Waddling Thunder

DATE: Monday, September 28, 2009 -----

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DATE: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 -----
Naples 45

An excellent pizzeria for slices on Park Avenue and 45th. But forget all the flavored pizzas - the only thing worth eating is the margherita. Dough made with flour, water and salt, and good fresh cheese and tomatoes. $2.50, but $1.50 after 2 p.m.

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DATE: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 -----
An Annoucement!

I have become sick of blogger. The archives don't work. The comments aren't working anymore (not blogger's fault). It is occasionally slow. They gave me a great opportunity, I admit, but a better one has come up . So I'm making a biggish change.

It is evident that this change will reveal where I go to school. But I decided a week or so ago that this didn't really bother me; what I didn't want was my name being googleable, and this I think I can prevent. So head on over to my new digs at

Waddling Thunder, mach 2.

Or for those of you changing links, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/waddle

Hope to see you there. I'll hold out this page as long as I can, to make sure people find me over there.


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DATE: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 -----
I was going to haran. . . , i mean favour you with my thoughts on Eugene Volokh's recent article on slippery slopes. But I see that Gtexts has done precisely the same thing today, so I'll leave my (different) thoughts for another time.



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DATE: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 -----
Hey, I'm employed!

I haven't accepted the offer yet, but only because the fellow wouldn't take yes for an answer. Sleep on it, he says. OK

anyway, I think I can say, without sacrificing any anonymity, that the position is with a part of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division that deals with violent crime, allying both an interesting policy wing plus a hard core group of prosecutors.

Much better then the job I turned down, which I will reveal now involved administering a combination of internal USDOJ affirmative action and employment disputes.

Now to accept, and get them to fax some papers getting me my summer funding.


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DATE: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 -----
I'm working (somewhat by compulsion) at our school's Public Interest Auction. Yesterday I went to the explanatory meeting, where we were told how the silent auction worked so that we could do our jobs (I'm a cashier, apparently).

What was funny, however, is that the only discussion among the cashiers afterwards concerned the economic ramifications of a blind silent auction versus one in which you can see the previous bids. That alone should tell you what kind of people go to this school.

And incidentally, I think an open auction is better.


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DATE: Monday, April 07, 2003 -----
We may (and I repeat, may) be witnessing the final nail in the coffin of the mainline war opponents, as news seems to have surfaced of real chemical weapons finds. That would finish off the whole "we don't believe Saddam has anything/the inspectors looked, didn't they?" line of silliness. We'll see.

I admit that the much more sensible "wasn't there a more subtle way to do this?" argument hasn't been answered, and won't be definitively for years.

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DATE: Sunday, April 06, 2003 -----
Who Stole the Tarts? has a series of excellent posts, really worth reading. The three I mean specifically are two covering courses selection, which I think make some great points, and the newest post about rankings, and what one can do with them.

I'm just going to post my own thoughts about rankings, now that I have a moment. I think Alice is exactly right to say that rankings give the pre-law student some interesting data to fiddle around with. I further agree that in most circumstances, you ought to create your own subjective ranking based on points important to you; location and price for example.

However, I somewhat disagree with one point Alice makes, regarding the important of a speciality field in making a decision. And, yes, I know that I am picking the tiniest of nits. Humour me.

She speaks, I'm sure, from more experience, but it seems to me that the starting point for any discussion of this subject really has to be the realization that law school is actually a glorified undergraduate program. Indeed, in the rest of the world, people who become our colleagues internationally do nothing but an undergraduate program, and I don't believe that our three year effort is so much more advanced that the entire nature of the endeavor is changed. I don't doubt that we're all stronger and far more seasoned students then the average European undergraduate, capable of assimilating more stuff and faster. But the way the work is done, reliant on homework, many classes, and exams is based on a strictly undergrad paradigm.

Having said that, I think that the strength or lack thereof of a specialty area within the law school you pick should have very little to do with which school you pick, barring extraordinary circumstances. First, I find it difficult to believe anyone really understands what they absolutely want to do when they get to law school. Maybe a couple of people might know, say, they absolutely have to be tax lawyers, but otherwise I think the level of ignorance about the law by laymen makes it impossible to make any sort of decision before getting through at least a year. Secondly, the undergrad nature of school means that many of the courses we take are standard. Sure, you get a certain amount of specialization, but in honesty what you're getting in law school is a general, terribly unuseful education.

In that context, I think its a mistake to put aside a putatively stronger school for a weaker one that happens to be some sort of juggernaut in a small subject area. I don't think, for example, you should eschew three years in the dank terror of New Haven (a cheap shot, I know) just because some other school is supposedly strong in the amorphous subject of "international law". Specialties could be something you use to seperate schools that come evenly in all your other rankings, I agree, but they should really be at the bottom of the list.



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DATE: Friday, April 04, 2003 -----
This filthy article from the British Independent argues that the rescue of Jessica Lynch demonstrates the implicit racism of America,where life is graded on a hierarchy of importance ranging from blonde to black. Why, the article moans, weren't Jessica's racially diverse colleagues rescued? Well, she answers herself, even if America didn't make extra efforts to save this made for TV movie of a girl, it was her very blondness that marked her out as somewhat important, even to the Iraqis.

I might note that perhaps one reason her colleagues weren't saved is because they had been killed. Or perhaps we couldn't find them, since we went to a hospital, and only the wounded happen to be there. But why deal in logic when you can make an argument like the above? It fulfills all the requirements of a good anti-american argument; slim and fleeting accusations of racism, a reference to American Indians and blacks and lynch mobs, a mocking of justifiable american pleasure (at her recovery), and even an implicit mockery of someone who clearly doesn't fit the requirements of university elitism that the author I'm sure is obsessed with. Bravo.

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DATE: Thursday, April 03, 2003 -----
I'm not sure if anyone has commented on this before, but there seems to be an amazing congruence between law bloggers and science fiction. I, for one, am both a sci-fi and fantasy buff. Gtexts currently has a review of Robert Jordan's newest unleashment. Janeway is reading Dune:Chapterhouse. JCA, I know from personal experience, is a Tolkienite at least (I won't make any guesses as to what else she likes). Volokh has written, I think, on Tolkien at least once. JMB is also clearly a fan.

I'm sure I'm missing someone, or many someones, but I'm pressed for time. I'm going to the single most irritating class in the history of man, which I'll blog tommorrow, perhaps.

EDIT: Jeff Cooper mentions in my comments (which don't seem to work properly) that he likes several fantasy authors. In reading the blogs tonight, I also noticed that Attempted Survival seems to be a fan of the Lord of the Rings movie as well.

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DATE: Thursday, April 03, 2003 -----
Harvard Law School announces that Elena Kagan will be the new dean. Interesting.

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DATE: Thursday, April 03, 2003 -----
Excerpt from a conversation at a law firm reception

Young Looking Lawyer : Yeah, so then I clerked for some judges for a couple of years, and then thought I should make a little money

Waddling Thunder, interest piqued: Oh, you clerked? and who did you clerk for (in WT's best patronizing voice, I'm sure)

YLL: Breyer.

WT, chastened: Oh.

I hate when people use false modesty against me. I invented false modesty.



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DATE: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 -----
In criminal procedure, we've been working on the idea of defining a "search". For the uninitiated, the significance is that if something is a constitutionally defined search, then that means the police must procure a warrant before doing so. If not, they can do so at just about random.

The distinction between what is a search and what is not is very thin. Courts have held, for example, that a wiretap is definitely a search. However, flying in a plane with a telescopic lens and taking pictures of (say) a marijuana plant is not. So what is the rule?

Well there are a lot of different potential rules. The way I've rationalized it for myself at the moment is to think of something I've decided to call the "invisible omnipotent man", a hypothetical third party with limitless eyesight, imperviousness to gravity, and lightning speed. The idea, therefore, is that the police are welcome to search anything without a warrant so long as the Invisible Omnipotent Man could see it. So, if you're hiding in a phonebooth and writing on a pad, I would argue that the police using a telescope to see what's on the pad isn't a search under our current law, because the IOM could see it if he was standing outside. However, the IOM couldn't hear the conversation inside the booth. Therefore, a wiretap is a search.

Yes, I realize there are lots of problems with this setup. One of the most obvious is that a court might well find the use of a too advanced technology to be a search. So maybe it's the Invisible Almost Omnipotent Man. But this is still helping me make sense of a very odd series of cases.

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DATE: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 -----
After much fiddling with my schedule, I've arrived at something I'm happy to bid on for next year. (and no, I haven't been working for five straight hours!). Though the final deadline for deciding is down the line, we have to bid for our mainline courses very soon, which determines everything else, of course.

So, I will be bidding for the following

Semester 1

Constitutional Law from Super-Socratic but only moderately famous "Iron Lady". As long as I'm here, why not tackle one old school monstrosity?

Corporations from an apparently very good MBA/JD.

A very short course in "accounting for lawyers", pass/fail.

A small seminar from the aforementioned FBP.

Our bizarre one course middle term

Food and Drug Law, both as an administrative law intro as well as in preparation for my eventual (and Quixotic) pro bono litigation against the FDA to legalize unpasteurized cheese aged less then 60 days. Yes, I'm serious. My pseudo-libertarianism is strongest where the government approaches either my mouth or wallet. I'm strictly a republican otherwise.


Semester 2

The apparently exorbitantly difficult Federal Courts ("B"), from a very popular but somewhat unknown (to me) prof.

Taxation, from an Unknown Quantity (aka, visiting prof)

Legal History Seminar, from a very nice gentleman who quite obviously suffers from the eroneous impression that he is an Oxford Don.


I'm not entirely happy with all this. I want to take Con Law from the famous professor, but it messes up the rest of my schedule. I want to kill my ethics requirement off, but that also doesn't work. I'd like to take tax with the best tax prof, but I also can't see a way to finagle him. I doubt my friends are going to join me in any of these choices. But if I get these courses, I think I have a comfortable mix of interesting stuff, interesting profs, and close in work with them. And the schedule gives me three nasty days, but Thursday and Friday off for both semesters, as far as I can tell. This is very good. I like big chunks of work time.

Oh, and those of you who go here and know where I go. I wonder how many of the people above you can name?




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DATE: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 -----
I have been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out what to do about my courses for next year. Every configuration I come up with has some sort of terrible weakness which is a deal breaker. Roughly speaking, I've decided the following short list comprises my priorities

1. Good professors
2. Opportunity to work with good professors in small groups
3. Interesting subject matter
4. Not overloading myself
5. Opportunity to keep study group friends around
6. Comfortable Schedule


The problem currently is that #1, which involves taking a course from Famous Con Law professor, involves giving up my chance for #2 schedule wise, which involves taking a seminar with Famous Blogging Personality. It does however open up space for priority #3, in that it means my second semester is open for a wide range of history courses. Priority #5, however, also clashes with #2 (but not #1), because my friends want to take the course from the FCL, but not necessarily from the FBP. But on the other hand, I can find new and interesting people to study with, surely.

All this is further complicated by the fact that I might not get what I want in the lottery, though this is not too likely. More later when I decide what I'm going to do with this.

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DATE: Monday, March 31, 2003 -----
A quick note on the war, which I think is going perfectly well.

There has been some fear from the ever timorous media that the Iraqis are going to reduce us to quivering blobs of desert coloured jelly by virtue of their amazing new tactic, suicide bombing. There is a tiny bit of truth to that, if only because it seems to be the only way the Iraqis can manage to kill more then one American per casaulty on their end.

But actually, I think the reason for the recent moves in the direction of suicide bombings and fake surrenders, etc, is a relatively subtle plan on the part of the Iraqi leadership to make it impossible for their rank and file to safely surrender. The theory, in my world, is this: "We can stop those idiots from surrendering in two ways. One is to shoot them if they try. That didn't work. So let's try making the Americans potentially shoot them if they try".

I don't think this is likely to work either. But they're desperate, so it's worth a go, I suppose.

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DATE: Monday, March 31, 2003 -----
Hmm, indeed. We've just been given our course selection packets, and before I noticed anything else, I noticed a very significant person in the blogging community is teaching here next year. I won't blatantly say who, as it will totally destroy even my putative anonymity, but I think a course will have to be shoehorned in.

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DATE: Monday, March 31, 2003 -----
The Washington Post online magazine has this article on fatness in the modern world. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, being someone who lost a substantial (though not from as an extreme position as the people in the article) amount of weight over the past few years.

For me the key was leaving the United States and acquiring friends who were obsessed with good food, which lowered any need I had for giant vats of whatever it is I ate before. Obviously, given the impossibility of this solution for most people, I really don't know what is to be done. But something had better be.

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DATE: Sunday, March 30, 2003 -----
I'm back from spring break, to some less then happy news; the law firm I was waiting for has decided to offer their job to another. Ah, well. No matter. I'll have ye olde bevy of offers next year, no doubt.

What this means, therefore, is that I'm waiting for the four government positions I have recently interviewed with to produce some sort of response. I really expect them to do so this week. I need hardly say that it will be a blessed relief to finish with this situation. I've been on the job since December, though I don't regret the effort. I collected a heck of a lot of experience, as I've said below.

In other news, my sister faces a torrid week of what we suspect will be a series of very hard to take rejections from college. After hearing of one such setback on Saturday, she told me that she felt like a "Big Mac rejected by a hungry fat man". Indeed. Thankfully, my ever wonderful alma mater has already favoured her with an offer, so she can always go there. It didn't hurt me any.

Anyway, another week, and we're within two months of the end of 1L. 2 months!


'


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DATE: Friday, March 28, 2003 -----
As JD2Breports, Brian Leiter has released his 2003-2004 rankings, or at least part of them. To be fair, they're not comprehensive rankings, in that they are only a survey of people he thinks know how good the faculties are at good law schools. However, Leiter has also done some great work (available in the 2000-2002 archives) concerning academic placement rates, etc. So this is only a new snippet of info, which I think is useful in that it counteracts at least poor old University of Chicago's consistently low (for its reputation) rating in the ridiculous USNEWS rankings. Otherwise, I don't think what he has just released is a great improvement on what he had, but still. New figures are always useful to nerds such as myself.

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DATE: Thursday, March 27, 2003 -----
Another side effect to vacation is that I get to watch cable TV, which I obviously don't have at school. My current obsession, besides the Food Network (Mario Batali is a great chef, but he seems to have misconstrued the stricture that olive oil is a good fat to mean that he should probably put three liters of it on everything) is a deer hunting trial on Court TV. The question, legally, is whether a person who shot another while hunting with a muzzle loader was reckless (in which case he goes merrily off to jail) or negligent, in which case he'll go free and someone will eventually sue him in civil court. My actual interest in the case mostly revolves around the fact that I simply don't understand how the fellow managed to kill anyone at all with a musket. It didn't really work in the 18th century; I'm stunned he managed it now.

I also saw cheap copies of some of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which I feel obligated to eventually read. The only problem is that I really resent having to devote several days of my reading time to slogging through some 6000 pages of Jordan's probably turgid megolomania. I mean, even Tolkien the Huge managed to save the world, send off the Elves, and feed an inummerable number of hobbits in a mere thousand pages. What could Jordan possibly be telling us?


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DATE: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 -----
I'm just getting ready to go to my second interview of the week. The one yesterday, in downtown Washington, was quite positive, and they even promise reasonably quick action.

There is a definite difference in government and law firm interviews, of course. Especially this year, when the government is really not risking anything by hiring you for free. The effort yesterday, for example, took precisely half an hour. I was home in time for a late lunch. We'll see how this one today goes, but it's a lot better then a telephone interview anyway.

The great thing about all these interviews is that I'm gathering the experience in interviewing that I simply missed by not doing anything productive up till now. People don't really ask very probing questions when you're applying to be a clerk at a college bookstore for 7 bucks an hour, let me assure you.

I'll close with a quick thank you to the Volokh Conspiracy's namesake, Eugene Volokh, who recommended through his blog Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon, which I read last week. It is indeed a fascinating story, perhaps a touch overlong, but nonetheless a great read. I would only note further that a whole lot of the included crytographic math went entirely over my head, despite an effort to understand it, and that I thought the World War II era portion of the book was much superior to the modern day techno thriller whatever Stephenson's efforts to tie it all together. But these are only niggles, and I've since bought and read the author's Snow Crash as well, in addition to starting in on a batch of long neglected P.G Wodehouse. Holidays are amusing things, occasionally.


