« May 16, 2004 - May 22, 2004 | Main | May 30, 2004 - June 05, 2004 »
Beginning/Ending Congratulations
Congratulations to Scoplaw, who has chosen to attend law school at Georgetown. The decision of where to go to school can be a tough one, and Scoplaw has been refreshingly candid about his decision-making process. Here's hoping he finds what he's looking for there!
On the other side of the congrats coin, congratulations to Scheherazade who gave notice at her law firm last week. Coincidentally, I spent part of last weekend at a 24-hour poker marathon held in celebration of two people who recently quit the same Washington law firm. One of them quit to take a clerkship, the other isn't sure what he's going to do next; both were sure that their firm wasn't where they wanted to be any longer, and both seemed thrilled to be finished with it. Still, I doubt any of these former associates sent a scathing farewell email like this:
I am no longer comfortable working for a group largely populated by gossips, backstabbers and Napoleonic personalities. In fact, I dare say that I would rather be dressed up like a pinata and beaten than remain with this group any longer. I wish you continued success in your goals to turn vibrant, productive, dedicated associates into an aimless, shambling group of dry, lifeless husks.
Gee, I sure wish I was on the firm track; it sounds like so much fun!
Posted 08:55 AM | Comments (1) | law general
Happy Memorial Day Weekend
The weather here in D.C. is gorgeous—sunny and cool, with the promise of more to come. It rained last night, so the city seems fresh and clean and sparkly. It's a great weekend for outdoor plans.
The big event in D.C. this weekend is the dedication of the WWII Memorial on the Mall. Yesterday on my way home from work I noticed lots of veterans and their families on the train—you could tell because many wore items of clothing (hats, jackets, etc.) with identifiers of company, or branch of service, or rank, etc. Although the memorial has received a lot of criticism, this should still be a very memorable and meaningful weekend for those veterans who are able to come to the dedication. "The greatest generation" seems a bit hyperbolic, but I'm certainly thankful for the sacrifices and dedication of so many (American and otherwise) in the first half of the 20th century. I wonder what the vets coming to Washington this weekend think of the world they live in today.
Posted 06:49 AM | Comments (5) | life generally
Washingtonienne
Yeah, you know it already, but apparently the vixen behind the Capital Hill blog scandal is no longer anonymous — she is Jessica Cutler and she worked for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine.
She's, um, been fired.
Posted 05:43 AM | Comments (2) | general politics
Acceleration
The pace of work is beginning to accelerate. Monday was advisements again—the only time I'm allowed to go behind the bar in a courtroom until I pass the bar. (Ok, there are other exceptions to that rule, but for now, that's all I can do.) We only had one taker, and he had questions I couldn't answer. It's so sad to be so unhelpful. Other than that, more research, phone calls, and a visit to the juvenile detention center to interview a client.
The office is holding a couple of training events in the next couple of days for the interns, all of whom have finally started. Today will also include a neighborhood investigation, searching for witnesses and general info about a case. Oh, and a fun assignment for techno-discovery along the lines of this post from Scheherazade. There could be a future in this for me. I don't have all the techno-expertise necessary to read the metadata in Word documents or recover transcripts of chat sessions, but it's definitely something I'd like to learn.
Menagerie Looks Back
Shelley at The Menagerie recently posted some reflections on her 2L year of law school, including this great big-picture advice:
Right now, thinking about 2L is about the furthest thing from my mind, but I hope to remember to return to sensible advice like this come August when the crazy train starts firing up again.
The Temperature at Which Conservatives Burn?
Congratulations to Michael Moore:
I haven't looked around, but I'll bet the howling on conservative websites right now and in the coming days would drown out D.C.'s infestation of locusts. I guess that would mean the conservatives are drowning out their own roar—ha!
In other Cannes news, another film I'm eager to see is "Tarnation," which may be the most highly-acclaimed feature-length film made entirely with iMovie. If that wasn't amazing enough, it's total budget was only $218.32, and the filmmaker, Jonathan Caouette made it on his boyfriend's iMac—he didn't even use his own machine!
Appropriately enough, the film's auteur is blogging his experience of the film's positive reception.
Posted 07:49 PM | Comments (1) | ai movies
Week In Review #1
With one week of my summer internship under my belt and the second about to begin, things are still too new and the learning curve too steep to have a solid impression of the job. Thus far, I love the people, the office environment (except for the internet access, about which you know I'll say more), and the overall mission of the public defender's office. On the other hand, I feel uncomfortably unqualified to be doing some of the things they've asked me to do, a feeling made worse by the fact that real people with real charges facing real jail-time may be depending on my ability to complete my assignments quickly and well. I rather doubt there will ever be a time this week when a client's fate will really rest in my hands, but the pressure of real consequences for the client remains.
