Damn Neighbors!

On the subject of arresting protesters or otherwise limiting their freedom of expression, GW (the law school I attend) is right next door to the IMF and World Bank (or is it the WTO? I always confuse the two...) buildings in downtown D.C., which means once or twice a year we get an email like this from the Dean of Students:

The Monetary Fund (IMF) has meetings scheduled for Oct 2 and 3 and according to local authorities, relatively small demonstrations/protests are planned in connection with these meetings. Because of the Limited Orange Alert in this area, security concerns have substantially increased. In preparation for both the meetings and protests we can expect that the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will - as they have in the past - institute street closures in the the area of the Law School -- especially on 20th Street -- and you can and should expect delays and detours in the entire Foggy Bottom Campus area over this weekend.

What's great about this is how matter-of-fact and ho-hum the dean is about the massive police presence involved with these military-style operations. Police in full riot gear surround the buildings near GW, and they put up 6-8 foot high barricades in the area streets. The barricades tend to control an area much larger than the two blocks occupied by the IMF/World Bank, ensuring that any protesters who do show up are not likely to be seen or heard by anyone involved with the meetings they're protesting. So we live in a free country and you have a right to express yourself, but legal professionals -- like the faculty and administration at a major U.S. law school -- are happy to accommodate massive police actions that threaten those freedoms and rights. And this accommodation takes place without a single word of critique. Great. Whatever you think of the police “response” to protests (which I would argue is less a response than an advance attack—the “Bush Doctrine” of military preemption applied against U.S. civil rights), these emails from the dean are also irritating because they make absolutely no attempt to interest GW law students in why this is happening, or to educate them in any way on the serious legal and social issues involved. Why are there protests? What are the protesters protesting? Why are the police responding in this way? What is the history of this kind of police action? Are current and former GW students currently involved in litigation against the city for serious police misconduct in previous protests? (Yes.) Aren't these serious and relevant legal issues? And aren't we at a law school, fergoodnessake!? Isn't an educational institution supposed to educate and encourage critical thinking? Or did I miss the memo that said law schools were supposed to teach law students to be obedient consumers whose only concern with protests is the inconvenience they might cause? It's things like this that make it abundantly clear why so many people think lawyers are a form of pond scum. Are legal issues like this not on the radar because there's so little money to be gained by paying attention to them?

Posted 01:35 PM | Comments (3) | 2L

Arresting Protesters: Neiderer

Since they don't allow comments at the Volokh Conspiracy (a mistake, IMO), I'm commenting here on this brief post from Orin Kerr about recent arrests of Bush protesters. It's a followup to a longer piece that criticizes a Maureen Dowd editorial about the arrest of Sue Neiderer because Dowd failed to mention that the charges against Neiderer were dropped and she was released. The suggestion is that Dowd somehow failed by not mentioning this. Perhaps. But isn't the issue here that the damage was already done at the point of arrest? I mean, it's great the charges were dropped, but the fact that Neiderer was arrested in the first place is what's offensive, isn't it? It's much like police rounding up protesters at mass demonstrations for little to no reason, holding them until the protest is over, then releasing them w/no charge. “Oops! Sorry! We don't want to prosecute because we already accomplished our goal, which was to violate your right to express yourself when and where it might have made a difference.” So while Professor Kerr says Neiderer's case “looks kind of bogus,” I beg to differ. The police (or secret service) should not have such unfettered freedom to arrest people who say “disagreeable” or “controversial” things in public places. The fact that those people are later released w/out being charged does not in any way reduce the fact that the police violated their rights to express themselves. I haven't studied First Amendment law yet. From the little I understand at this point, the state has the right to regulate the “time, place, and manner” of expression. Does this kind of police conduct fall within that sort of regulation? And if so, am I the only one who thinks it should not?

Posted 01:12 PM | Comments (3) | election 2004 general politics

A Horse Is A Vehicle Of Course

You've probably seen this story about Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Eakin's rhyming dissent in a recent case deciding whether the state's drunk driving law could be applied to a man on a horse. The majority said a horse was not a vehicle, but Justice Eakin disagreed to the tune of the theme song of “Mr. Ed”:

“A horse is a horse, of course, of course, but the Vehicle Code does not divorce its application from, perforce, a steed as my colleagues said. ”'It's not vague,' I'll say until I'm hoarse, and whether a car, a truck or horse this law applies with equal force, and I'd reverse instead.“

We need more judges like Justice Eakin. Then again, maybe one is enough.