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DATE: Monday, March 24, 2003 -----
Who Stole the Tarts mentioned a little while ago the kinds of things 1L's thinks are cool, but which no one else thinks is even vaguely interesting. I had a moment like this yesterday, when it temporarily occurred to me that I should make a T-shirt that said "future transaction cost".

I've now disuaded myself of the idea.


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DATE: Friday, March 21, 2003 -----
Man... I'm feeling rather more waddle then thunder today; just kind of tired for some reason. Of course, conveniently enough, it's spring break. So I'm back off to Washington for a week.

My little risk in turning down that job last week seems to at least be close to paying off. Though I haven't heard anything from the actual law firm I'm waiting for, I have secured three more interviews with some very interesting divisions of the DOJ for this coming week. That'll give me four DOJ positions with decisions oustanding, plus the firm, which gives me a lot of confidence. But things could still go wrong.

Anyway, I'll try to be safe on my way back home,and I'll blog occasionally from there. Keep your fingers crossed,etc, for our troops.


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DATE: Friday, March 21, 2003 -----
Obviously, I'm up and watching the war again. As I said yesterday, the news seems good if unclear. The British left yesterday moved quickly to mock the American miss of Saddam Hussein, but I'm not convinced we missed. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that at worst, we've sent him into a bunker so deep his own people don't know where he is. Let's hope.

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DATE: Thursday, March 20, 2003 -----
Clearly, as I said yesterday, something odd is going on. We must have some kind of info that isn't being released, and I rather suspect it's something like the fact that they have info about surrenders or something.

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DATE: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 -----
Here we go. Pray for everyone involved, Iraqi and American, if that's your deal. Except for Hussein, of course.

Oh, also, I've thought for a while that this "shock and awe" situation was misinformation. I think the military has something up its sleeve.

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DATE: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 -----
I'm sitting here doing research for my assistant position, waiting for the war to begin. Tommorrow the anti-war people are going to be doing some sort of protest throughout the university, which they're welcome to do, of course. We won't be in class at the requisite time, so I guess we won't see the supposed walkout, though maybe our friendly in class zealots will stage something early for our benefit. Anyway, I would worry if there were no protests on the eve of a war; if 280,000,000 people agree on such a big issue, you know there's something wrong.

A quick post also on the law review preview session held last night.

It was mostly a wasted hour. We did get very nice ice cream, supposedly to remind us of the scads of free food the editors get. They also mentioned the time commitment; an apparently "manageable" average of 26 hours a week, spread across twenties days out of every month. Among the possible assigments they mentioned was a small book review, to be finished in a day. I'm going to guess people take liberties in terms of reading the whole book. Either that or they're all equipped with super fast legal reading goggles.

Though details on the competition were not forthcoming, they did mention a week of full days on it was probably the minimum amount of work necessary. As one editor put it in a fit of unintended humour, "only a few people stayed up all week".

Somewhat on a contraversial subject, I noticed before the event the law reviewers fanning out to chat briefly with those in the audience who happened to be of various types of underrepresented minorities, for whom the review saves a number of spots. Now, I begrudge no one this kind of thing, largely (if I'm honest with myself) because I've been lucky enough not to ever have been in the position of being slighted. But I must wonder; what possible kind of discrimination could any of these folks suffer, given that they are at this of all law schools, and given that the review competition is marked entirely, completely, fanatically blindly?

If I was in that situation I'd feel an incredibly hot anger at being patronized. How dare they assume I can't do these tasks as well? It's like my interview with the DOJ position I was offered and turned down, when the interviewer kept asking how my foreign background had subjected me to discrimination. I don't think he liked my answer (it hasn't) all that much, but I'm not give people a non-existent sob story.

Anyway, the tip session for the competition is sometime in the future. Should be interesting.


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DATE: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 -----
I'm going to try to explain my theory of yesterday, but hopefully without as much hyperbole this time. I think it's an important point.

People might try to denigrate the speech of Bush in relation to Blair. Look, they might say, at how eloquent Blair was, how persuasive, how brave in the face of yelling and rustling, and the implied hisses of parliament. All true.

But Bush and Blair are different things. Blair is the prime minister of his country; the first among equals. His job is to descend occasionally into the fray of his parliament and to fight it out. And that he did.

But Bush is not a prime minister. Indeed, his position comes to us from a long history of kingship and monarchy, starting with anthropological roots, if you will, in the tribal setting. and the way it developed was that chief of the tribe, whom we later called the King, had two main responsibilities. The first was to administer law and to provide justice, and that developed into a wide range of responsibilities. It's no surprise then, that the president today is the final fount of justice through his pardon power, and controls the Attorney General et al.

The second thing the King/tribal chief did was handle wars. And when war came upon his people, he would take upon himself the aspect of his society's warlord. We can see historically that even into the 18th century, Kings still felt it necessary to lead their troops to battle themselves, personally. Thankfully most of them had figured out that they ought to bring some generals along too, but it was a rare thing for the monarch to simply make no effort at all. And what people wanted from these king people was a clear statement of why the monarch was going to war, and a reassurance that victory was likely to be theirs. So when you look at a lot of declarations of war in the early modern period and before, that's what you get. And that's what we got from President Bush.

So that's the difference in content of the speeches. One (Bush) was trying to convince people of his leadership; he had made a decision, and now was telling us. Blair was trying to convince a rancorous legislature. They're different things, and require different efforts.

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DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 -----
I've just finished listening to the entirety of Prime Minister Blair's speech today to Parliament.

I had a very pompous post ready, contrasting the style of Blair to that of Bush, showing how the President gave a speech I would classify as imperial, whereas Blair made a more persuasive effort. Trust me, it was all very eloquent, very highbrow. It also made me sound like I have a sceptre rammed up my *!?!.

So all I'll say is that Blair delivered a true blockbuster of a speech. It pains me terribly to say anything nice of a socialist (as he says of himself), but it was really great. It was persuasive (as Bush's neither was nor was meant to be), dramatic, and powerful. I was really impressed, and there is little like the Mother of Parliaments for political theatre anyway.

Of course, a speech of Blair's can't have the tremendous implicit power of Bush's speech. When Bush raises a finger, the world shakes, and Blair hasn't the oomph. But, to cannibalize a cricket expression, he hit a boundary. Magnificent.



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DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 -----
I just got a very funny email from the Dean of our school. Apparently terrified that we might become overwrought at the prospect of war, the school is providing succor via doughnut for the duration. Also, they suggest psychological counseling if the fried delicacies don't work.

Seriously, what kind of pansies have we become as a nation if a piddly war like this shakes us up? People have braved ten thousand times worse, and if you feel like faltering, think of the poor people in Iraq who have been so abused by their dictator. Buck up people. It's only war. It's happened thousands of times before. It'll happen thousands again.

EDIT: In response to a comment, by all means what I'm saying doesn't apply to folks who have loved ones serving. They're entitled to whatever angst they experience, since they're actually making a sacrifice. I just find it difficult to take when those of us who are completely insulated from threat supposedly can't deal with it all. In a war when so many of us are being asked to do nothing, the least we can contribute is steadfast unemotional support. That's all I mean.

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DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 -----
Here is an excellent description of my ambivalent feelings towards France, a combination of disdain for their politics and admiration for their culture, from an apparent fellow traveller at the National Review.

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DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 -----
As others have posted as well, Bill Clinton unequivocally backs US action in todays Guardian. Not that I personally care what that disaster of a showman thinks, but apparently some people do.

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DATE: Monday, March 17, 2003 -----
I saw this bon mot of Jacques Chirac on Andrew Sullivan's blog, and didn't exactly believe it, but there it is quoted on cnn. Chirac apparently believes that Hussein "loves his people".

Now, I'm sure Chirac isn't quite that stupid. So he's obviously saying it in the context of diplomacy. But as a stattement, it is many multiples dumber then anything Bush has ever said or mis-said.

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DATE: Monday, March 17, 2003 -----
I can't find the comment button on liable, so I'll simply post this here.

Essentially, the blogger there asks why the law students blogosphere (and also the prep books) seem to be so heavily biased towards more national schools. On the prep books, I think her answer is right; the people who are obsessive enough to go and buy all these things tend to apply to the schools thought to be national.

As for the blogs et al, I don't really know. Perhaps the folks at the more regional schools are working harder. I would hope so, given my not terribly trying experience. But I will point both liable and anyone else interested over to nontradlaw, which despite a sometimes sanctimonious distrust of any advice save their own seems to offer a good community for those interested in schools outside the ones constantly discussed elsewhere. That's the only resource I really know of, though.

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DATE: Monday, March 17, 2003 -----
And just to put aside the accusation of parochialism, I realize that this is also a critical week because the war is going to begin. I was referring below to my own little world here.

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DATE: Sunday, March 16, 2003 -----
So, another week, another dollar.

This should be quite a critical week in deciding if my little gamble with jobs is going to work, or whether I'm going to splat directly on my face. For now, I'm going to feign confidence, but I'll keep the blog up to date on that issue.

Also upcoming is the Law Review's info session, when they let us know exactly how awful the selection competition is. I'm not even sure there's any way to couch it to make it sound palatable, but I'll be there nonetheless.

So those are the two potentially interesting events of this week. Let's see how it all shakes out.


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DATE: Saturday, March 15, 2003 -----
As a result of a prodigous shove from the excellent JD2B, Waddling Thunder paunched its way to a record 200 hits yesterday. Thank you!

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DATE: Thursday, March 13, 2003 -----
There is nothing fun, glamorous, or amusing about BIGLAW interviews. Nothing.

I arrived, fortuitously, on time. Fortuitously, I say, because at 8:45 I was stuck very precisely on the Key Bridge, over the Potomac River. As those of you who know the area will realize, the Key Bridge is tragically not anywhere near where DC lawyers tend to have their offices. So I left my father’s car and took off at a dead sprint towards Rosslyn Metro station, where fate smiled on me and I caught the orange line just as I got to the station. After resuming my sprint when I got off the train in DC, my days of walking around the city last summer came in handy, as I found the office in relatively short order. So there I was, at 8:59, huffing up a storm.

I gave myself the minute to calm down, combed what’s left of my southerly migrating hair, and marched in. And thus the combat began.

From 9am to 3:30, I fended off and tried to answer every question you can imagine a firm might ask. I listened to a soliloquy about professional responsibility. I asked putatively interesting questions. I oozed as much enthusiasm as I could manage, limited only by the fact that too much of my form of enthusiasm tends to come off as sarcasm. I chatted up someone about elite little league baseball. I assured them over and over again that I wasn’t worried about their lack of summer parties, mandatory or otherwise, and wouldn’t be put off by the prestige hogs who denigrated the firm for being small. I gave my well thought out spiel about the kind of law they practice. I nodded encouragingly when prompted, and mentioned how highly my connection to the firm had spoken of the place. It was clearly my best interview performance, purely on an objective level, so far.

Was it enough? I haven’t the foggiest. At the end I was drained in a way only an introvert forced to interact all day can be. The one good thing is that I know who my competition is, though, because they let it slip; it’s a student at a very good top ten school. But I’m enough of a pompous ass to think that if I convinced them of my sincerity, they’ll at least give me a shot. I hope so, anyway.


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DATE: Thursday, March 13, 2003 -----
My interview post is still pending. However;

I have (politely) declined the offer I received from the DOJ last week. I feel awful, and torn. Have I just rejected my only job offer of the summer?

But, well. I don't do drugs. Or jump out of planes. Or even snowboard. If I can't take puny risks with my summer jobs, then what really am I good for? The interview with the firm made them so sound good, as did my interview with another office of the DOJ afterwards, that I felt this job I turned down suffered in comparison. And it wasn't fair to string them along any further.

Hope I did the right thing.


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DATE: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 -----
Whew! I'm back from my interview, which was exhausting. I don't know whether I got the job or not, obviously, but I think I did pretty well. It's just a question of who else they've picked to interview.

But since I'm very busy now (catching up for not being here the last few days) I'll just post quickly on another topic entirely. My mother recently returned from a trip to France. She brought back some ready made crepes, very evidently the kind French mothers give their two year olds when they haven't had time to go to the patissier (as evidenced by the bewildered looking kangaroo plastered on the sachet). The price is affixed right next to the out of place marsupial; one euro twenty, for eight crepes.

So far so good.

The problem is that these crepes taste better then every single baked good I've had since the last time I was in France. And I eat a lot of baked goods; doughnuts, cakes, beignets, banana breads, muffins, sweet bagels, pancakes, waffles (technically not baked, yes), british style puddings (boiled, but its the same idea), twinkies, ho ho's, brownies, blondies, swiss rolls, and others. I eat them at fancy bakeries and from the supermarket. These crappy fifteenth tier french snack crepes were better then every single one, and as good as most of them combined. What's the problem here? do people forget how to bake at the borders of America?


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DATE: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 -----
Greengourd posts this article on the "epidemic" of early rising.

If I have one goal in my life, it is to avoid complicating it so much that this kind of 18 hour mad dash to and fro becomes my existence. I don't want a commute (other then a pleasant walk), I don't want to iron white chorus shirts for mad overcommitted children, and I don't want to wake up at 5 am every morning.

I am absolutely terrified of looking around in twenty years and finding myself entranced so completely by law's "golden handcuffs" that I have no other thought then to keep working to make sure that little Jerome can go to the snazzy preschool. Someone please shoot me if that happens.



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DATE: Monday, March 10, 2003 -----
I'll be flying down to Washington tommorrow for an interview with a firm on Wednesday. I just got my schedule for the thing today; I'm meeting with nine (count 'em) different people. At least I get a nice lunch out of it, and a free trip home for a day.

so I'm going to spend of the night and tommorrow preparing my spiel for these folks. As my friend who works for them tells me, convey enthusiasm and you'll be fine.

Wish me luck!



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DATE: Monday, March 10, 2003 -----
Jeremy, over at Harvard, chimes in on the raging legal writing debate. I mostly agree with him, except that I would point out that some of us (like me) really do care very little about whether or not the briefs and whatnot are actually good. I'm very easily irritated, and nothing irritates me more then the preposterous babying of obstensible adults (yes, yes. If I was really all that adult I would do a good job. Thanks).

But then, I see this post over at another1l, a beneficary of Chicago's supposedly excellent Bigelow program. Of course, he's complaining about too little babying, so I guess our superiors can never win. I still think I would prefer Chicago's version, though.




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DATE: Monday, March 10, 2003 -----
Riotously funny proof (as if anyone needed it) that world governmental opposition to war is grounded not in some solicitous concern for Iraqis but the old game of great power politics. The Russians, of the giant incredibly bloody (and in my mind perfectly okay) war in Chechnya are worried about destruction and civilians in Iraq. That's like the pot calling the clafouti black.

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DATE: Monday, March 10, 2003 -----
I noticed that over the weekend huge groups of admitted students were being herded around campus. This gives me a perfect opportunity to address what I think such a visit gives you an opportunity to do.

When it got down to decision time last year, I had two schools left on the table, having narrowed down the field to the place I am now and the west coast romantic option. It seemed to me that I had to see them both before I sunk so much money into the decision, so I invested the time and cash to fly in from England for the week. The sum total of what I was able to find out was the following; you absolutely needed a car at the romantic Californian place, which I didn't want. This place here was neither stressful nor unfriendly, while the town was excellent if expensive.

I know that doesn't sound like much, but I don't see what more you can find out from visits. If you're in the middle of doing them now, don't go to the school trying to determine if one place is more likely to get you a job then the other, especially if the schools are close in quality. No one is going to tell you the truth. Also don't try to figure out if the teaching is somehow "better". If the school has a mock class for you, be assured they've unleashed the best and most dynamic teacher they have. Don't ask your fellow admitees their
LSAT score. Don't show up in a suit, or get really drunk and hit on anything that moves. People remember the jackasses from admit weekend, because as a lot of bloggers have pointed out before, law school is high school for adults.

Just try to put some simple, easily deteminable questions in your head that you think might make a difference, and get them answered. Heck, it worked for me, at least.