The first week's impressions were mostly big-picture like that, and fell into two main areas:
First, public defenders (at least those in this office) are handicapped when it comes to doing internet research and using technology. I learned that one reason this office likes law student interns is that we generally come with Lexis and/or Westlaw passwords. The office subscribes to a service that aggregates all the state's court decisions, as well as material from federal district and Supreme Court cases, so the attorneys do most of their research through that. However, if they need to venture beyond that database, I guess they either have to pay for a Lexis or Westlaw search, or head for the books somewhere, or hire an intern w/a password to do the research for them. The upside of this for me is that I should get a lot more practice doing online research this summer, and that's good. The downside for everyone is that public defenders may not have access to the best research resources. Everyone I talk to about this seems to think/assume that government agencies have free or very cheap access to Lexis and Westlaw since these services couldn't exist without the cooperation of the government. That assumption is wrong. For-profit legal research is wrong.
Not only does the office not have access to Lexis and Westlaw, but it also has only four intern computers with access to the internet. These computers are old and slow, so research takes forever -- especially on Westlaw, where all the frames and complex code hocus-pocus (most of which exists to make your research follow certain profitable paths and to ensure Westlaw gets paid for your every click) choke the outdated browsers. The machines run Windows 2000 and are all locked down so I can't install Mozilla or update the browser or do anything else that might, potentially, speed up the research process. I haven't yet figured out how to contact the city's tech people, but that's definitely on my priority list. I hope to convince them to install a wireless router so I and the other interns can just bring in our laptops and get some real work done.
Second, I learned that our courts are clogged with ridiculous cases that eat up lots of criminal justice resources (the time of police officers, guards, judges, attorneys, interns, the clients, administrative support staff, etc.) for very little social benefit. A large number of these cases involve repeat offenders who get caught at a young age in cycles of petty crime that have them in and out of jail and court their entire lives. Because our system is more focused on incarceration than rehabilitation, these cycles can be endless, ridiculous and very very sad. I'm sure we, as a society, could do better than this. There are many reasons the criminal justice system continues along this less than satisfactory path, but after one week I'm convinced one of those reasons is simply that most people have no idea what goes on in courtrooms around the country every day. If they knew, they would demand some changes. Obviously I'm being vague here; I hope to return to this theme as the summer progresses.
Other than those two big-picture impressions, the first week was exhausting and exciting with the avalanche of information that came pouring into my head. It was also, in some ways, very long. I leave for work at 7:30 a.m. and don't return home until 6:30 p.m.; 11-hour days are just too long for my taste. I'm getting a lot of great reading done on the train, but still, it's hard to go from a student life where my schedule was full but flexible, to this level of regimentation where I feel like I hardly have a free minute during the week. I've been reminded emphatically why I returned to grad school in 1999 after working only 6 or 8 months in an 8-5 job—the schedule blows. No wonder our country is so screwed up politically; as voters, we allow our "leaders" to get away with murder because we simply don't have time to pay very close attention or the energy to care too much or do anything about it when we see they're incompetent and destroying our world. Such is the nature of the status quo to reinforce itself. I guess this summer I'll find out how easy it may be to become assimilated by that status quo. L tells me she felt the same way when she started working a year ago, but that it took more than 11-13 weeks for her body and mind to accept the program. Have we all taken the blue pill?
So other than the schedule, I'm looking forward to this second week to try to begin putting some of that information in more usable order. The office also has a softball team that I may participate in, and now that I've been fingerprinted (four impressions each for all ten digits!) and submitted my pee test for drugs, I should be able to go to the jail this week to interview clients. Which reminds me of the following humorous exchange:
When I was getting my jail clearance the officer in charge asked me into a small back room and asked me seriously, "Have you ever had any records expunged?"
"No."
"Have you ever had any felony charges dismissed?"
"No."
"Have you ever robbed any banks?"
"Um, no. I think if I had I wouldn't have much interest in doing this job and being here now."
"No, I don't think you would."
Apparently someone with a name very similar to mine is a bank robber. Who knew!? To think, what might have been...