Posted 09:02 AM | Comments (2) | law general

Criminal Duct Tape

“Every criminal uses duct tape for something. Matter of fact, that's the sine qua non of being a criminal. Every time I pick up some duct tape I start to worry.” —Professor Evidence, speaking of U.S. v. Trenkler, 61 F.3d 45 (1st Cir. 1995) (where the court found that the fact that two bombs were both constructed with duct tape was evidence suggesting that they were made by the same person). Other comments of note from recent classes:

• Random hypo comment from Prof. Evidence: “I met him at Denny's. Good place for a drug deal.”
• “There's kind of a King Learish quality to this case” — Prof. Corporations speaking of Francis v. United Jersey Bank, 432 A.2d 814 (1981) (in which two scumbag sons are also officers and directors of the family corporation from which they're stealing millions; mom was a drunk, daddy's dead).
• “You don't send a man to jail just because he's done some bad acts in the past. Gosh, if that was true, we'd all be in jail—especially the prosecutor.” —Prof. Evidence when discussing the O.J. Simpson case and FRE 413-415, but he's not necessarily referring to this case or the prosecutor in this case.

Posted 08:02 AM | Comments (2) | 2L law school

Behind the Curtain in Bush v. Gore

The ACSBlog links to an article at the SCOTUS Blog about:

the lengthy October 2004 Vanity Fair article by David Margolick et al. on the 2000 election litigation, with a focus on never-before-reported details about what happened inside the Supreme Court. The piece has received a great deal of attention inside the Court because, as the article details, “[a] surprising number of [law] clerks [from that term] talked to Vanity Fair.”

Vanity Fair generously allowed SCOTUS Blog to post a PDF version of the article online. Get it while you can.

Posted 07:45 PM | election 2004 general politics law general

Corporate Welfare

Shocking and offensive information from my Corporations textbook (Corporations: A Contemporary Approach by Lawrence E. Mitchell and Michael Diamond):

For example, in the 1996 report, [Stephen] Moore and [Dean] Stansel reported that $75 billion of taxpayer dollars were going to pay direct business subsidies in over 125 congressionally-sanctioned programs. Combined with tax breaks, the amount exceeded $150 billion (and we think it‘s worth noting that at the time, this exceeded the core welfare bill — that is, excluding social security and medical care — by at least $5 billion). Among the most flagrant abuses noted by Moore and Stansel were direct federal payments to Martin Marietta, a major defense contractor, of $263,000 for a Smokey Robinson concert for its workers, $20,000 for golf balls, and $7,500 for an office Christmas party. Perhaps more legitimate were federal contributions of $2.9 million to promote Pillsbury’s efforts to sell its baked goods, $10 million to help sell Sunkist oranges, $465,000 to McDonald‘s to advertise Chicken McNuggets, and $2.5 million to Dole to help it advertise pineapples, nuts and prunes. (45-6)

Are you shocked and offended yet? Reading stuff like this makes me so mad I could spit. Ptewie! (See, I spit!) Excuse me, but what, praytell, is the least bit “legitimate” about 465,000 taxpayer dollars paid to McDonald’s to help sell McNuggets!? Or any of that other crap? Why are taxpayers subsidizing ads that sell them crap they do not need and which is potentially lethal!? The answer is: Taxpayers aren‘t subsidizing crap like this, at least not consciously. Instead, their “elected officials” are subsidizing this crap, and those officials obviously don’t give a damn what taxpayer-voters think (at least once the election‘s over). Disgust reigns.

Posted to the tune of: Everything’s Not Lost from the album “Parachutes” by Coldplay

Posted 12:24 PM | Comments (1) | 2L general politics

Hooray for the Good Americans!