If you're linking from JD2B, the relevant post is just below this one.


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DATE: Saturday, March 08, 2003 -----
Both SuaSponte and Janeway have recently been writing about their legal writing classes. JD2B reports that another law blogger, Jewish Buddha, has also broached the subject. I'll join in.

The final copy of my brief is due sometime this next week, which is somewhat inconvenient because I'm flying to Washington for an interview. So I'm just about to go to the library to deal with it now. But I just don't see why I should make any serious effort on it. To look at it superficially, it isn't graded. There's no incentive to win the argument, and I already know how to bluebook through my journal work. Sure, I'd like to improve my legal writing, but the comments I get back are so abysmal I can't be bothered. My favorite from this week was "You have to look beyond the third circuit!", which was problematic only in that I haven't cited a single 3rd circuit case anywhere in the brief. I also enjoyed the teacher's opinion that I'm missing key cases, which I admit, but also note that I'm missing them because I decided not to argue the issue they address. (this is a fun exercise, so I'm arguing the far more interesting minor issues).

On top of which the schedule includes time for all sorts of completely preposterous exercises, which take up far more of my time then I care to surrender. A few weeks ago, for example, the entire thing descended into farce when we were assigned to give two minutes speeches in front of the class, to make us more comfortable with public speaking. The problem with this assignment, of course, is that I've done it before; in sixth grade. Not to mention that a significant portion of the section came to law school after professional experience, making the concept of arguing a case in front of a few "judges" for a paltry fifteen minutes something less then terrifying.

Thankfully, it'll all be over relatively soon. I can't wait.


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DATE: Thursday, March 06, 2003 -----
When it rains it pours

Of course, in the wake of my job offer from the DOJ comes an offer to flyback to Washington with a firm I'm very interested in. (they practice a type of law that I at least have a very strong ideological connection to. It remains to be seen whether I would be good at it). So now the juggling begins. I need to figure out how much time I can tease out from the DOJ while I interview with these folks in DC. I am, of course, very risk averse, so I don't know if I would reject the DOJ job to wait and see if I get the firm. But it's worth the effort.

I feel kind of bad that I'm making the DOJ wait. But why the hell should I not make them wait? I'm offering free labour in return for training, and waited for months for responses. They can wait an extra week, surely.



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DATE: Thursday, March 06, 2003 -----
The british writer George Orwell apparently once penned the following:

The pamphelt is a one man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and "highbrow" then is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. . . . .Above all, a pamphlet does not have to follow any prescribed pattern. It can be in prose or in verse, it can consist largely of maps or statistics or quotations,it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of reportage. All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemnical, and short.


Without putting to fine a point on it, everything Orwell says applies equally to blogs. Fellow bloggers, if you're ever unsure about the time you spend on this, just remember this; We are the new pamphleteers!



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DATE: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 -----
One of my favorite quotes of the year

This is that Hughson! Whose name and most detestable conspiracies will no doubt be had in everlasting remembrance to his eternal reproach; and stand recorded to latest posterity. This is the man! This that grand incendiary! That arch rebel against God, his King, and his country! That devil incarnate, and chief agent of the old Abaddon of the infernal pit, and Geryon of Darkness!

New York Prosecutor, on the man accused of enciting the (almost certainly imaginary) 1741 slave rebellion, John Hughson.

Geryon of Darkness indeed.



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DATE: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 -----
Fantastic! I've finally been offered a job, with a division of the Department of Justice. By virtue of it being both public interest and government, it triggers the full weight of my school's pretty generous public service grant. It's not quite a private law firm, of course, but at least the disparity is closer to 4-1 then 50-1. Anyway, I will almost certainly accept the offer, unless one or two calls I make tommorrow morning yield fruit. Keep tuned.



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DATE: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 -----
Our criminal law class started today with the recitation of a long series of names, one after another. The professor told us to raise our hands every time we recognized someone as he went down the list. Name after name was read, however, and no hands were raised anywhere. Rather, we were flashing puzzled looks across the room at our friends, convinced this was some sort of innovative learning technique the prof was trying on us.

The punchline, when it came, was worth the confusion. "Those", he said, "are the names of the last thirty presidents of this school's Law Review. If you want anonymity, there's nothing better". Then he gave a wolfish grin and started talking about the defence of necessity and the hilarities of torture

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DATE: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 -----
Just a quick tidbit of news: the firm I interviewed with on campus last week (remember, the one with the sleeping interviewer) found it fit to reject me sans callback. As if I couldn't have predicted that the moment I walked in. Anyway, the wait continues for some sort of reasonable offer, and I've got a few more nibbles. I am, however, on the brink of enacting plan C (plans A and B having failed thus far to produce), which involves mailings to state government. Luckily, their deadlines seem much later then the feds; perhaps it has somethng to do with a less rigorous security check.


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DATE: Monday, March 03, 2003 -----
It is so cold here that instead of grass we've got just huge blocks of ice. A puddle I walked by in the early morning was rock solid at lunch. I'm still wearing my heaviest winter coat, a hat, AND gloves.

Law school has been great thus far, and I love this place. But days like this the shadow of the orange eating short wearing me that might have been at a certain school in the west crosses my mind for a moment. Only for a moment, though.

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DATE: Monday, March 03, 2003 -----
I've just noticed this attorney authored blog, which is interesting in that the author's cooking obsession makes them vaguely similar to me. The difference, I suppose, is that they have no time and loads of money, and I have no money but limitless time. The funny part is that there's really never any midpoint as a lawyer, when you both have enough money and enough time. Maybe during a clerkship?

On a very quick adjoining note, can anyone at all explain to me why two shallots costs $1.59? Come on, people. It's a glorified onion mixed with a couple garlic genes. Give me a break.



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DATE: Sunday, March 02, 2003 -----
It's amazing to me how different a professor can make a technically identical course.

For example, Sua Sponte reports continued frustration with her property professor, who seems to treat the course as a primer in redistribution. Last semester, I had a torts professor who didn't believe in prison. Now, my own property prof is probably one of the best teachers I've ever studied at the feet of. We've discussed lobsters, and oysters, and spectrum, and irrigation systems in medieval spain. We've done about three cases. Every day, the lecture and socratic questioning is delivered with sharp efficiency, reducing all of us eventually to bemused spectators. The crisp crackle of pure intellectual power circles malevolently about his impressive beard; every word only reasserts the impression that this is the kind of person who unleashed an unimagineable panoply of chaos on every educational institution that has had the misfortune of trying to teach him. I may not be learning any of the mythic blackletter law, but I can't help feeling I'll pick it all up later. I rememberI complaining last semester of my torts prof, who tried to sound obscure for the sake of sounding intelligent. This is the actually smart version of her; both occasionally obscure and massively bright.

Let's put it this way; taking this class has almost made me wish my degree was in economics. Economics!



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DATE: Saturday, March 01, 2003 -----
Still struggling with this ridiculous cold, so through my headache I'll write a little something about the North Korea v. Iraq distinction.

As everyone knows, one of the arguments raised by opponents of war is that North Korea is more dangerous then Iraq, so we aren't we dealing with them as muscularly?

First of all, I dispute the danger of North Korea.If anyone is unlikely to pass weapons to Al-Quaeda et al, I would think it's North Korea. There's no ideological link, there's no ethnic link, and you can't even use the "enemy of my enemy is your friend" argument because I suspect North Korea is too jealous of the few weapons it has to give them to a deeply unstable bunch of lunatics. As for the worry that they can build a missile to reach the United States, this is a legitimate concern. However, If they were to fire it, even without a missile defense system over here, North Korea would cease to exist. Remember those thousands of nukes we've got?

But all this aside, let's say Bush did take up these naysayers and started theatening to attack North Korea unless they got rid of their nukes. What would the result be? Obviously, I'm sure the peacemongers defending Iraq would instantly turn against the US here too. And they would be right. Because America has no current cassus belli against the North Koreans. We've made a peace with them that they're more or less respecting (they haven't invaded south Korea). The peace didn't say, to my knowledge, that they were not to have this or that weapon. So any attack by us against North Korea would be the exact kind of international marauding the peacemongers are so exercised about.

The situation with Iraq is much simpler. We defeated them in a battle they started. Hussein, unwisely, was allowed to stay in power (I am convinced this is the biggest mistake America has made since Vietnam). However, he was allowed to remain in power only on the condition that he did x, y, and z. He hasn't done x, y, or z. Therefore, we are allowed by every principle of international politics I've ever heard to finish the previous job. Think what would have happened if in 1955 the Germans had reinstalled the Nazis somehow and had started to build the Wermacht back up. Wouldn't we have attacked immediately? This is the same thing on a much smaller scale, though with a strange very high upside in potential danger.

Should this have been done in 1992, 1995, 1998, or any year before now? Obviously. But America was drifting around in a la la land of a boom all those years, and I'm not going to blame President Clinton on this one. The nation wouldn't have been able to go to war before September 11th, because no one believed in a threat to the US. But we've been undecieved.

So what do we do with North Korea? Well, it's a difficult problem. On one hand, we can rely on MAD to protect ourselves. However, we have a good ally in the South, and I wonder if we'd be able to muster up the moral force to attack North Korea with our nuclear weapons if the south was attacked by them. IN my 18th century war monger mode, I would suggest prodding them so outrageously that they eventually do something really stupid, enough to earn the approbium of the international community. But I'm not sure the UN will be up to it even then. We'll see.

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DATE: Saturday, March 01, 2003 -----
Someone reminds me to dress more warmly the next time I go for a run in the cold.

I only say this because I woke up this morning with a really outlandish head cold. Or rather, I woke up this afternoon with a head cold, at 2 pm. Given that I rarely, if ever, sleep past 9am, you can imagine the shape I'm in. It's really frustrating when your body doesn't cooperate, I have to say. And yes, I know its only going to get worse as I progress inexorably towards death. Thank You.

So, grapefruits, tylenol, and ginger tea. Let's see if these help.



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DATE: Friday, February 28, 2003 -----
I was just at a talk given by a prominent circuit judge, named among many as a candidate for the U.S Supreme Court when a vacancy finally arises. Most of the talk covered general threats to the institution of law, through a variety of sources. These included, among others, plaintiff's lawyers, realist law professors, and the loss of natural law as the underpinning of the legal system. Most politically important, however, the judge addressed the appointment battle of Miguel Estrada during the after talk question period.

As she put it, the cut in salary involved in sitting as a federal judge is alone enough to disqualify most people who have a reasonable title to sanity. Put on top of it not only intrusive personal examination but also the possibility of a wide ranging vendetta pursued by a fanatical congressman (of either side) and what we're going to have as judges in a generation or two is people who have done nothing, said nothing, and thought nothing. To quote the punchline, no one but government employees are going to apply for these positively vital positions.

I think this is absolutely right. For now, the pure prestige of the federal judiciary is enough to still reel in good candidates. But if this process degenerates any further, forget finding a new Cardozo, or Brandeis, or Scalia, or Holmes. We're going to have trouble recruiting a new Judge Mathis. And that, folks, is not good. So maybe its time for mutual disarmament on both sides. Maybe its time for mechanistic standards through which someone qualifies as a judge. Maybe it's time for a judiciary of the elderly, as Yale law prof Ackerman recommends. I don't know. But we had better think of something quick.






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DATE: Thursday, February 27, 2003 -----
You know you're institutionalized when some classroom visiters steal your seat (in your one class where seats aren't assigned), and you're so befuddled you feel dizzy for the entire class. Honestly, I didn't use to be such a prima donna. I wonder what's happened.

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DATE: Thursday, February 27, 2003 -----
I don't understand the constant stream of anti-tobacco company ads I see on TV. It just seems completely over the top.

Now, I'm no apologist for smoking. I can't think of anything socially acceptable that makes me question whether I respect someone more then smoking. It's nasty, generally inconsiderate, and demonstrably unhealthy. However, everyone knows now, don't they? You could have the same commercials for the makers of beer, burgers, coca cola, and a whole range of other things that have bad health effects. As far as I can tell, the only effect of the ads is to annoy people like me, to the extent that I'm tempted to go buy a pack out of spite.

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DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 -----
A quick note on what I'm doing as a research assistant.

Essentially, I've been assigned several parts of the course to revise the reading for the next time she teaches it. What this involves at the moment is paging laboriously through a very long but fascinating source related to one of our many 18th century slave revolts, and trying to figure out what future people taking this course should be reading. I'm also, at some point, going to put together a rather complete annotated bibliography, and will also try to tie the goings on here to some things that happened near the end of the course chronologically.

Those adhering to the most cynical interpretation of all things will note that I am, in effect, being paid to study for my exam.

I deny everything. Ahem.


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DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 -----
My "Quest for the Holy Job" (thus far an epic spanning three months) has taken yet another bizarre twist. I got a call from a firm this morning who wanted to know whether I realized what kind of law they practiced. Luckily, a friend of mine from college summered there, so the answer was yes, but then the attorney said "Oh Good! You'll hear from us soon".

Now what in the hell is that supposed to mean?



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DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 -----
Huzzah, so to speak. My subciting assignment for the journal is done. Done!


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DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 -----
I had my last OCI interview today. I don't think I have a chance in hell, what with the almost two dozen applicants and presumably one spot.

What really struck me, however, was the interviewer. He was tired/. I mean tired in a way I've rarely seen before. So tired that he looked as if he finishes up at the firm around 2 in the morning and then heads home to be beaten senseless by an ogre he employs for that very purpose. I swear I saw him almost nod off once or twice. You've got to wonder what this firm does to people; the folks at other firms I've met didn't look as if they were only a few steps away from possible death.

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DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 -----
To add to a growing movement nationwide, enterprising students at Harvard Law School have founded a pro-national defense organization, called Students for Protecting America. Good luck to 'em.

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DATE: Monday, February 24, 2003 -----
From my property reading . . .

. . . "caused considerable pondering among nineteenth centiry roadway jurisprudes" . . . .

Waddling Beavis: he he he... He said prude. huh huh huh.



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DATE: Monday, February 24, 2003 -----
The interview with the DOJ today went well, I thought. The guy threw a couple of oddball questions my way, and even asked very specifically what the office does. Which really wasn't fair, since the web page is a disaster. But I had basically figured it out after a little puzzling, so I was able to answer. Anyway, he told me that would get through their decisions "very quickly". Indeed, 'I could expect to hear as early as the end of March".

How are the words "very quickly" at all related to "end of march", if it is presently mid February?


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DATE: Sunday, February 23, 2003 -----
. . . . And the prize for the most oddly named government agency goes to the Department of Justice's Office of Weed and Seed.

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DATE: Sunday, February 23, 2003 -----
I went to the movies today, to see the new comic book fantasy Daredevil. The most memorable part of the whole experience were the previews.

In a time where a large shadowy conspiracy lies waiting to unleash mass destruction on our cities, when the nation's host has ridden forth to probable war in Iraq, when a nuclear lunatic inhabits North Korea, and when depending on what you think, we're either on the brink of an ice age or global warming, do we really need a movie about having to restart the rotation of the earth's core via atomic detonation?

Chris Rock and Bernie Mack running for president. Now that is cinema!


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DATE: Friday, February 21, 2003 -----
Two new developments. First, I've been offered a term time job as a research assistant. If worst comes to worst on the summer job front, I can always do that through the summer months, and in the meantime I've been assigned a very interesting block of primary source material to prepare for study. I've also set up an interview with that office from the DOJ for Monday. What I found funny, though, was that they assumed I was flying down for them. I mean, I want a job, but I am not flying to Washington D.C on a weekends notice for a job that only pays what I get from the law school.

A funny note from my interview for the research position. We were talking about careers in legal academia, and she pointed out that you need to establish credibility both as a historian and a lawyer for a law school to hire you. As she put it, having herself gone to Yale, she had problems on the legal side. Of course, though, that could be the line she takes when speaking to lesser creatures. I'm not sure.

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DATE: Friday, February 21, 2003 -----
I did the interview. Honestly, my first impression is that my chances of getting the job would have been better if I had simply jumped up and bit him instead of attempting any conversation. There were 17 candidates and they're offering two positions at most. It's close to impossible.

