching 6-8 hours/week, as well, but that's another story. My English grad classes were small—8-16 students each—and probably about 50-80% of class time was devoted to class discussion. My law school classes have been very large—100 or more in all but the first semester of CivPro (about 40 students) and my legal writing section (12 students). So far, I've seen almost no discussion in the larger classes; the so-called "Socratic method" is a sick joke that allows law schools to pretend they have a pedagogical model when really they've just become degree factories. (Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but you get the idea.)
Assessment: There is simply no comparison here. In English grad school I was evaluated on my class participation (meaning class attendance was basically just assumed; if you weren't there your Prof might be more offended than anything else), my ability to write short (2-10 pages) and long (15-30 pages) papers, and often my ability to present a short paper to the class. In law school I'm evaluated just as Greg says—everything basically rests on how you perform on one final exam. Like the huge class model, I think this method of assessment leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its accuracy, fairness, and value to learning, but there you go.
I might have more to say about this another day. Right now, I've got to do half a dozen practice property questions. At 5 p.m. my first year of law school will be over and I will be glad. Very.
Posted 05:53 AM | Comments (3) | law school
The Damaged Kingdom
Disney is trying to block the release of Michael Moore's new film, "Fahrenheit 911." And why is Disney doing this? Moore's agent claims Disney just wants to protect its relationship with the Bush administration:
Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.
"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."
Disney executives deny that accusation, though they said their displeasure over the deal was made clear to Miramax and Mr. Emanuel.
Yeah, of course Disney denies the accusation. But this move may have been the best thing Moore could hope for, since it's generating tons of free press and "buzz" about the film. Plus, he's made the front page of the NY Times with a quote like this:
and this:
Doesn't Disney care about the poor and working people? Oh yeah, only insofar as they buy tickets to theme parks and movies.
Posted 06:36 AM | Comments (5) | general politics
Discovery & Disclosure
Ok, my first year of law school officially ends tomorrow at 5 p.m. and I have a question for all my dear and beloved readers: Who am I? Do you know? Would you tell me if you did?
I ask b/c Favorable Dicta just posted about being "found out," and DG has disclosed her identity to some friends. Like them, I've taken a few small steps to actively conceal my identity (like not posting under my given name), but for the most part I assume anyone who wants to know who I am could figure it out. Referral logs tell me that at least someone at GW reads ai fairly regularly, and there have been indications that at least a couple of people have made the physical connection. I don't think about it often, but sometimes I wonder. Who reads ai and how many of those readers know me? How many do I know? As I think about starting the summer job, I wonder even more.
So: If you read ai and know me, please say hello. I've only kept my name off of these pages to stay, as the Energy Spatula puts it, "below google radar." I haven't really talked about ai with my classmates because it's simply never come up. One friend asked me once if I had a blog. I said yes, and that was that. She didn't ask any more about it. Perhaps she was just confirming what she already knew.
Anyhoo, I believe at least a couple "blawgers" will (likely?) be in D.C. this summer or fall for summer jobs or for school. If that group includes you, please look me up (email always works) so we can make our plans for legal world domination in person, rather than just virtually. Coffee's always good.
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Posted to the tune of: Dark Center of the Universe from "The Moon & Antarctica" by Modest Mouse
Posted 05:54 AM | Comments (10) | law school meta-blogging
ConLaw Craziness & Notes
ConLaw is over. It was closed-book, no notes, three hours, three essays, and 30 multiple choice questions. If I hit the median, I'll be thrilled.
In celebration of finishing my ConLaw exam, I've posted the notes I used to study for it. At that link you'll also find my CivPro notes. (Click the bullet points to go to the notes themselves, or you can navigate by clicking the curled page corners in the top right, or via the tabbed dividers on the right edge of the pages. All this fancy-shmanciness courtesy of Circus Ponies NoteBook, "The $50 Valet for your iLife." (in my case it was only $10, but who's counting?).) As I explain here, these note come with no warranties, neither express nor implied. The main point of putting them up is just to show how a real outliner (that allows you to collapse and expand your outline as you wish) can help make studying easier. It works well for me, but in online form it might make pages slow to load.
Mac users have lots of choices for OPML-compliant outliners, beginning with OmniOutliner, which I believe comes loaded on all Macs these days. If you'd like to try using a more functional and dynamic outline next fall and you don't use a Mac, I'm sure can find a Windoze outliner that supports OPML somewhere. I guess OneNote can handle it, for starters, so soon the capability will be built into M$ Office. [link via Scripting News] I'm telling you, the expand/collapse feature makes outlines much more useful.
Only one more exam to go: Property. Thanks to all who helped out with my Landlord/Tenant and Covenant questions the other day. I'm going to try to get back into it so I may have more questions for you soon!