----- Amazing Race Spoiler Alert !!! ----- Congratulations to possibly the nicest and most deserving team ever to win The Amazing Race! It was a great finale that restored my faith in humanity. (Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was great to see a deserving couple win.) I'm guessing some will complain that Chip and Kim played dirty w/the yield and by deliberately misleading the "dating Christians" about which flag was correct. That's true, but what separates Chip and Kim from some of the other teams is that they never seemed to do anything just to be mean or for personal reasons. As a commenter on The Yin Blog said, they never did anything out of malice. They also showed the most enjoyment and real enthusiasm about the places they got to visit, and I think they showed the most respect for the people in those places. Whereas many of the other teams made derogatory comments about the local people or culture in different places, Chip and Kim just drank it all in with smiles and appreciation. In all, I felt like they played a positive game, a fair game. They helped other teams when they could afford to, and they didn't when they couldn't. In my book, they won fair and square. Congratulations, Chip and Kim! Kudos also to the show's writers/producers or whoever designed the final challenges and everything. The boats and flags and climbing wall and kayaking in the Phillipines was brilliant because it was all done in close quarters where teams could see each other most of the time and know when they were behind, which made for high drama and spirited competition. It makes me wonder if the game should try some new things next time around. For example, airports always cause everyone to catch up with each other; why not do less with airports and more on one island or in one city or country, leaving teams on their own to decide how to get around? Of course, Survivor is just one island, and is it just me, or is that show losing its luster—especially compared to the Amazing Race? What to say about the other teams? Apparently Colin proposed to Christie on tv this morning, and she accepted because he's supposedly really not the guy he appears to be on the show:

Guinn told co-anchor Harry Smith, "Christy and I, we have a rotten edit: I'm a raging lunatic psycho and Christy just puts up with it - which couldn't be farther from the truth. We actually have a wonderful relationship and I'd like to just state for the record that I am the luckiest man alive being with Christy."

Hey, whatever works. They did make it through seemingly happy with each other, so perhaps they're the perfect couple. And there's no doubt editing can really skew how an audience perceives someone on a show like this, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. See also: Coverage from RealityTVWorld.