However, I feel my interview craft getting better, which is a good thing given my total lack of experience with anything even approximately like professional life before I came here. And when I got home, there was a message from a Department of Justice office wanting to interview me. So maybe a good day, all in all.

I'm meeting my research assistant searching professor soon. Let's see what she has to say.


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DATE: Friday, February 21, 2003 -----
Alicepasses on some wonderful advice about figuring out law firm pronounciations: simply call the firm! This is the kind of thing that would never have occurred to me otherwise, so thank you! And my sincerest condolences for the foul pilfering of your laptop, Alice: even reading about it made me feel sick. I gave my old warhorse an extra hug last night.

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DATE: Thursday, February 20, 2003 -----
I'm prepping for my hopeless interview tommorrow (15 interviews just from this school. And I'm going to get the job? Heh) and have run into a giant dead end. I haven't the slightest idea how to pronounce the name of the firm. I've already thought up 5 perfectly plausible alternatives, and I thought of this problem too late to simply ask someone. Ah well. I'll have to bluff. Shouldn't be too hard, since I bluff a facade of competence every day.

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DATE: Thursday, February 20, 2003 -----
I always have trouble shaking the feeling that most of my conversations in the real world are plagiarized from my blog. Should I start citing myself?


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DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 -----
It's now 11:30 at night, and I'm sitting at my desk surrounded by 300 pages of photocopies trying to make sure that a law professor's citations match up to what is said in the books that he cites, and also that he's cited the books that he cited in the correct form as dictated by the ever popular Blue Book. It is, needless to say, a tiresome business, forcing me to produce such well crafted outpourings as the following gem of wordsmanship:

"the parenthetical explaining the Eisgruber citation does not start with a present participle. Rule 1.5. However, I think that here a complete phrase is not necessary in context, and therefore we don’t need to change this under the exception provided for in the rule."

Someone needs to explain to me right now why I'm planning to take the law review competition in the summer. It really makes no sense whatsoever.





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DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 -----
P.S- Don't these job dispensing idiots realize I came here because my future employment is supposed to be almost a sinecure? Come on! I shouldn't have to work for it.

The gall of some people.

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DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 -----
Honestly, getting a 1L job is a problem and a half, or at least one that either qualifies for the school's public funding or pays. Yesterday, I got rejected from a DOJ position I had interviewed for, which isn't a problem unless it speaks to the fact that people find me obnoxious or annoying. But still, that makes two rejections after interviews if you count in the law firm a month ago or so.

Anyway, Spring OCI (on-campus interviewing) starts on Friday for me. I'm going to go in there and give it my best shot. Otherwise, my desperate flailing continues.

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DATE: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 -----
I've just read Chirac's warning to the Eastern European countries not to support the United States. It's even more imperious then I thought, particularly for a man convinced the US is the one punching above its weight. I used to think, honestly, that the French presidents thought they were Louis XIV. I've now realized I'm wrong; they think they're the Holy Roman Emperor. It's incredible.

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DATE: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 -----
27.5 inches of snow here, and the Law School has delayed opening till noon. Back in DC, a snow storm of this magnitude shuts down the city for the week. Here? A morning delay.


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DATE: Monday, February 17, 2003 -----
Great news is filtering in from the rest of my study group. It looks like we all got precisely the same GPA, with different distributions as to grades. Since we know that the curve is something in between a B and a B+ (aimed closer to a B, we hear), this means we've all done really well. Definitely good to hear that everyone got something positive out of our efforts, and that our low stress limited studying method worked.

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DATE: Sunday, February 16, 2003 -----
The spike in traffic from Sua Sponte's link reminds me of something I've been meaning to write for a while.

Back when I was a kid and watched at least some professional wrestling, it occured to me that there were 4 categories of quasi-pugilist. The meanest form were what I called the "underwear" guys, wrestlers who fought under their own name and wore only some coloured bit of spandex undergarment. Their role, in general, was relatively simple; they would charge out onto the ring, put up a reasonable fight, and then let their one of the superior wrestlers thrash them.

Just above the underwear guys, I put the "underwear and nickname" group. These people still didn't have costumes, but they did have cool names, and they sometimes even managed to win. And above this group, one hit the stars of wrestling, whether it was those at the highest level like Hulk Hogan, or those slightly below.

Now, it seems to me that given the amount of traffic and the quality of the writing here, I'm basically an underwear guy in the legal blogosphere. Sua, on the other hand, is different. Ok, she's not quite Instapundit, who enters the ring daily complete with entourage and fireworks. She's also not the Volokh Conspiracy, which in its growing size resembles precisely one of those tenuous tag team alliances I so fondly remember (Actually, I'm waiting for Sasha to declare Eugene a traitor, steal his "woman", and form Volokh Squared. It would help ratings). But she's definitely no longer an underwear guy. Congratulations.


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DATE: Saturday, February 15, 2003 -----
On yet another note, I've applied to be a term time research assistant with one of my profs. On one hand, this clearly marks me out as one of the pathetic backstabbing favour curryers I've attacked before. It's even worse; instead of running up to the professor after class, I'm trying to work for him/her.

On the other hand, I don't see how I'm going to keep my toe in the intellectual interests I had before coming here if I don't make an effort. And the professor I've applied to work for is a top notch legal historian, whether I agree with her methodology or not. And I do, stunningly enough, have a little extra time [current subciting stress notwithstanding].

So I'm going to swallow my criticisms and hope for the best.


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DATE: Saturday, February 15, 2003 -----
Many thanks to Sua Sponte for her congratulations on her blog, and for Adam's advice in the comments...

On another note entirely, I need to congratulate my sister. She's had her first college acceptance! To my alma mater, no less. Guess which way I'll be pushing her?



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DATE: Saturday, February 15, 2003 -----
I never knew property was this fun!

Our property professor pointed out on Friday that the reason the university here keeps opening and closing the gates leading across campus is to prevent the creation of an easement. I'm just imagining the lawyer who thought that worry up. To think that I'm training to be a predictor of doom...


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DATE: Friday, February 14, 2003 -----
Given how pompous the post below sounds, I don't mean I'm disappointed. I just don't want the first semester to be the pinnacle of my career. That's all.

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DATE: Friday, February 14, 2003 -----
Okay, folks, grades are in.

According to my taxonomy posted a little less then two weeks ago, my category is "Not Dead Yet".

According to what rumours I can find on the web about my school's secretive grading system, I'm just a touch outside the top 10%, and certainly within a putative grouping of the top 20%. Given that these things arent really statistically significant with only three grades, the upshot is that I'm within striking distance of anything almost anything I'd like to do, given enough work.

So I'll give a temporary woo and hoo. Then it's back to the mill. Waddling Thunder does not mean to let up.



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DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 -----
Americans have no sense of drama.

Back in Scotland, the day before the winter results were released, a small notice would go up on the second floor of the modern history department. Actually, we’d have some forewarning on when this would happen, because the rumours would come fast and furious from other departments. Classics is up today, we’d hear! Medieval history is moving soon! The note announcing the dreadful news was always the same; a small handwritten missive pointing out that “Examination Results will be posted on the Honours board at 2:00 p.m tomorrow afternoon”.

The next day, I almost always went home for lunch, at about noon. Just as the clock wound its slow, tortuous way past one and I began thinking about making my own way to town, a sense of propriety held me back. There’s nothing quite as pathetic as a student waiting for exam results in front of a bulletin board. Finally, as two o’clock came around, I left my pastel pink hall of residence. The road on those days seemed a lot longer then usual, past the lime green biology center, then up to along the edge of the ancient golf course that bordered the university. From there, I rambled past the Catholic church, and then the university buildings would begin to appear in rapid succession. Management, to the right. Then the ever impressive Edgecliff, home to our mysterious Economics department. I would realize there was a crowd in Modern History, and would wander on, past the twin and linked schools of Moral Philosophy and Logic, and then to the ruined castle, all the while feeling the ancient stones frown at me in a disdain fostered by centuries of combined wisdom.

Finally confident that the main rush at grades was over, and getting whipped by the kind of merciless wind that only Scotland can produce, I would eventually decide to take the plunge and go into St. Katherine’s Lodge, where my immediate destiny awaited on the second floor. There would still be a few gawkers left, of course, desperate to see who did better then them, but I would be able to get close enough to scan the list. And the wait would end.

Sometime tomorrow or Friday, we’re getting mailed our grades via U.S Postal Service. And this is supposed to be law school?


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DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 -----
I've just been to a law firm reception, and thought i would use the opportunity to put a final touch on my thoughts about BIGLAW.

The one thing that receptions like this make absolutely clear is that big law firms pose a tremendous moral hazard for people who, because of their beliefs, shouldn't be working for them. The money, simply put, is huge. Not only for partners, but for first year associates as well. The abandon with which they spend at these get togethers is designed to demonstrate to you exactly that wealth, and more importantly, the potential that if you join them you too one day can spend with reckless disregard. Now, I can see how someone who is opposed to what they do theoretically might be bamboozled into joining a firm when they shouldn't because of the golden fruit dangled before them. My advice is to steel your heart against them if you can't deal with their work mentally. Though I like what they do, that doesn't mean everyone should too.

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DATE: Monday, February 10, 2003 -----
JMB has come back with a tripartite division of lawyers, in which he now sees a seperate class of lawyers who are immoral because they break the law and are obsessed by the bottom line to the exclusion of all else, a set of roughly moral lawyers who work for all kinds of clients, and then the warrior white knights. I don't see anything wrong with his classification as such, and agree with him that those in the first category should be seen as reprehensible.

We still have a point of disagreement, however, which I don't think we can resolve without having a full debate on the goodness of our system, which I'm not going to do because it would overwhelm my time and this blog. I think JMB still sees that last group as superior to the second group. There can be moral lawyers in that second group, he says, but they hoe a tough row, because the very business they do is so potentially damaging.

That's where we part paths, because to me if those lawyers do their work within the bounds of ethics, then they are just as valuable to society as someone fighting the good fight as a public defender. Put very simply, defending people for little money is good. Business is also good. There might be a moral upside to public defending because you're doing it as charity work, which itself is good. But there's nothing about the work itself that is better for society on a meta-level for me. We need both people.

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DATE: Monday, February 10, 2003 -----
A short companion piece to illustrate my point about a "judo throw" below. Here is how an 18th century diplomat would have answered the recent French proposal for more inspections.

We are in receipt of your dispatch of February 8, 2003. I have instructed his Excellency the President in the entirety of your communication.

Let me say to you, honorable sir, that his Excellency the President was so moved by the gentle heart of His Excellency the President of France that tears sprang uncalled for upon his august cheek. Never before have the sanguine ties of Republican Blood been so strong between the two Nations of France and the United States! His Excellency the President then deigned to instruct me that he accepts in every particular the outpouring from his Excellency the President of France's genius, and far from entertaining even the most ephermeral uneasiness as to its content, announced only that the proposal of his esteemed brother be accepted at once and augmented with all the additional vigor of American earnest. For has the Lord not said, "Blessed are the peacemakers"? etc, etc.

By pointing out that what the French are doing is a diplomatic manuever, however, the putative letter France feels like it received from Powell is something like the following:

Dear France; Your recent proposal suggests you are acting the fool. Please stop acting the fool, or we will leave you to act the fool alone. "

I don't know what is more effective. But I'll just note that a French diplomat getting the first letter would be JUST AS wary as a diplomat getting the second one.

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DATE: Monday, February 10, 2003 -----
I'm going to respond to JMB's response to my response, but I'd rather do that when I'm not eating breakfast. So, check later for that. For now, my topic is the latest move in Franco-German diplomacy; this proposal for a "super" inspection regime.

I should say first that the Germans clearly have no part in the proposal. Yes, they're fanatically opposed to war, but the cleverness of the plan doesn't smack of German diplomacy. Historically, at least until WWII, German diplomacy has been effective, but not particularly subtle. Various devices have included invading without warning (Silesa, 1740), entering a war and leaving again despite an alliance (yet again, the War of Austrian Succession, 1740-1748), and entering a war as a minor power and only staying if bribed (1705ish, I think, War of Spanish Succession, when Frederick III/I blackmailed a royal title out of the Emperor). This new devilry, my friends, is purely French in character. And through its efficacy, it is proof that the craft of the heirs to the Rois Tres Chretien is deep still.

The pertinent thing to note, however, is that though French skill may be deep, they're playing a bad hand. This new position, it is important to notice, is a fall back position, a definite step back from previous French insistence on merely more time. What has forced them back is Powell's speech, which I'm now willing to classify as effective. By essentially shattering mainstream domestic opposition to the war, Powell deprived France of a powerful weapon in its arsenal. Therefore, France has retreated to her current more defensible position.

It's going to be a hard rampart to storm, I think. We can do it through brute force on one hand, simply by using all the power we have to shove the French in our direction. That would include rightly warning the UN that they risk complete irrelevance by not acting. There's a lot to be said for this; why engage the French in the game they invented? On the other hand, the French have left themselves open to one of the oldest tricks in the diplomatic world; the judo throw. I think the US has the opportunity now, if they want to play diplomacy, to neutralize the French plan by accepting it in principal, and then noting that it should be expanded. More troops! More inspectors! More intrusiveness! I read one editorial on Sunday that suggested a "no drive zone", meaning that if any Iraqi truck was seen on the roads around a suspected WMD center, it would be destroyed. This is exactly the kind of proposal that I mean, because eventually we would bump up against the level of Iraqi tolerance. We would force Iraq to reject the French plan.

But as I've said before, this isn't the game Bush is playing. Like him or not, his insistence on disarmament is absolutely sincere, and if you don't understand that, you've misunderstood the diplomatic posture.




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DATE: Sunday, February 09, 2003 -----
An amazing number of hits is heading my way via JD2B, at least for a Sunday. Maybe I should write increasingly outrageous articles in hopes of getting people to link to me. Hits are invigorating.

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DATE: Saturday, February 08, 2003 -----
Attacked!

I just noticed that I've been verbally brutalized* by JMB, in a recent post. His contention is that my own recent argument as to the inherent morality of practicing BIGLAW is essentially wrong, and exhorts us all towards a glorious defense of the little guy.

The problem is that I don't think we fundamentally disagree as to the main point of my post. JMB says that he doesn't believe in the Free Market system. As I pointed out, if you don't believe in the free market system, then my post doesn't particularly apply to you. At that point, you absolutely should not work for BIGLAW, MEDIUM LAW, or any other kind of law which greases the wheels of what you consider the capitalist oppressor. As he puts it, being shot is a reasonable alternative to the kind of fundamental betrayal that working for a wealthy firm would represent.

But I would wager that the majority of law students believe in capitalism and the free market. I certainly do, the various injustices dictacted by the fallen human condition notwithstanding. In that context, my point was that pretending that working for the public interest is in any way morally superior is a complete red herring. What is moral, indeed, is the practice of whatever kind of law you decide to do consonant with the highest standards of ethics. I personally would argue that in the context of market defined liberty, working to faciliate the coercive brutality of the federal income tax system can be by far morally inferior to helping two businesses work together, or to providing a corporation with the due process they are guaranteed by our system.

In other words, I make no claim that being a lawyer= being a capitalist, as JMB posits that I do. Rather, my formulation is that if you are a capitalist, you can be a good lawyer. I don't think JMB agrees, but that's a disagreement about the shape of society as a whole.

You don't like our system? By all means, fight to change it. But if you do approve in general, then you don't get the moral high ground by pretending you don't. Sorry.

* I'm very much kidding. I actually appreciate being challenged.




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DATE: Saturday, February 08, 2003 -----
I've got a small collection of new recipes and posts over at the Waddling Kitchen, including a very brief post on my sourdough adventures. Stay tuned for goat stew, since I've now got 2.5 pounds of constituent meat in my freezer.

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DATE: Friday, February 07, 2003 -----
When studying in Scotland, I always was amazed by the behavior of American junior year abroad students in my smaller history classes. Based on the minimal reading the professor would assign (assuming that if you were interested you would go find out more yourself based on his very large bibliography), they would invariably come up with a whole range of often completely nonsensical speculations. So, for example, upon hearing that Indians X attacked Settlers Y in colonial America, they would say something like "Couldn't that have been because of some envy between the tribe and the settlers vis a vis the imbalance of wealth?", in response to which the professor would have to note that if they had actually read some of the sources before talking, they would have noticed that the Europeans were in fact considerably on the short end of the stick income wise.

