ambivalent comment

Hey, don't worry. What you're looking for isn't there, so don't be concerned that you can't seem to find it. What I mean is that you can't figure out the underlying legal principle for many cases b/c many cases aren't based on any real underlying principles. Many cases are decided as a means to whatever end the judge thinks is correct, and later academics come along and try to harmonize the case with others and extract some underlying “principle” that seems to explain them all. That's the cynical reading, but in many cases it's true. A less cynical and also true reading is this: Even when a case is decided on an underlying principle, few single cases will give you the full legal principle within that single case. That's because the principle developed over time in a sort of process of accretion as one decision built on another and another until finally, one day, a judge said, “Hey, looking at all these previous cases, it looks like this is the rule. So here's the rule!” And bang, there's your underlying legal principle. Your professor has read that case that's last in the line, so he/she knows the rule. You might even read that case next week and by then the rule will seem very clear to you. Or, maybe you'll never read it and you'll always wonder where the rule came from. Or maybe the rule has never been written into a case and is just out there in a bunch of academic theory, in which case you might be trapped in the cynical reading of things, as described above. All of which is to say the law is just a bunch of stuff people have made up. There's no there there, so don't worry about finding it. Listen to the prof when he/she announces the rule, write it down, remember it, try to figure out a way to make it make sense for you, regurgitate it on an exam, and move on. Then when you're in practice you can start making up the rules based on your own reading of the cases and see if you can persuade anyone to see things you're way. If you do, eventually some professor will be teaching your reading of things and future law students will be thinking you smoked way too much crack.