Posted 12:38 PM | tv land

Yin-Yang Flowerpot

Not all Mondays are the same. On some Mondays, it seems like nothing happens—just another tiring start to the week. But not on all Mondays. Mine yesterday: 8:50 a.m.: Prof. Labor starts off class with this: “Mr. Ambimb, if you're an average worker starting a new job and your contract says you have to become a 'union member in good standing' within 30 days, what do you think that means?” I know Prof. Labor wants me to say that this language will confuse me and mislead me into thinking I actually have to join the union, when in fact the law says that the only thing a union can require in a contract is that new employees become “financial core members” (that they pay initiation fees and dues). Prof. Labor thinks the courts have erred in ruling that the “member in good standing” language is ok. I disagree, so I tell him, “If I was an average employee, I'd wonder what it meant to be a 'member in good standing,' so I'd ask about that, and my employer and the union would be legally obligated to explain that it meant I didn't have to join the union, but just pay initiation fees and dues.” Prof. Labor didn't like that, so he moved on and I didn't have to answer any more questions. I wasn't trying to be difficult; I just think that the deck is stacked against both unions and workers (and Prof. Labor started out the semester saying the same thing), so even if the “member in good standing” language might be misleading, that's a tiny little advantage the union and the worker deserve. Also, we typically apply the principle of caveat emptor to most contracts, why not here? The employee should read his/her employment contract, and if he/she has questions, he/she should ask for clarification, right? (For more on this, see the NLRA § 7 (I think—I forget where it addresses union security clauses) and Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild, 119 S. Ct. 292 (1998)). But the best part of it was, this was the first question of the morning, so it was just reviewing material we'd covered yesterday—the fact that I'm behind in the reading didn't show! 11:00 a.m.: Interview w/“K Street Non-Profit.” This was my first (possibly only) interview this fall, but it was for a job to start immediately, not next summer. It sounds like a great position, and the people who interviewed me were very nice, but I completely dropped the ball from the get-go. They started like this: “We were intrigued by your cover letter. You said you'd written something about modifying John Rawls' 'original position' as a basis for a more equal distribution of social goods. Can you tell us more about that?” My answer was basically: Uh, no, not really. Of course I didn't say that, but I'm sure that's how it sounded. See, I wrote that paper about four years ago, and what I write in my cover letter about it is really about all I remember about it, except that Rawls was fairly tangential to the paper, and I'm not an authority on him by any means, and I wasn't outlining any modifications to the OP or the “veil of ignorance” so much as arguing that some version of these ideas would be a better basis for equality in law, and since that's saying nothing new (it's just restating what Rawls said), I obviously shouldn't have mentioned it in my cover letter at all. There's a little more to it; if I reread the paper I could talk about it more intelligently, but that's the point, isn't it? That's what I should have done before going to the interview! So there's definitely a lesson here: Don't talk about anything in your resume or cover letter that you're not prepared to talk intelligently about in an interview (or later if you get hired). Who knew someone who read my cover letter would be a fan of John Rawls!? It might not happen often, but if you're going to talk it, you better be able to walk it. This is like job-hunting 101 advice, which makes me feel all the more foolish for overlooking it. Yeah, interviewing is fun! But it was, and, like I said, they were very nice about it. They also asked about my union organizing experience and asked me to pretend I was a university administrator explaining why grad students should not be allowed to unionize. I mention it because it was another unexpected question, a smart question on their part which I assume was intended to determine whether I understood more than “my” side of an issue that was important to me. I think I did fine there. The work this non-profit does is pretty cool, but, although I felt good about the interview, something in their closing handshakes tells me I'm not going to get the job. Still, it was good interviewing practice, and obviously I needed that. 1:40 p.m.: Try to stay awake through Evidence. Should the fact that a married person is having an affair be considered evidence of “character.” What kind of “character” has an affair? What does that tell us about the person? More Harrison Ford courtroom video clips from a movie I don't recognize but assume is fairly popular (Ford is the defendant in a murder case). Also a clip of Joan Cusack racing through an office with a videotape, also from a movie I don't recognize. I do wish Prof. Evidence would at least identify the movies he's showing clips from. It would make them more interesting and allow me to add them to my list of movies I need to see. 3:50 p.m.: Prof. Corporations starts the discussion part of class with: “Mr. Ambimb, say you're an investor and the directors of the company you've invested in decide to do something that will cause the company to lose $26 million, even though they could do something a little differently and only lose $18 million. How would you feel? Mr. Ambimb, Kamin v. American Express.” That's how Prof. Corps starts a class. He doesn't ask you to tell him about a case, he just names the case and you have to start talking about what you think is important about it. If you start off with “this case stands for the proposition that...” or some similar attempt to reduce the case to a rule, Prof. Corps will cut you off and demand to hear something interesting about the case. I had little of interest to say about Kamin, so I threw out a few tidbits about why it was just another in the endless line of cases that reaffirm's the law's insistence that the purpose of the state is to promote the unchecked and uninhibited accumulation of private profit. We quickly reached the limit of my technical knowledge of buying and selling stocks and fiduciary duties and duties of care, etc., all of which were somewhat important to what Prof. Corps wanted to talk about in relation to this case, so Prof. Corps moved on. I was only in the hotseat for about 15 minutes! Now, I'm virtually guaranteed to be left alone in that class for the rest of the semester, which as Half-Cocked points out, is going to make it rather hard to focus on the reading. In fact, at this moment, I'm writing this horrendously long post when I should be reading for corporations, but I no longer need to be concerned about such things. Isn't life grand?!? So, like I said, not all Mondays are the same. On some, little happens besides you being exhausted and behind from being lazy all weekend (if you're me). On others, you learn:

1. If you disagree w/some professors they'll just move on and leave you alone. (Don't get me wrong; I really like Prof. Labor, we just disagreed here a little and that didn't fit well into what he was doing yesterday).
2. If you mention something on your resume or cover letter, you better be prepared to talk about it intelligently later in an interview.
3. If you can demonstrate that you've read the material but that your knowledge of the context of the material is seriously limited, some professors will move on and leave you alone.

All very valuable lessons. YMMV.

Posted 12:32 PM | Comments (7) | 2L law school

Chilled

It was actually almost cold riding to school this morning in tevas, light shirt and shorts. Is it really going to decide to be fall? Please!? The home internet is down again, so who knows what that means.