Anyway, so in my history course we're going through the early creation of slave laws in America. It's really quite interesting to see how the New York legislature responded to a growing slave population by instituting a system of slave control administered by private parties through civil suit. For example, if you saw three slaves congregating you were allowed to sue the owners of each slave. The question then arose; why adopt that system?

Now, my classmates came up with some fascinating arguments. For example, some pointed out that by allowing people to take control of those laws themselves, the "rich elite' produced a system to inculcate the the system of slavery into the minds of the people. Someone else held that this had something to do with the propertyization, for lack of a better term, of the slaves. Since property is dealt with under civil law, so should slaves. The problem here, however, is that all these arguments are undercut by a terribly simple argument that requires no intelligence or insight whatsoever; having the state arrest and try slaves for congregating would have been totally completely and comprehensively unadministrable in the early 18th century. I don't think even an administrative giant like France could have managed it, much less a tiny colony with a 20% slave population like colonial New York. I mean, we're dealing with a world where only recently has administration got past the point that the King personally has to show up to keep a province in order. And they're going to run a police state? You've got to be kidding.

So why didn't everyone instinctively realize this? Because there's no background reading required in the course. Because all we do is read some pages in a carefully preened packet the professor has prepared. Because for the professor, the history is only a jumping off point for a discussion of the philisophy of history. Indeed, I'm sure she much prefers the intelligent answers I mentioned above. The fact that they're superceded by a boring, muddy, and hopelessly realistic answer is, to her, one of these inconveniences of life, like learning that brownies have fat. I really don't think I would have done too well in a history grad program here; I really don't.

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DATE: Friday, February 07, 2003 -----
Adam notes in the comments section of my last post that the theory of tax cutting has not matched up with the practice; domestic spending keeps growing, Reagan or not. Absolutely true, and I shouldn't have written such a congratulatory post. What I really meant was that I see Bush uses all this talk of jump starting the economy and suchlike to do what he really wants to do, which is starve the government sufficiently to hopefully reduce it one day. Like you, though, I'm disappointed by the continued rises in spending.

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DATE: Friday, February 07, 2003 -----
A talk on Reagan I saw the other day argued that his main realization was that one reduced the size of the domestic government by starving it. The existence of deficits forbids spending more. Amen, I say to that. And Bush has apparently learned the same lesson.

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DATE: Thursday, February 06, 2003 -----
I have, of course, no real evidence of what I'm going to say. So discount it entirely if you wish.

I've been thinking of French opposition to action against Iraq. Clearly, whatever they say, it's not because they believe Iraq doesn't have these weapons. They've admitted the opposite on numerous occasions. So what's going on?

My opinion is that France is playing one of its infamous games of diplomatic sublety, and it probably comes down to oil. No, I don't mean that they think America is going to war for oil. They know well enough, like everyone else (and like other blogs have pointed out in great detail recently) that "controlling" the oil fields in Iraq really does nothing for US oil supplies. Oil is bought and sold on a world market, and the US will always be able to buy enough of it unless all the oil producing nations refuse to produce oil at all. Until, of course, the stuff just runs out, which is why the new hydrogen car initiative is so exciting.

Anyway, the blood for oil argument is too childish for a nation of France's historical malevolence. This is a country, one must remember, so skilled in diplomatic doubletalk that they once conned the Spanish into helping the Americans gain independence, even though the Spanish knew full well the Americans were just going to turn around and attack them. What I think is actually going on is that the French think the US are going to war in Iraq to deprive European companies of the bounty peace might bring. If, after all, sanctions were taken off Iraq, it is French oil companies who would make it in there first. They've been chomping at the bit for years. (I'm writing too quickly to search for the cites, but there have been numerous stories over the past decade about French oil execs heading to Iraq for talks.) Anyway, so the idea is that if France stops war, then they also stop this move of great sneakiness on the part of the US, and thus save the oil fields of Iraq from the domination of the US hyper-puissance (hyperpower).

The problem is that the US isn't playing the same game at all. Unlike French diplomacy, American diplomacy is not often that subtle. We might lie, but this folding upon folding of bizarre motiviations isn't our style. I'm quite certain that President Bush thinks there are weapons in Iraq, thinks that Hussein and Al-Quaeda are about to unite, and wants to stop it. If someone told him about this oil thing, or about French theories of impending Pax Americana, I'm sure he'd say something like "how 'bout that?", and just move on. I wish someone would tell France that huddling over the chess board searching deeply for our strategy is really futile; we're really playing nothing more complicated then Candyland.



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DATE: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 -----
I've been reading for days of "uneasiness" in the British military establishment about the coming war. No one was explaining what the source of the uneasiness was, though, and I couldn't figure it out. Like the American military, the British tend not to make political statements of any sort; they're commanded to fight by the political leadership, and off they go. I have, however, finally figured out what the problem is. They're apparently terrified of being relegated to the wings of the campaign. Now that I believe.


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DATE: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 -----
JD2B reports that an applicant to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a DC firm, was rejected because of law school grades. . . . despite 7 million dollars in portable business and years of experience. Now, what was that about the GPA dimishing in importance as the years went on?

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DATE: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 -----
A last post on this issue for now, since I really should sleep. I found an auction site which does nothing but sell player avatars and magic items, called Playerauctions. Just as for general auctions in Ebay, Playerauctions is regulated by a strong feedback system, and also a name and shame policy for scammers. However, if you look at the site relatively closely two problems become apparent. 1) Everyone realizes that there's very little one can do about scammers 2) Paypal's fraud policies don't cover intangible items. Anyway, this is interesting stuff.

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DATE: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 -----
So I did a search to find out how courts deal with contract disputes involving magic items in role playing games. First of all, EverQuest's parent company [i.e Sony] sees the items and characters produced within its game as intellectual property, and has pressured ebay to remove them from its listings. [though I read that trading continues]. The other big online game I have heard of, however, is Ultima Online, which does encourage trading of characters, at least.

However, my research there doesn't answer my question of how a court would deal with such a thing contractually. Ultima Online agrees to happily transfer your entire character to another person for a fee of $25. The contract you apparently sign upon signing up, however, only explicitly allows the selling of entire characters. So I suppose in a suit between two players for a contract violation [and my knowledge of the law is too tenuous to be sure], Ultima could intervene and claim its intellectual property was being violated. Anyway, for now I'm baffled.

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DATE: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 -----
I just read a fascinating article on the economics of Everquest in Salon. For those who don't know, Everquest is a very large on-line role playing game. It's the kind of thing I would have been very into if it had come along when I was younger. Indeed, I used to play a very embryonic version of it, of which I only remember that to protect yourself when you logged off from the ravaging of other players, you had to hire bodyguards. Due to a rather fortuitous glitch in the game, the pink poodles were actually almost unbeatable.

Anyway, among the facts mentioned in the article is that game "money" now has a real world equivalent. Players desperate to advance more quickly are apparently willing to pay sums of real dollars to purchase game currency and equipment. In fact, the article points out, one unit of Everquest currency corresponds to a US penny, making the fictional exchange medium a stronger currency then the now defunct Italian lira.

It occured to me, however, that it would be a very interesting experiment indeed to fiddle with the ground rules of the game, and see what the behavioral consequences are. Our property professor is always stressing that property rules should be examined with a "transactional cap" firmly in place. Well, how better then to see changes work in a virgin and very real economy? Quite apart from the very funny consequences of an income tax on the game, what if we said that a murdered character's items were the permanent property of the underlying player, so that his later avatars could come along and collect them? I suspect random killings would go down, if killing is in part a method to collect magic weapons and so on. Or how about introducing a rule simply making all the often used items (I'm assuming you have to buy food in the game) free, but limited in quantity? Maybe someone should try to prevail on the people who run the game.

* A footnote to that; I can't wait for the first case where a seller renegs on his promise to sell a magic sword to a buyer. I wonder if its already happened?


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DATE: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 -----
We're not reading this case in crim law, but I noticed it as I was flipping to a case we are reading. I can't tell whether it's an actual case or a story a professor came up with, but in any case.

A teenager knew that his father was likely to threaten his mother with an unloaded shotgun, and he wanted his mother dead. So he secretly loaded the shotgun. In due time, the father became embroiled in a fight with his wife, pulled out the shotgun as expected, and pulled the trigger, assuming the gun to be unloaded. Of course, it was indeed loaded, so a shot was fired, which missed the wife and went out the window. At the same time, however, the son had grown desperate at the failure of his plan, so he had tossed himself off the roof of the apartment building, at which point he was hit and killed by the shotgun his dad had just fired. The suicide attempt itself would probably have failed because of a net set up on the eigth floor for window washers. To quote the casebook, "the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.".

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DATE: Monday, February 03, 2003 -----
I've currently got a pot of flour and water fermenting in my room, on its way to being my first experiment in sourdough leaven. Yes, I know. This is my definite move towards becoming one of those people described in Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, my life ceded to the the demands made on my time by a wide panoply of voracious yeasts. In any case, the reason I mention it on this blog is that this is all part of my very complicated contingency plans.

It plays several roles in these plans. If, for example, my grades fall in the "Admissions Office F'ed Up" range, then dropping out of school to become a baker is plan 1 (b) in my running away from law school plan, to be activated only if the get back into history academia plan [1(a)] doesn't pan out. It is a definitive improvement over plan 1(c), which involves french fries and a uniform, and an even bigger improvement over 1(d) (getting myself into shape and entering professional wrestling as 'The Hirsute Warrior'). As a bonus, If I somehow end up destitute or transported back in time to the middle ages after leaving school, I'll be able to at least put some bread together.

Baking is also a backstop if "Path I" to 2L, involving securing enough loans to pay for the year, doesn't work. I'm sure I can at least finance some of my studies with some efforts in the early mornings.

I'm also providing now for my mid-life crisis, if I choose to have one. Moving to the country and opening a mill and a bakery fits very neatly between Mid-Life Crisis Scenario 1 (to be decided, but I figure there must be something) and 3 (trying to round up people interesting in recapturing Constantinople).

Right, then. I'm glad that's all settled.







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DATE: Monday, February 03, 2003 -----
Green Gourd, a blog I didn't know about but who linked to one of my posts, passes on relatively sad news I hadn't heard. The great Takanohana, sumo yokozuna, has retired after a glorious career. Also see this post.

Though I hadn't caught much sumo recently due to the lack of it on US TV, I did watch a lot while I was in Scotland via Eurosport. There's something about it that appeals to me. If pressed, I would probably say it was the hierarchy of it all.

I'm the kind of person, steeped in history on one hand and fantasy literature on the other, who likes the whole idea of titles and the authority that goes with them on a theoretical level. Aragorn, son of Arathorn, lord of Gondor! James, King of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, etc! Kasparov, Grandmaster and World Champion! So when I hear about a sport where there are only one or two yokozuna at any one time, and these paragons of greatness are considered so unbeatable that lesser beings get bounties for doing so which they keep for their entire careers, and that yokozuna almost ceremoniously retire rather then decline, I'm attracted. The sport itself? An interesting martial art, if you look at it. But the traditions that surround the art are just fascinating.

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DATE: Sunday, February 02, 2003 -----
I've been thinking a lot about grades recently. So have a lot of my friends. We're all a little on edge, as I suppose all law students are when the time of reckoning gets closer. Anyway, I've organized the possible results into categories. I should note that these categories are designed for this schoo, which has a forced mean that amounts to no grades below a B-.

The Glorious Outlands/Kozinski, here I come- All A's of one type or another.

Not Dead Yet- A majority of A's, or 1 A and no grade below a B+.

Eh.On the train to mediocrity - No A's and all B's of one sort or another, or 1 A and 2 B's of one sort or another.

Hoo boy- No A's. All B's, none of which are B+'s.

The Admissions office F'ed up- One C of any kind, even counter-balanced by any number of good grades.

It seems to me that the in the long term, the mediocre result is the most disastrous. If I do really well, the presumably my methods work. If I really screw up, then I'll be able to engage in a wide scale re-think, and maybe right the ship. But if I do kind of OK, which is what I expect, then I don't have the motivation to totally change my path, so I'll just keeping doing what got me OK results.

The other benefit of this system is that I'll be able to blog my grades when they come out, without telling you exactly what I got. I know you're all waiting (yeah. Right).

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DATE: Sunday, February 02, 2003 -----
The questions start about the shuttle disaster; I wonder what they'll find. Nonetheless, I hope this tragedy spurs some new thinking about space. Maybe the time for shuttles is over, and we should look on to mars. Anyway, that's my last post on the disaster. My prayers are with the dead.

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DATE: Sunday, February 02, 2003 -----
Washington Post columnist Hoagland claims that American intelligence shows no Iraqi retreat towards Baghdad. If true, the obvious implication is that Hussein intends to fight the Americans in the field.

Needless to say, that would be a mistake of truly historic proportions on his part, because the length of the war would suddenly be defined by the amount of time it takes for an M1A1 to drive from the invasion point to Baghdad. The good part for us, of course, is that both our soldiers and Iraqi citizens would be spared much potential heartache. I shudder for his troops, though.

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DATE: Saturday, February 01, 2003 -----
A horrible accident today, as everyone knows. I'm very sorry to hear such news.

However, I do want to note the effect 9/11 seems to have had on the media. The reports today have been thankfully restrained, both recognizing the bravery of the astronauts while keeping the event in perspective. Good thing too; we might soon be dealing with far more casaulties, as we finish a long neglected job in Iraq.

To put on my 18th century cap, at least the astronauts died gloriously. Not everyone gets to say the same.


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DATE: Friday, January 31, 2003 -----
Be Careful what you ask for

I guess they got the message. The firm who hadn't responded for a month sent along a very nice rejection letter today. Ah well. Such is life.


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DATE: Thursday, January 30, 2003 -----
Jimbo, on the Simpsons tonight: "I don't believe in anything anymore! I'm going to law school."

Now, that's meant to be a joke. But, like so much on the Simpsons, there's a kernel of a serious issue buried just underneath the surface of the school yard hooligan's exclamation. Can you go to law school and still believe in things?

According to a lot of people around here, the answer is no. Once you accept the devil's bargain of coming to a school like this, the argument goes, you are almost inevitably doomed to a life of moral ambivalence, sewn inextricably into the pockets of corporate dictators. I doubt there's been such a display of self-flagellation since the middle ages, the fallen many left interminably kneeling before a latter-day Canossa*.

It's possible, of course, that all this quasi-penance is purely hypocritical. Like people's claims to outsiders of how difficult this school is, the mantra is repeated just to make ourselves feel better for being lucky enough to be here. Being a great conneisseur of false modesty (a trait of mine which is probably really annoying), I understand this motivation.

Unlike the hard work mantra, however, I think some people actually believe the "evil" fallacy. Suffice to say, I don't. However difficult work at big law firms might be, it is inconsistent with believing in capitalism to think that the work itself is immoral. In fact, if you believe that business, and enterprise, and wealth are good things, then helping to faciliate deals is itself moral. What's wrong with fighting a suit between two giant companies? What are they supposed to do instead? Hire private armies and duke it out? If you don't believe in capital and markets, that's another thing entirely. Attack what lawyers do all you want. But I just don't understand people who merrily take advantage of the great wealth that economic liberty has brought us, and then condemn the way it happens. On a theoretical level, I'll be proud to work for big business; it's done us a lot of good.

* Canossa, FYI, is where Henry IV knelt before the Pope in the snow for several days begging for forgiveness. 11th century.
** Yeah, I know I've said the same thing (much) earlier in this blog. It's a pet peeve. Sorry.



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DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 -----
The new rumour around school is that our property professor spent some time as an officer in an elite Israeli battle unit. If it's true, I'm not really surprised. His classroom demeanor suggests someone precariously dangled between quiet contemplation and battle frenzy, intense eyes boring into the class. It's kind of unsettling.

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DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 -----
I'm really not sure what kind of game a couple of these firms I've talked to are playing. For one of them I've been waiting a month, and no rejection yet. Our office of career services says to wait, because 1L's just don't get much priority in recruiting. I'll hold on, but it's all a bit irritating.