Note: Because it looks like I'll have very little time each day to post about the job or anything else, I plan to simply record a few notes each day and try to reflect on each week over the weekend. Therefore, this will likely be the first of 11-13 "Week In Review" posts (depending on how long I end up working; end date still not firm.)
Posted 05:36 AM | Comments (6) | 1L summer
Adrianna!?
Every time I watch The Sopranos I wonder why. I hate the show. It's got to be about the most depressing hour on television every week. And it's Sunday night, too; could there be a worse night? As if you're not already bummed enough that the weekend is over and you have to go back to work, if you're a Sopranos fan you also have to cope with another heart-wrenching episode, on the edge of your seat for an hour wondering who's gonna stab who in the back (literally and/or metaphorically). But that's also why it's so great—it's probably the most compelling, possibly the best written and acted show on tv. The characters are so well developed by now that I care way too much about what happens to them. Ah, Adrianna! Sure, the writing was on the wall, but that doesn't make it any easier.
Posted 09:24 PM | Comments (4) | tv land
Save us from the innocent and good
On L's recommendation, and because it's small and easy to read on the train, I picked up The Quiet American by Graham Greene last week. Set in 1950s Vietnam, it's a short but complex novel that resonates eerily today. The major theme is neatly summarized in the first chapter by the narrator's response to Vigot upon learning that Pyle is dead: "'God save us always,' I said, 'from the innocent and the good.'"
And why do we need to be saved from the innocent and the good? Perhaps because "innocence" is too often a polite description of what could less charitably be called "stupidity." Take our current president, for example. Many people believe he and his buddies have a sincere desire to do good in the world; supporters argue that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was intended to make the world a better, more peaceful place. That may be true; innocents often have only the best of intentions (not that I would accept the notion that Bush, Cheney, et al, are the least bit innocent, but they do pretend to be "good.") However, good intentions are small consolation to the families of all the people—soldier and civilian—who have died in this war, and great intentions do little to repair our shattered relationships with many countries around the world. If we grant that Bush and Co. thought they were doing good by invading Iraq, it's easy to see why Greene's narrator invokes God's protection from people like them.
The "quiet American" of the book's title is Pyle, a young, "innocent" American sent to Vietnam on an "economic" mission. Describing Pyle in Vietnam, the narrator gives would could also be a fair description of G.W. Bush as President:
Of course, Pyle the "innocent" doesn't care if he's out of place—he has big plans to do "good"! While in Vietnam, Pyle secretly works to prop up a local "gang" leader to be a "third force" to combat the Communists. Of course, Pyle's efforts have horrific effects right from the beginning, and although Greene wrote the book in 1955 and couldn't have known he was being so prophetic, the disaster that is Pyle's plan to involve American forces and ideas in Vietnam foreshadows the much larger disaster that American involvement in the region would become in the next 20 years. It also eerily foreshadows current events, with U.S. forces again meddling where they're not wanted.
That's the simple, superficial stuff that resonated with me as I read, but there's much more to this novel. It's so prescient because it's so smart about colonialism. Academics probably call it a postcolonial novel because it's already cynically critical of the "new" colonialism we see today (e.g. in Afghanistan and now Iraq and countless other countries where the U.S. and other wealthy (mostly Western) nations have propped up warlords in the hope of making them puppets). It's somewhat in the tradition of Heart of Darkness, but as L said it doesn't dehumanize the colonized people like Conrad does. Instead, it problematizes that kind of colonist tendency-to-dehumanize by having its narrator struggle over his own relationship with the Vietnamese people with whom he lives, as well as the Vietnamese woman with whom he falls in love. In fact, one of the subplots is a contest between the narrator and Pyle over Phuong, a Vietnamese woman whom both the men "love." L could provide a fascinating account of how this relationship struggle symbolizes the colonial/post-colonial relationship with the colonized, but I'll let her explain that for you, if she so desires.
(I've been trying to get L to start her own blog so she can at least share her brilliant readings of books and movies with the world, but so far, no dice. Unless she has a blog and she's just not telling me, which is always possible....)
UPDATE: In a short article entitled "History's Fools," Jack Beatty echoes the gist of what I've said above, comparing our current crop of neo-conservatives (esp. Paul Wolfowitz) with the type of "innocent" we see in Pyle, the so-called "quiet American":
It's possible the so-called "innocence" of people like Wolfowitz could more accurately be described as willful ignorance verging on sociopathy, but the result is the same when people like this get a bit of power: danger for the rest of the world.
Posted 05:51 PM | Comments (3) | ai books election 2004