Posted 08:49 AM | law school

On Being Behind

It strikes me that in my second year of law school I should know some things I didn't know in the first year, and I'm sure I do, but that's not stopping me from making the same mistake I made last fall, which was to fall behind right from day one. Stupid stupid stupid stupid! This semester I'm taking classes on topics I like and am interested in from the outset, and classes I'm sort of predisposed to dislike. The “good” courses are labor law and evidence, but also ConLaw2. The “bad” class is Corporations, which I'm only taking under the “know your enemy” theory. Also, the only Prof. that uses a strict random socratic method is Prof. Corps, who calls on people randomly and grills them for an hour (really) in a very exacting way. My other profs either don't call on students at all (or almost), or demand very little when they do call, so you can fake it or simply beg off if you have to. So far, none of the reading for any class has been bad, as in really dry and hard to follow. Still, I always want to do the labor reading, and there are parts of ConLaw and Evidence I want to read, while I'm always procrastinating doing the Corps reading. But since the Corps reading must get done (b/c I never know when I'll be in the scorching hot seat in there) I have to do it first all the time. And since it's the reading I want to do the least, I put it off as much as possible. And perversely, that means that I also put off doing the reading I actually want to do. So basically, since I don't want to read for Corporations, I'm not reading at all, and that's killing me. Our compressed 13-week semester is already almost a quarter over—we only have 10 weeks left and I feel like I've barely started! Do not be stupid like me. Do your reading so you won't have to hate Mondays! This message has been a public service from your friends at ai.

Posted 07:11 AM | Comments (4) | 2L law school

Kakistocracy

FYI: The Next Big Thing is a cool radio show. I especially like the “Use It Or Lose It” feature, wherein “activist lexicographer” Erin McKean gives a writer a handful of words to use in his/her next novel or magazine or newspaper article. This week's words were lovertine (someone addicted to lovemaking), esprise (obsolete verb meaning “to inflame with love,” usually used in the passive, as in, “she was esprised and taken with his love”), and kakistocracy (a government run by its worst citizens). Hey, we're living in a kakistocracy! See why this show is great? McKean has also co-edited 1001 Legal Words You Need to Know. Do you know them all?

Posted 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Silver City

Saw Silver City Friday night. Salon‘s comments were pretty dead on:

Sayles has basically been making the same picture for, like, umpty-five years now. I’ve gotten used to it; I even kind of like it. It‘s a picture in which some fine and well-intentioned actors stand in front of a scenic background, knees locked, and deliver a monologue about America. Sometimes it’s a pretty good monologue about America. And once you get used to the movie‘s creaking plot, its aw-shucks ragtag heroes and sniggering, black-hatted villains, and once the general boringness of the filmmaking stops bothering you, the Sayles film can crank itself up to a certain power.

I, of course, liked it, because I’m admittedly part of the choir. The scenic backgrounds of Colorado were nice, and some of the actors did a great job. Tim Roth‘s character also delivers a nice little monologue about how the mainstream media interacts with independent media and bloggers. Basically, he says, the independents uncover a big story and write something about it, but the mainstream won’t touch it until there‘s a mountain of supporting evidence so that the story just can’t be ignored anymore, and then they‘ll publish a one-paragraph teaser on page 6 about “rumors and allegations,” and then the politicians or corporations or whoever is involved will have to deny the rumors and allegations, and that’s when the story finally hits the front pages of the mainstream media: “X denies rumors!” Is that what happened with the “CBS memos”? Is that how CBS got burned? Maybe it didn‘t float the one-paragraph teaser before it went public, and then it got creamed by the righteous indignation of the right. But watching “Silver City” and seeing what’s happening w/the whole CBS memos thing—it‘s all so ridiculous. If CBS got these documents and shared them with the public, why should we crucify CBS if they turn out to be fakes? If they’re fakes, the next question is: Do they reflect reality, despite being fake? And another question: Who faked them, and why? (That‘s being asked now.) The point is, we shouldn’t punish the media for reporting information they find. Yes, we should ask them to verify as best they can the information they find, but shouldn‘t we encourage sharing more information, not less? If we set up a standard where the only thing the media can “report” is what’s already well-proven to be “true,” then we‘ll get what we have today, which is a media that does little beyond reading press releases. Not good.

Posted 09:39 AM | ai movies