On the same topic, I went to a law firm reception yesterday and asked the national managing partner who had turned up what she thought of the whole Clifford Chance affair. She made, I'll quickly note, a relatively convincing argument as to why those particular problems didn't afflict her firm. Not only do partners at her firm respect their associates, she pointed out, but the late night dinner ordering system was fully web accessible. Great.

What was far more interesting, however, is the extent to which law firms are aware of each other's problems, and the amount of pleasure they seem to take in them. I mean, it was all very discreet, but it didn't take breathtaking subtlety to realize that she thought the whole situation rather a funny one.

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DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 -----
I just realized that I haven't mentioned my crim law professor yet, aside from a brief mention of him running a prosecution in the criminal division of the DOJ.

So far, I like him. Granted, he was pretty high up in a democratic administration, so that's a strike again him. However, he left the job because he couldn't stand the attorney general (yay!), and secondly, he's far more a crusty old prosecutor then any kind of psychotic ideologue.

The White Knight, however, didn't quite realize this. She seemed to think that he would spend the class attacking prison, punishments, and, in general, the United States. This last purpose was outed when he asked for 20th century genocides other then the obvious, and she answered "Iraq". I don't think she meant Iraq's war against Iran, either.


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DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 -----
Our Federalist and Gun Clubs are bonding together to show Red Dawn tommorrow. I've always had a soft spot for this kind of thing, mostly because I spent a year or so of my early teens playing a board game called "The Price of Freedom", which started just as the first Spetsnaz (spelling?) were parachuting into Washington (actually, I think Washington had been renamed Debs, after what I think the early 20th century American Socialist was called).

I wasn't very good at running the game, though. The band of heroes would always somehow acquire a large tank, and then would steal several nuclear warheads thus blackmailing the Soviets into freeing the US. Ah well.

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DATE: Sunday, January 26, 2003 -----
Just as my friends and I had convinced ourselves that grades don't matter, Who Stole the Tarts posts this quotation from Judge Alex Kozinski's law clerk recruiting materials.

I don't really mean top 10%. I mean top 10, as in people. I'm looking for amazingly intelligent Supreme Court clerk wannabes eager to slave like dogs for an unreasonably demanding boss who'll cut their work to shreds. Dweebs OK.

Putting aside my suspicions of a brilliantly subtle stroke of Machiavellian cruelty on Alice's part*, I need to not look at that quote again. It threatens my fragile bubble of pathetic nonchalance far too much.


* It bothers me not at all that no one else sees the potential hidden motivations of my fellow blogger. I pride myself on sniffing out subtlety. I am very subtle.

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DATE: Sunday, January 26, 2003 -----
The barber shop next to the law school boasts that it both "trims beards" and "cuts ladies hair". I rather suspect that the former somewhat limits their business in the latter, but what do I know? Maybe women really like knowing their hairdresser can also get rid of any beard they might have. It's possible.

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DATE: Friday, January 24, 2003 -----
I'm not sure if you people have seen the Federal sentencing guidelines table, and I don't want to recreate it here, but you really get the impression that then Judge Stephen Breyer and everyone else involved in it had played too much Dungeons and Dragons as children. One axis of the table is labelled "Offense Level", and ranges from 1-43. The other axis is called "Criminal History Points", and goes in six categories from I to VI, each corresponding to a certain amount of criminal history. The idea is that you go down the "offense level" to find the appropriate number for what the person did, then go across the table to the number of points in previous convictions they have, and presto! You know how long to put the criminal in jail.

But I love some of the instructions we read concerning the example the book was using, a bribery scandal our crim law professor had helped prosecute. They sound like they came right out of the D & D rulebook. For example;

"The table in Section 2F1.1 (Fraud and Deceit) provides that the base offense level be increased by 11 where the dollar amount involved exceeds $5,000,000. Since the value of the bribe alleged in Count 2 was a $100 million loan, the base offense level would be enhanced by 11.

4. Ascertain whether any "adjustements" from Chapter 3 of the Guidelines apply. These include victim-related adjustements (where the victim was physically restrained in the course of the crime, the base offense level will be increased). . . With respect to Count 2, Senator William's false statements to FBI agents . . . constituted an attempt to obstruct . . . an investigation. Hence the offense level would be increased by 2. "


Good thing to know they haven't yet started to mention the magic sword of Altergon, hit points, or a 3d6 modifier. Then the cat would really be out of the bag.


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DATE: Thursday, January 23, 2003 -----
From the truth is stranger then fiction file:

Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg riding an elephant



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DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 -----
The famous lawsuit against Mcdonald's was thrown out today. Of course, I'm fine with that. You eat their burgers, you get fat. Stunning. But I do wonder about our society sometimes, especially after seeing a pizza ad this afternoon.

When I first heard of extra cheese on a pizza, my reaction was to wonder why pizzas needed even more cheese. Then I saw the various "cheese lovers" deals, and my confusion deepened. Then the pizza places introduced cheese imbedded in the crust, and I really thought this was the last possible addition. But, as usual, I was completely wrong. Now Pizza Hut has introduced an extra cheese pizza with pizza in the crust, and crowned with cheddar cheese on the crust. Why not just serve a giant slab of cheese instead?


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DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 -----
The word blog made its first appearance in law school today, mentioned as the main player in a hypo by the below-described property professor. I'm sure some of my classmates hadn't the foggiest idea what he was talking about; why would they, after all? The "blogosphere", to use the apparent term of art, is not exactly the province of the strictly normal; most of us, I suspect, are either people who like to write or are unfathomable megalomaniacs, content to know that someone out there is reading our constant stream of talismanic profundities.

I haven't decided which I am yet.

In any case, I felt really special in class. It was probably my only foray into the top ten percent.



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DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 -----
Well, I've finally met the first of my new teachers for the semester (for Property) , a heavily bearded and relatively young visiting Professor (i.e, a job applicant) from one of the two major schools in New York. One of the first substantive things he told us was that he has an "algorithm" for working out who to call, so we shouldn't bother trying to guess because until the computer spits it out, he hasn't the slightest idea himself. An algorithm. I thought I left those behind in high school when I still wanted to be a computerr scientist.

Ah well, no use grousing. I'm almost always prepared in any case, barring some odd illness.


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DATE: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 -----
Coming up to exams, I felt like I was gaining momentum. Whether it paid off or not, I don't know, but at least it felt like I was bumbling more or less down hill.

The break stopped all that. The less then impressive engine that is Waddling Thunder has ground to a pathetic slovenly halt, and no amount of food has awoken me. I feel like a giant walrus, asleep on whatever kind of rocks walruses sleep on after having swallowed a great and excessive quantity of whatever walruses eat. I feel bloated, and lazy. I want to sit around and watch movies like Shallow Hal. In fact, I did watch Shallow Hal. The fact that I'm even admitting to having rented such unmitigated rubbish is proof enough of the mammalian depth of my present funk.

But really, I'm exaggerating. It always takes me a while to get the bus rolling. I'm just no good with starts. So in lieu of studying, here is yet another vignette from my trip to New York.

Zabar's and Fairway's

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DATE: Monday, January 20, 2003 -----
Hello! I'm back from New York, refreshed and excited.

The trip was great. I enjoyed New York, though I'm somewhat ambivalent about living there if I decide to do so (I'll need another few trips to decide), and though the actual travel wasn't fun, where else but on a Greyhound bus would your seatmate ask you if a game of touch football in Harlem was "gang war"?,

I'll be blogging my favorite parts of it on the Waddling Kitchen, which is really a private food journal for myself I've only recently started up.

Here, then, are my brief reviews of the places I ate.

Lupa, Gray's Papaya, Lombardi's, H & H Bagels, Artie's.

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DATE: Thursday, January 16, 2003 -----
Yes, yes, I know. Aethelred isn't 18th or 17th century. I just like him.

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DATE: Thursday, January 16, 2003 -----
Okay. I'm heading off for New York tommorrow for a brief holiday. I've got a lot of eating planned, and hopefully a trip to the opera, but mostly I'm going to wander around a city I just don't know at all. I love walking around cities, my personal record thus far being a hike from the Bois de Bologne in the extreme west of Paris to the Quartier Latin. I'm going to see if walking Broadway from the Upper West Side down to the Village is feasible.

In other news, I interviewed with a judge today. I don't know whether he counts as a federal judge in the traditional sense; he works for a very specific part of the government. Still, it was really interesting, and I hope they at least offer me the position. I think I probably screwed it up on the whole, but then I bet everyone screws up these telephone interviews. They're just really unsettling .

Something has just occurred to me though, in terms of a project I need to do someday, more as a note to myself then as a post. Sobriquets. I think there's a gap in the historiography of 18th and 17th century sobriquets. Where did they come from? I mean, sure Frederick is the Great because he stole Silesia in 1740, and Augustus II of Saxony is the "Strong" because he fathered a lot of children, but how do they get adopted? Are they evidence of early modern propaganda? Was Aethelred the Unready ever told by his advisers, "hey, at least they're not still calling you the 'Entirely Unprepared'?". I bet someone has written on this. I just don't know who.



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DATE: Thursday, January 16, 2003 -----
I don't understand the fuss about Eldred v. Ashcroft. I mean, I know I haven't yet done Con Law, and I don't know much, but it seems to me that court was roughly saying that if Congress had the power to shift copyright from 50 years to life+50, then it has the power to go from Life+50 to Life+70, so long as the extension isn't literally unlimited.

I understand why people are so upset about the law itself. I would be too, in general. So go harass your congressmen about it. That's what they're there for, right?

But I'm hoping someone explains to me why this doesn't work.


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DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 -----
There's been a lot of coverage on law blogs recently about the changes introduced by the Bush administration in the Department of Justice honors program. The left, apparently, fears that suddenly a giant unwashed conservative horde is going to run roughshod over their last refuge, burning every shred of decency in its cowering path.

Now, I agree that if only people like me are hired, the Civil Rights Division is renamed the Division of Stealing Food from the Mouths of Children, and slaughtering the elderly becomes the chief pastime of the Criminal Division,then our progressive friends do have a point. It's neither fair nor just to exclude anyone because of politics.

Honestly, though, I rather suspect that the net effect of these changes, as others have noted, is to make sure that conservatives aren't discriminated against in certain more traditionally progressive divisions of the government. Nothing sneakier, nothing more sinister. Just a long belated attempt at fairness.

In any case, keep one thing in mind; the people who think conservatives are taking over the Justice Department are some of the same people who think Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans control the media. Yes, the media. As in the staunchest bastion of left wing thinking outside academia. As anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty would realize, it's a preposterous claim. I might as well decide that the African Wild rhinocerous ought to be the queen of tonga, or that my straight teeth are a result of an umixed bloodline which I had better continue in order to outbreed the Seljuk (an actual theory of my family).

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DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 -----
Exams are over. Let me sound the obligatory woohoo.

But what's actually depressed me is that I went out for my traditional post exam ice cream, and couldn't find what I was looking for, frozen yogurt chocolate chip cookie dough. I would eat the real stuff, but the quantity I need to eat it in doesn't allow for the real stuff. This is a disaster of truly elephantine proportions.

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DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 -----
The Liberty Club at my undergrad university has some interesting coverage of my alma mater's election of a rector. To explain this bizarre institution as briefly as possible, what a rector does is get elected, provide newspapers with some copy, chair a couple of meetings of the University Senate, and most importantly get dragged around the town in a carriage by an all men's club dressed up as women. Previous rectors of the place have included characters as eclectic as Gladstone and Rudyard Kipling, though recently men such as Donald Findlay QC (who had to leave in semi-disgrace for singing anti-Catholic songs relating to soccer) and Andrew Neil (the merrily hated editor of The Scotsman) have been more common.

In any case, the main high profile character up for election this year was Germaine Greer, a woman of some importance in the UK as a result of writing books that include the words "Eunuch" and "woman" in them. It's not surprising, really. Every two years when the election comes up, some group of zealots tries to foist some left wing juggernaut on the university. Last time it was a Scottish MP whose big pet plan was to nationalize housing, as I remember it. Anyway, the interesting thing is that the left winger always gets clubbed, regardless of what the newspapers think. Just absolutely slob-gobbled. This is bizarre only because Scotland is as radical as the United Kingdom gets, and our students aren't known for being overly conservative, let me assure you. To add insult to injury, my intrepid successors overwhelmingly elected a 78 year old man apparently known only for doing inoffensive television programs. As he put it, "I won't be 78 forever. I'll be 79 next year."

This is all by way of noting that my torts exam is tommorrow morning, and I don't think it deserves any more of my limited brain power. The goings on back in the olde country are far more interesting.

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DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 -----
On the eve of our last exam, our crim law professor, as in the one we're going to have next semester, has sent us our first assignment. What a sense of timing these people have, huh?

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DATE: Monday, January 13, 2003 -----
Hooh boy. I just finished a marathon exam, from 8:30 to 4 with a five minute sprint to the cafeteria for some food. Issues were literally coming out of the woodwork all over the place, and the whole thing was considerably worse then anything we were imagining. I think I counted two issues we had actually covered in our case book. Everything else was stuff courts either didn't know what to do about or stuff we had simply not covered.

On the other hand, it felt really satisfying chewing through all this stuff. Even if I missed a lot of things, or just got other issues wrong, it felt like a caught a lot more, which distinguishes this exam from the contracts one where no one thought they caught any one of the difficult questions.

What this all means is that I'm kind of tired now. But the great thing about being obsessed by food is that a nice, even simple dinner can revitalize me enough to pound some torts.

Also, I just checked my email and have been offered an interview with the Department of Justice. I'm still waiting on that law firm (my hopes seem dimmer now, I guess) but this is a great alternative if I get it.



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DATE: Sunday, January 12, 2003 -----
As I study for Civ pro, I should note an interesting little battle happening in London. Later this year, an $8 a day toll is going to be instituted in the British capital for those driving in, an idea thought up by the famously left wing mayor, "Red" Ken Livingston. What's fascinating is seeing a leftist twist between twin goals. On one hand, his environmentalist side wants to destroy cars. So he's happy about the tax. On the other, this fee is the single biggest and most outlandishly regressive tax increase in the history of the United Kingdom. It's class warfare all right, but against the poor. So he's got both the pro-car people and the pro-soak the rich people mobbing him at once now. Very funny indeed.

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DATE: Saturday, January 11, 2003 -----
Just chomping through the work for Civ pro, now.

I know I shouldn't have done this, but I went back over my contracts exam last night. I still can't find any sneaky hidden issues that I missed, which means that the Professor didn't test conditions, third party beneficiaries, or delegations/assignments. I tried really hard during the exam to stuff something undecorously under the rubric of a condition, but the thing with facts is that sometimes they're awkward, and refuse to be so stuffed. I'm now going to get rid of the exam, and not think about it again, hopefully.


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DATE: Friday, January 10, 2003 -----
I have entirely no idea what just happened. I did the exam. I think I did fine, and in any case it's worthless worrying about grades because they'll just curve us up to a B anyway. But my sense is that I just missed something huge, because each of the issue spotters only had a couple of issues. On the other hand, they were kind of subtle, especially the one that was basically Sherwood v. Walker but with a race horse. So maybe it was an exam testing subtlety. Hope so.
On to Civ Pro, I guess. I'm somewhat disappointed with the exam, though.


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DATE: Friday, January 10, 2003 -----
Well, I'm ready to go. Exam this morning.

But honestly, the exams here have nothing on the exams at my undergrad. We didn't get to take anything home there, or take the exams in comfortable classrooms all spread out watched by local retirees posing as "proctors".

What we got instead was a giant mass exam with hundreds of other students in a large hall, where we were faced by perhaps a dozen begowned "Invigilators". Actually, I kind of miss the invigilators; they made me feel as if they not only were there to stop you cheating, but might also take care of your religious heresy while at it or something. Though the impression was somewhat lessened by the fact that one of them was invariably my own rather short, increasingly stubby, and inevitably cheery thesis adviser. Anyway, I'm looking forward to this, so long as it goes relatively well.