Posted 07:46 PM | Comments (2) | law school
Newly Minted JD
Congratulations to Scott at L-Cubed on completing his final final. He are purty much an laywer now! Oh, and happy (one-day-late) birthday, too!
Posted 05:36 AM | Comments (1) | law school
Remote Controlled Teaching
This story about teachers using "clickers" in university and law school class rooms is fascinating:
Although some skeptics dismiss the devices as novelties more suited to a TV game show than a lecture hall, educators who use them say their classrooms come alive as never before. Shy students have no choice but to participate, the instructors say, and the know-it-alls lose their monopoly on the classroom dialogue.
Professor Wilde has her students answer multiple-choice questions to gauge whether she is getting her point across and adjusts her lectures accordingly. "I can instantly see that three-quarters of the class doesn't get it," she said.
. . .The devices look and work much as a television remote does, sending infrared signals to a receiver at the front of the classroom. The receiver is connected to a computer, which tabulates and analyzes the responses. The data can be displayed by an overhead projector, incorporated into a spreadsheet or posted on a class Web site. Responses are anonymous among the students, but not to the teachers, who can identify students by the serial numbers of their clickers.
Doesn't that sound awesome? I'm not sure how these clickers would integrate with discussion; it seems a teacher would have to be well-prepared and very flexible to encourage regular, productive give-and-take of classroom discussion in addition to having time and opportunity to make the clickers useful. But that's just it; if teachers are forced to think a bit more about how they present information, and if students are constantly forced to engage, I bet learning improves. Maybe it's just the tech-fan in me, but I would have loved to try to make use of these things in the English classes I used to teach, and I would have loved to use them as a student in the past year of law school. [link via JD2B, which also links to an abstract of a forthcoming journal article on the subject of using clickers in law classrooms]
Posted 06:24 AM | Comments (2) | law school life generally
Background Checking 1L Summer
Although it's been pretty much all finals all the time around here for a while, I do realize life will go on after Thursday at 5 p.m. when finals are over. In fact, I start work as a public defender intern on the 17th. I haven't had time to give it a great deal of thought, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. On an application for summer funding, my future supervisor described my summer job as follows:
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Filling out paperwork in preparation for the job (mostly for background checks so I can spend my summer in jail), I get this twice:
Yikes. I guess this is when I appreciate the fact that I was always one step ahead of the cops during my youthful crime sprees. Kidding! But I also have to authorize "the release of the following data or records:" employment, including military; bank, savings, loans & investments; credit; education; medical & military medical; selective service (such an unfortunate name when reduced to an acronym, no?); veteran's administration; police & judiciary; arrests/convictions (criminal & traffic); prior polygraph information; birth and citizenship.
I wonder how long it will be before forms like this also require disclosure of any websites, blogs, or discussion fora to which you are a regular contributor. Maybe never, but I do wonder what I'm going be able to say here on ai about whatever it is I'm doing this summer. Speaking of which, this post inaugurates a new ai category: "1L Summer." I hope to populate it with hilarious and breathtakingly compelling anecdotes and observations (or just random notes about my summer experience), if that's possible. Since starting ai I haven't needed to be too concerned about what my employer might have to say about what I write here; I've been unemployed for a year now, and before that I worked for a public university and I didn't worry too much what it thought. Something tells me working at a public defender's office will raise all sorts of fun "can I say that on tv?" questions. We'll see.
Posted 05:58 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer
Meandering Mind
Studying is overrated. In fact, it blows. It's spring and it's time to move. As Transmogriflaw has been posting recently, now is probably the worst time to be inside making outlines. Meanwhile, Scripting News is on vacation in Germany, and it sounds wonderful:
I had the same impression when I biked through Germany years ago, and the Germans I've known have only confirmed that impression: Germany may not be heaven, but they've got a lot of things figured out. A standard 4-6 weeks of paid vacation and health care for all citizens are great places to start on the list of things Germans enjoy that most Americans don't. Quality of life could skyrocket for most Americans if we had more vacation time and fewer worries about health care, don't you think?
Can I go there now, please? Or anywhere but here, really?
Oh no, I can't. As Monica says
And so we have judicial review, justiciability and standing and prudential concerns and mootness and ripeness, federalism, separation of powers, the commerce clause and the negative or dormant commerce clause, executive powers and immunities, and the state action doctrine. And those are just the highlights! Time to stop whining and start studying.
But first, speaking of ConLaw and judicial review, did you hear that Justice Souter was assaulted on Friday night? D.C.: A fun place to live, work, and jog!
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Posted to the tune of: You May Know Him from "Moon Pix" by Cat Power
Posted 08:59 AM | Comments (2) | law school