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DATE: Thursday, January 09, 2003 -----
So, Contracts tommorrow. The format is a bit odd; what we apparently call around here a hybrid. To wit, 12 short answer questions to be done in class and in one hour, and then the 2 issue spotters in 4 hours at home. It should be a good laugh.

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DATE: Thursday, January 09, 2003 -----
Tolkien described a Hobbit's post dinner nibbling as "filling in the corners", or something similar. That's where I'm at with Contracts right now, just snatching a last pig in a blanket or daikon radish chip with tuna tartare to fill me up to total capacity (Thank you Nobu in Paris!) So, one more study group meeting to hash over some things, and then I'll pretty much stop studying to let things settle down.

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DATE: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 -----
Study groups are interesting things, I have to say. What makes ours stand aside is that it's essentially the giant loner group. With the exception of one, it was basically formed in spirit when we jointly fled from a pre-christmas holiday party in order to escape the after dinner games. And yet, we get along as a little unit.

In the excellent book "Getting to Maybe", which I recommend for any law students facing exams, I read again yesterday what I consider to be the main key to law school .I'm not quoting directly, but the sentence reads something like this.

Law professors are law professors because they're good at exams. They were chosen for their jobs by other people who are good at exams, and got into the law schools they went to, which produce people who become law professors, because they were good at other exams. In other words, what law school exams test is really whether or not you're good at exams. And that, my friends, is a learnable skill.

So I'm working on it.




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DATE: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 -----
Just a note on politics as I keep studying. People are attacking the new tax cut as economically unsound. It's all such a wink wink nudge nudge job, though, because I doubt anyone in the White House really believes the cut is for stimulus. I'm sure among most republicans, as for myself, it doesn't really matter if the cut is an effective economic boost or not. What's important is that another tax is being justly buried. If the cut happens to also be useful economically, great. But the increase in economic liberty is the main thing.

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DATE: Monday, January 06, 2003 -----
There's one thing that terrifies me about exams. It's not the grades or anything. I'll be fine there. What really frightens me is walking out of the exam thinking I did well.

Every single time that's happened, I've had an academic disaster. OK, none have bee enough to sink me yet, but this isn't the right time for one of these particular hilarities, let me assure you.

So how do I want to feel when I walk out of an exam? I can't really describe it, so I'll use an analogy.

Let's pretend you were let into a supermarket, entirely alone. And they tell you that among that enormous pile of melons, there are a few really terrific melons, but you've only got a few hours to find them before the store closes. So you start poking, and squeezing, shaking and smelling. And you see, right there, what looks like a terrific melon. It's big, and unblemished. So you grab it, and it just doesn't feel right, and you put it back. But now, there's a crotchety old woman yelling about how there are only a few minutes left, and you've got a few decent enough melons but you're sure there are more of them somewhere, so you're grabbing and throwing the things about like a madman and you're sure you need to find them and they just aren't anywhere and the time is ticking, and finally it ends. So you stagger out clutching what you think are a few pretty good melons, but you can't be sure if you got all of them, or none of them. That's how I want to leave the exam.

Damn. I just realized I've effectively described the grail scene in The Last Crusade. I'm not too good with originality, am I?

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DATE: Monday, January 06, 2003 -----
This morning on one of the start up the day shows I had flipped on to see what the weather was like, I saw one of our 2L's getting locked up in a house with some other "fat" people to lose weight. Sounds like the winter term our 2 and 3Ls have is a really useful time.

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DATE: Sunday, January 05, 2003 -----
Given the easiness of this semester, I really haven't had any of the experiences that I was expecting given the book 1L and other things. No yelling in the classroom, no wierd political movements churning the law school, etc. But yesterday, I finally did something worthy of this law school. My study group had its first meeting.

Honestly, it was not a big deal. We went over some contracts exams, had some good debates about questions, and then decided to meet a couple of more times before the big show. We're not putting together any secret outlines, or working as some sort of juggernautic monolith 10 hours a day to defeat all the other groups. The first thing we decided was that people were more then welcome to not show up at any particular meeting if they thought it was crap, and could come again later, or bring other people, or whatever. There might be some sort of nasty group working somewhere in the law school, but if there is, I don't know about it. Yet another myth debunked.

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DATE: Saturday, January 04, 2003 -----
So, an update on the job situation.

3 more rejections. However, another offer to send grades in, which may turn into an interview eventually. So upwards of 30 rejections, 2 interviews, and about five of these "talk to us later's". Still waiting on word from that interview I had last week.

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DATE: Friday, January 03, 2003 -----
I spend the evenings studying theory just now (the days I do practice exams, a wellspring of hilarity, let me assure you). At worst, it's good for reminding me why I vote republican.

Here, for example, is an excerpt from a particularly horrifying Duncan Kennedy article from the late 70's.

"Finally, I should say something positive about the motives of liberal lawyers, judges, and legislators who developed the doctrine of unequal bargaining power . . . [it is] a weapon in the war against the conservative program of reinforcing all kinds of social hierarchy. .. it is a weapon on the side of equality, of the left, and not of the right, however imperfect.

On another page, if I've understood him right, he claimed that if he was ever presented with a case where a company had won an easement by promising to relocate somewhere, but later closed the plant he would simply impose an imaginary contract term that awarded the entire factory to the workers. Right.

But what really bothers me is the way things are taught here in America. As an undergrad, a professor teaching the same course would have handed me about a 200 book/article bibliography summarizing recent thinking on ttorts, with perhaps 20 articles on something like this. If I was actually interested I would go read this stuff and talk to him later. Here, we get one article from 20 years ago by a complete iconoclast, who may or may not have won the ideological day. Great. So what have I actually learned from this?





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DATE: Thursday, January 02, 2003 -----
Amid some bad personal news vis a vis my extended family, I wanted to report a second interview offer, for February. So about 30 rejections, 2 interviews so far. Not too bad for 1L summer, given the DC market.

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DATE: Thursday, January 02, 2003 -----
Having finished You can't see Paris from Here by Michael S. Sanders, the wonderful recounting of a man's year in the kitchen of a small French restaurant, I sent the author a congratulatory email. I'm glad to say that he responded with a kind note, and right quick. Seems like exactly the sort of person I might enjoy having lunch with, I have to say. Anyway, buy the book. It is an excellent and enlightening read.


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DATE: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 -----
My apologies for the longish series of posts.

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DATE: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 -----
I have promised, for a long time now, my allegorical view of exams. I figured that today would be the best day to produce it, as the New Year signals the start of exam season for us here at the law school.

Over the past month, I’ve seen how other people have reacted to exams through the blawg network. Some have gone underground, documenting their manic war against a seemingly insatiable enemy through their writings. Others have disappeared entirely, presumably doing the same manic studying in private. The basic 1L verdict, in any case has been of barely concealed panic. Whatever the merits of panicking, however, I tend not to do it, and the reason I don’t is the way I think about things like exams.

I see exams, oddly, as fantasy like enemies. There, for example, just over that hill, is contracts. I see him as a short, squat figure, a robotic mélange of ancient parts and tubes and pipes, a cobbled together amalgam of inconsistency and confusion. Beware when you strike him, however, for behind every one of its multitudinous limbs lurks yet another spinning blade, another whirling disk, another trap to be drawn headlong into.

The figure standing next to him is nothing if not a contrast, a seething, oozing mound of filth and malevolent debris we know as Civil Procedure. For its wiles are different then that of its ancient friend, and its strengths lie in turning everything it touches into a confusing and inescapable mess. Beware when you touch him, lest you be lost in the dark ways of the festering construction.

And finally, standing a little further away, alone, is torts. Ephemeral, shadowy, insubstantial, and yet dangerous and evil, it challenges you to coral it, and yet knows you cannot. Beware when chasing this sprite, for it may drag you away from the road and towards oblivion.

And so, there stand the Three, seemingly indestructible, preening, and champing, snorting and flexing and shouting. From this distance, it seems that around them are the dead and wounded bodies of those who have gone before, of people who have rode against these demons and have been thrown aside. It seems, in other words, that all of us are right in panicking. But I don’t think so.

I don’t think so because all this display is just a show. In fact, these supposedly terrible beasts and thousands exactly like them have been beaten every year by a literal myriad of our contemporaries; they have been chewed upon and spit out, challenged and defeated, trod upon, ridden over, thrashed and humiliated. They are, to quote Monty Python, un-threats, nothing but the worst sort of illusory braggarts. They are the very definition of chimerical. If they are dangerous to anyone at all it is only to the very slowest among us, to the fattest and juiciest zebra in the herd, to the one particularly stupid wildebeest who decides to lead the group into the crocodile infested water. Their entire strength, indeed, is drawn from the worth we give them.

So, I’ll let everyone else around me study and fret. For my part, I’m going to adjust the frayed and straining string holding up my pants, and, readjusting the floppy straw hat on my head with one hand and grasping a particularly nice sandwich in the other, I’m going to shamble without too much concern in their direction. If I can’t deal with them without turning myself into some sort of imprisoned mummy, or overworked psychotic, I don’t deserve to be here anyway. I’ll leave my panicking for the workplace, when large sums of real dollars are at stake, and I’m responsible for them. For now, my enemies, I think it’s time you met the clumsy, fat, not terribly hardworking disaster that is Waddling Thunder. I can guarantee you’re not going to enjoy the visit.


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DATE: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 -----
I'm taking studying a little easier today, on the holiday theory, so I was watching Judge Mathis on TV (he's like People's Court). His show, honestly, is not only decent review for 1L courses, but also is a funny warning to finish high school.

On today's plate of social disasters was one woman who was suing for emotional distress (negligent and intentional, one would assume) because her (now dead) pet chinchilla had been poorly stuffed (she got $294 to get the stuffing fixed under a material breach theory), another woman who was suing because she had recently bought a lemon used car from her former husband, who had spent their now long dead marriage beating her senseless while in a drunken stupor (there was an express warranty on the engine, which essentially fell out), and another woman who was suing for child support from a man whom the DNA test had shown wasn't the father, but had promised to pay if he was (she got, obviously, nothing). My favorite case of the day, however, was one in which one admitted crackhead was suing another one for refusing to pay rent on a house they had decided to move into together while sharing a prison cell for crack possession, and was being countersued for having locked the second crackhead out of the house without instituting eviction proceedings, and for having stolen all his furniture. (after asking for aspirin, the judge granted the back rent and consequential damages for swiss cheese the second crackhead had stolen, also granted the money for the stolen furniture to the other guy, and added a punitive damage for having thrown the guy out on tthe street illegally). Sometimes, I've got to think being a state trial judge must be a lot of depressing fun.

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DATE: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 -----
The Chief Justice has apparently made a personal plea to President Bush to raise the salaries of our federal judges. I'm fully with him. How can we justify paying our federal judges, the supposed elites of the judicial system, a mere $150,000? This is especially ridiculous when snot nosed first year associates in New York and Washington make only slightly less then that all told. By all means, public service has its own advantages and attractions; people should want to serve without a lot of money. But if you are trying to save for retirement, or put some kids through college, or whatever, going to the private sector and earning a lot more money is going to wear on you as a judge. I won't even mention the worries about corruption that fuel their life tenures in the first place. The presidential salary has justly been lifted; let's move the judges up the list too.

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DATE: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 -----
My parents were kind enough to give me enough money to go to New York (post exams) as a Christmas gift. The problem is that the planning is taking up too much time out of my studying, which I am now doing. All I know is, Don Giovanni on the 18th at the Met, preceeded by lunch at Mario Batali's Lupa. Yum.

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DATE: Saturday, December 28, 2002 -----
Men have been rejected for centuries, by sword, and by ax, and as civilization advanced, by post. The art, I am glad to say, has marched ever forth, slowly becoming more sophisticated as the turgid march of history has worn ever on. Only recently, however, has rejection reached its highest form in the guise of law firm summer associate rejections. It is in this field that the greatest masters ply their trade, paid handsomely for their distasteful work.

Now, however, a new demon of dissapointment has arisen from the wilds of the north. He has seen the strivings of his competitors. He sees their tactics, and their methods, and he disdains them. Not because these lesser beings are unskilled in their way, for they are honourable journeymen, but because his own craft so far exceeds them. He has gazed upon the polite letter, and has laughed. He has seen the honest rebuttal, and has scorned. He has even looked upon the mighty rejections of our time, the efforts of Tim the Despoiler of Dreams, who once stamped "Rejected" across a resume and mailed it back, the jabbings of Gerald the Black of Oxford, whose "Your qualifications do not qualify for interview" lives in notorious infamy, and has hurled them aside.

For this new monster has thought of a way that surpasses all others in diabolicality. He would send out upon the world a legal recruiter, who would sit at a law fair, and refuse to take resumes saying only that they were not recruiting 1L's. And he would say unto this recruiter, take their addresses down, and they will think we will recruit them next year indeed. But they will not know that his real desire is to send them rejections this year. And lo! All others will gasp at his feat, for who but he would have dared this new venture, this rejection of those who did not apply ? and then he will laugh merrily, and nod. For he stands as the greatest of all.

In case you didn't understand the above, what I'm trying to get at is that I just picked up my Christmas mail from the post office. There are, for my delectation, 17 more rejections. I've sorted them roughly by content for your enjoyment

Rejections: (including those received earlier)
Not Hiring 1L's: 19 (including the firm to which I didn't apply, described above)
We're hiring someone, but not you: 3
We're really impressed, but we're still not hiring you: 2
We're an IP firm. You're a history student: 1
We don't have a summer associate program: 1

Total Rejections so far: 26

Interviews: 1 (see yesterday, result pending)

Letters still pending: about 40.


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DATE: Saturday, December 28, 2002 -----
OK. I'm just going to address something to annoys me a lot, inspired by yet another Guardian Article., the gist of which is that it would be both funnier and more effective if British troops just went and campaigned for Bush in Florida rather then went to war for his electoral ambitions.

Let me be really clear. No nonstupid ruler or monarch has ever thought that war helps his popularity (and for those who think Bush is stupid, you keep thinking that. I'll just note that if you don't like him, you'd better get it into your head that's he is a lot cleverer then you initially thought), There might be exceptions here and there, and certainly a great victory helps popularity, but in general the calculus governments do makes war a bad risk if what they care about is popularity. In 1614, for example, Louis XIII rode forth to Italy. His advisers went crazy; yes, it might show the French people their King was kind of manly, but it also might turn into a mortifying disaster. Same thing when same man threw himself into the 30 years war in 1630. I can guarantee you that French advisers were not thinking of popularity when they moved into the American War of Independence in 1777/78 either. Even wars like that of Jenkin's Ear in 1738, which the government was browbeaten into by a furious public, were undertaken with extreme discomfort about what would happen to the country and the government.

People don't fight wars as popularity contests. They fought them, in the 18th century, to increase honour, gain resources, defeat ancient family enemies, to expand colonial ventures and, of course, to defend the country against enemies. A lot of the same reasons rule today. How could war possibly be a popularity tool? It costs a lot of tax money, it involves killing the sons and now daughters of your own country, it is morally troubling and it might even result in extreme danger to the country itself. A war might prop up some sort of banana republic by refocusing attention outside, but no one thinks the American government needs such propping. And It's not as if we don't have evidence that I'm right; this President' s very father won a war and lost an election, for the exact reasons I'm talking about. So say what you want about a possible war, but please, abandon this popularity argument.

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DATE: Friday, December 27, 2002 -----
So, I'm back to school, having had my interview this morning. Law firm interviews are interesting things, it seems. The experience itself was probably worth it. Anyway, I spoke to three attorneys for about twenty minutes each. The first was an associate newly graduated from my law school, put there mostly to make me feel a little more comfortable, I suspect. She asked me some basic questions, then wanted to know if our studentophile professor was still dating a 3L (the answer is yes). The next two meetings were rather more serious; one was a partner in sort of patent/trademark law, and the next practiced a field so specific I'd rather not say what he did, other then to mention it had to do with national defense. The second fellow was rather more difficult, in that he sat me down and said quite frankly, 'Look, this looks like a legal academic's resume. Aren't you just going to jump ship?". I tried to answer as best I could, pointing out that I could have perfectly well been a history academic with a lot less effort, and that any move to legal academia would be in the future.

But even these two went really well. I happen to know a lot about national defense, so I was able to have a really good conversation with the second partner about that. If nothing else, I found out about a practice area I had never heard of, and actually sounded fascinating. The first partner was a fellow failed academic, and sympathised with my job market woes via that profession, so I had things to tell her too. Let's see what happens, but I'm feeling slightly optimistic. If they're hiring anyone at all, I should have a chance.

To top it all off, the secretary turned out to be my high school classmate, who was doing that in preparation for grad school in another field altogether. Small world....


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DATE: Thursday, December 26, 2002 -----
Waddling Thunder, surprisingly, has been called to interview with a firm in DC, the morning I fly back to school. If nothing else, I'll gain some experience in handling law firm interviews. It'll help for next year. At best, I'll get what I want; an experience with a big firm, to help me decide if that life is for me, even for a little while. Wish me luck.


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DATE: Wednesday, December 25, 2002 -----
Merry Christmas, everyone! My family celebrates Christmas on the eve, leaving only church for today. So, if you were at the wonderful L'Auberge Chez Francois last night, you were enjoying the same meal I was.

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DATE: Sunday, December 22, 2002 -----
Just a related side note to the below: If you happen to be a law school dean trying to attract students to your school, there are many possible tactics. The one you should studiously avoid is to list your peer institutions, and proceed to insult them in turn, as one Dean did. It makes you sound like a jackass. A particularly insecure jackass, at that.

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DATE: Sunday, December 22, 2002 -----
Brian Leiter, at some point, has published some very interesting new figures on his law school ranking web site. If people don't believe the prestige obsession of law professors (and probably the legal profession as a whiole) just take a look at these numbers. Yeesh.

EDIT: I swear I had this idea before Prof. Leiter. In fact, I posted by own version on the internet last year, and the proof that I had beat him to the punch is that I bothered to do the work at all. At that point, I was still trying to decide between a few schools, and was concerned about my prospects for an eventual academic position if I wanted to go in that direction. I hardly need to say that Prof. Leiter's version is 20 times more comprehensive and professional, but I'm going to take the credit anyway. I'm looking for the link to my work, but I think the site it was on has erased it.

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DATE: Friday, December 20, 2002 -----
Well, I've now given people an opportunity to go see LOTR, The Two Towers, so I can comment. Nonetheless, SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let me cover my pedantic niggles first, which were responible for the lather I was in the first time I saw it,.

1. This won't be a too original observation, but I'll make it anyway. Why make Faramir so weak? And why this bizarre trip to Osgiliath?

2. Elves at Helms Deep? What? And the elves are "proud" to fight again with men? What kind of elves are they supposed to be, exactly?

3. There is no good reason to send Aragorn over a cliff, during what I'm reasonably sure is a nonexistent attack by wolf riders.

4. Yes, I know that the stuff with Arwen and Aragorn is from the book (the appendix). And it's beautiful stuff; the eventual fate of Aragorn and Arwen is certainly touching, and belies the usual accusation of Tolkien's emotional detachment. But why is it in The Two Towers? It took up time that could have been used to remedy some other niggles.

5. Why are the Ents suddenly stupid? This reminds me of my complaint about Ms. Cherie Blair, leading British lawyer, pleading legal naivety. Fangorn, who is older the Sauruman himself, has to be tricked by these pathetic hobbits? And where did the great song of the Ents go? It's a wonderful scene. I suspect, though, that this one is fixed by the eventual extended DVD.

6. Gandalf is not an exorcist. He should not, therefore, be performing exorcisms on Theoden.

7. If Gandalf is not an exorcist, Gimli is even more emphatically not a diminutive clown. His scenes were funny, I admit, but honestly, Gimli the mighty isn't in the book just as comic relief.

Despite all this, I enjoyed the film the second time. Gollum is a triumph, as is the battle at Helm's Deep for the most part. Treebeard, aside from his ridiculous and inexplicable stupidity, is surprisingly good. I was impressed by the depth to which the books have been plumbed for good lines, though they often appear in the mouths of the wrong person. There's some good stuff from Frodo and Sam, which is good, since I think that besides the climactic moments in Return of the King, the journey of Frodo and Sam is the least exciting part of the entire book. It's a worthy second film in what may end up beinig a great series, depending on how good Return of the King is. More importantly, I'm not sure anyone else could have adapted LOTR any better then what Jackson has done. So I'm pretty happy. And I'll reward them with my money.

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DATE: Friday, December 20, 2002 -----
I'm waiting for confirmation that certain people have seen The Two Towers before saying anything more about it. Let's just say that I've seen it twice now, the first time in a great lather, and the second with much more enjoyment.

The only other news is that I'm moving my food operation to a new blog, entitled The Waddling Kitchen. For now, I think I've made it private, but I'll eventually open it up once I feel I have some idea what I'm going to do with it.



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DATE: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 -----
Who Stole the Tarts? has provided me with two important services. Firstly, Alice has kindly reminded me who gave me the idea for the student archetype series I've been writing. I knew I had copied it from somewhere, but couldn't for the life of me remember where. So, thank you. It's really so typical of me; I'm an expander rather then an original thinker. I'm the person who comes in and takes the joke in a strange direction, but I never make the original joke. The second thing she (I'm assuming the author is she) has done for me is dig up some of my posts, but I've tried now to find all of them in the series. So here.

The Cackler,The Sidler,The White Knight, The Poker,The Black Hole.



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DATE: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 -----
I haven't seen the Two Towers yet (that will happen later today, as well as tommorrow), but I thought I would take the opportunity of arguing some points that have bothered me for a while.

All the less then sterling reviews of TTT I've seen have come from people annoyed with the message of the film, particularly from the English press. To them, TTT is an anachronistic anti-democratic screed, a portrayal of the most bloodthirsty variety of global holy war. I thought I would deal with a couple of these misconceptions.

1a. As Tolkien himself said so many times, LOTR isn't an allegory. He's just retelling what actually happened at some unspecifiied moment in the past. It's not what he wishes would happen, or what he thinks ought to happen, but simply a retelling of what did occur. To attack LOTR for a policy position, per Tolkien, would be like attacking Runciman's book on the Crusades for what it depicts. So I don't think there is even an issue. But I'm willing to argue on the ground of LOTR as an allegory, just for the sake of debate.

1. LOTR isn't a pro-monarchy (in the functional sense; I don't think Tolkien had any problem with the ceremonial British monarchy) book. Yes, Aragorn ends up being king. People do indeed grovel to him. But the point, surely, is that he's not human. We can't have a monarchy like that of Gondor here in our time because we can't have the mighty Elessar, the heir of Elendil, the bearer of Anduril. He doesn't exist. As Tolkien tells it, he passed away, and with him the last hope for that kind of government. Just look at Theoden for what a human king can become without the help of his betters, who, incidentally, don't exist anymore. Democracy as the least worst thing isn't a new idea.

2. There is indeed a lack of women in LOTR. However, the ones who do exist are vital. Particularly Eowyn. Do all these people miss entirely that she banishes the Lord of the Nazgul? The entire book is about how people shouldn't be underestimated just because of who they are or what they look like. It applies just as well to women as to hobbits. Sure, it's not quite a late 20th century portrayal, but it wasn't written in the late 20th century, was it?

3. Tolkien isn't advocating holy war against other men. The idea that a veteran of WWI wanted more holy wars is so ridiculous as to defy explanation. The orcs, just so people understand, aren't people. They're terrible mockeries of man, depending on what part of Tolkien's writing you believe, created by the hand of evil itself to foul the wonderful creation of God. The actual people used by Sauron are shown, in the end, to be misguided, as having been tricked. And they're neither slaughtered nor villified, but granted a mercy they don't necesarily deserve.

Indeed, as it was in the 70's, LOTR is much more a book on the contemporary left then anything else. Far from being conservative, it's very peculiar form of early 20th century anti-industrialism (see the wonderful G.K Chesterton for examples of this, as well as the much less interesting John Ruskin) is an exact analogue, one would think, to the modern anti-globalisation movement. As the National Review points out today, one imagines that Tolkien himself would be not well pleased with America today; I remember one of his letters pointing out that he wasn't sure whether a Soviet or US victory would be better, since both represented a form of mindless tyranny. I don't agree with such opinions, being a great fan of industrial capitalism. But if Tolkien is a conservative, he's one of a very odd variety indeed. He doesn't wish it to be 1850, but 1410.

And yes, I know I'm probably twisting what Tolkien actually might have said. But I'm sure what I just wrote is a lot more accurate then the usual blather written about LOTR.

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DATE: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 -----
Please note that for the next two days at least, I'll be lost in a wave of Two Towers inspired hysteria. I don't know how long I've waited to see Theoden ride, or to watch Orthanc fall to the Ents, but it's longer then I've studied law, that's for sure. And the reviews are encouraging, though I hear they've ruined Faramir. Anyway...

Also, there are two blogs that have linked to me recently, and aren't on my blog roll. They'll be added eventually. I just haven't had the inclination to do template fixing. Anyway, they are Janeway Speaks, and Paul's Boutique.

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DATE: Monday, December 16, 2002 -----
Well, I have to admit I'm not posting too much right now. Basically, I'm just partaking in the twin comforts of bed and pantry, and relaxing. I did, however, spend last night at a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio over at the University of Maryland. The concert was great fun, as that piece always is. But I was astounded at the facilities of that UM is able to offer its students. What a concert hall.

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DATE: Sunday, December 15, 2002 -----
I'm back in DC now. The only think I'll mention about that is that having your plane struck by lightning twice in rapid succession, post 9/1, is a little nervewracking. Just a touch.

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DATE: Friday, December 13, 2002 -----
That's it. The first semester of law school is done, and exams, post christmas, are all that is left to deal with. I'm going to wait till after exams to post a general impression of this semester. And I'm not going to talk too much about exams. What you will get, however, closer to the time, is an allegorical explanation of how I see these things. I'm sure it'll cement some people's belief that I'm a bit nuts, but that's fine. Otherwise.

Job Application Meter

Rejections: 7
Waiting for grades: 3
Pending: lots


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DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 -----
Another in a continuing series. . .

The White Knight The White Knight has never seen a windmill at which she didn't tilt. She's never seen a suit of shining armour she hasn't thrown herself into, and there isn't a horse to which she hasn't stapled herself bodily. The White Knight doesn't take the moral high ground; she thinks she actually is the moral high ground, hurling from above thunderbolts of holy righteousness. The defence of infancy? She's against it; children have full rights; if they want to divorce their parents and marry their uncles, more power to them. Products liability? Since we can't destroy capitalism through the ballot box, might as well unleash justice through the courts! What's the problem with contracting rights between cohabiting partners? Well, what about the polyamorous? The White Knight is here to destroy the law and erect the truth. The Law, however, is not easily budged from the rocking chair of historical precedent, and as it squints through the tired eyes of centuries' toil, you can just hear it saying "oh, another one of you? I'll wear you down yet.". But for now, the avenger remains enthusiastic. And annoying.

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DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 -----
The course evaluation I should have written for my lawyering class:

This is the worst class I have ever taken. It is boring, repetetive, monotonous, repetetive, and indeed, boring. It wasn't just humdrum, but both hum and drum. It was poppy, and yet cock. It was pointless, worthless, ill run, and senseless. Skipping this class was the most efficient of efficient breaches. If you gave me a choice of all the classes in the world to skip, this would be the one I would chose. I'd rather do just about anything, then go to this class.


What I actually wrote: Awful class. Needs to be shortened.


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DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 -----
I've just discovered the real reason people date within the law school. If you study with your girlfriend, you acquire not only the usual things one gets with girlfriends, but also someone to look after your stuff when you need to go off for a snack, or to the bathroom, or whatever. They're like one of those safety locks, but they never have false alarms. Oh, the endless ingenuity of my classmates.

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DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 -----
I'm amazed how insiduous torts can be. We're studying products liability just now;just as a very down and dirty kind of explanation, this means several things; a) even if a company takes an outlandish amount of care, they're liable if a manufacturing defect causes an injury. and b) (and much more annoyingly) if something can be shown to be dangerous in its current state for use in its intended way or in any reasonably forseeable way, and there is a reasonable alternative design, then the company can be liable. Even if the person chose this design because it was faster, or cheaper or whatever. (with some exceptions and modifications; I'm writing this off the top off my head).

And it's so easy to just go to sleep on this and to accept the assumptions that the professor is making. It's just plain easy to get lost in the delightful complication of language; should the standard be this collection of words, or this other? But then, the real implications of this academic fiddling hit you, and I make a point of occassionally arguing them in class. People don't have the liberty to choose kind of dangerous equipment? The courts decide how products should be made? What's going on here?

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DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 -----
My section went out to dinner last night, paid for by the school. No complaints about the idea, even if a jelly bean excreting plastic cow in honour of Rose 2d. (a famous cow in contracts) wouldn't have been the first thing I would have thought of as a gift.

But really, I just have a plea to restaurants. "They won't notice the food is bland if we just double the quantity" is not a good tactic. It might make money; I don't know. But how about tasteful mounds of food, at the minimum? anyway, that's the complaint of the day.

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DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 -----
There's a somewhat difficult to explain scandal brewing in England, involving the Prime Minister's wife. Suffice to say that her main defence is naivety, even if I'm not sure that the whole thing isn't a tempest in a teacup. But anyway; naivety from one of the top lawyers in the country? Come on, now.

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DATE: Sunday, December 08, 2002 -----
I was reading more of that book about the American cooking in a small French kitchen yesterday, and got to his rather unfortunate description of foie gras. Now, I'll eat the stuff if someone else is paying. It's good. But as I sit here trying to do torts, the only thing I can think of is undisgested corn pouring out of the slaughtered duck's stomach cavity. The image isn't helping.

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DATE: Sunday, December 08, 2002 -----
Darn it. I just wrote a post, and it's vanished. I'll try to recreate it.

What I was saying was that I'm just reading a hardcopy of Le Figaro, the French right of centre paper. I normally read the leftist Le Monde online, but when I feel like relaxing, the former is much better. The reason for this is largely that Le Figaro is traditionally written for the comfortably situated French middle class, and therefore is generally replete with the kind of food and lifestyle issues so typical of the French. I only now finished off an article about how a certain type of wine might go with less fatty oysters, but that to drink it with other varieties of the popular seafood is nigh on heresy.

Anyway, the point is that I owe a sincere apology to Jean-Paul Raffarin, the French Prime Minister. When he was elected, I scoffed at the idea that he might be of any use. As I remember putting it, Raffarin was likely nothing more then a communist by another name, yet another devotee to the cult of the thieving hyper state. I was wrong. In his quiet and efficient way, Raffarin is in the middle of demolishing many of the "achievements" of the previous Socialist government, including its ill conceived 35 hour work week, some of its concessions to the overpowerful labour unions, and its obsession with state owned enterprise. That's not to say that Raffarin espouses the kind of libertarian eonomic policy I might favour, but he's a lot closer to it then I first thought. More power to you, Mr. Raffarin.

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DATE: Saturday, December 07, 2002 -----
A columnist has written a sarcastic article castigating the award of the peace prize to Carter; not because it was clearly a jab at Bush, but because, apparently, Carter too was evil. But look at these two examples of his evil.

" For re-arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Thailand after they were defeated by the Vietnamese. . . .

For encouraging the rise of the Christian right. "

These are equivalents?

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DATE: Friday, December 06, 2002 -----
Much earlier in this blog I made fun of people who spout their "feelings" in class. But now, I have to mention the opposite extreme, which I've only just noticed.

The Poker: the job of the poker is to answer any possible question with a quotation from the text. So, when the professor asks "How do we apply the rule in X to the current hypo?", the poker sees it as his opportunity to spring into action, stabbing at his hapless book with heroic profundity. "Judge Friendly, on page 424, says that there would be liability, in the second sentence of the third full paragraph". When informed that the sentence cited doesn't necessarily apply, this doesn't discourage him in the slightest. He just picks a different sentence. "Oh, right. Then how about what Cardozo says on 430. Also, I think the comments of the Restatement cover it", he says, as he jabs his fingers into the book or holds up heavily highlighted photocopies. "I think that's what he was saying there'. The problem is that what the prof inevitably wants is some logical policy argument, which hasn' t been made anywhere in the casebook. It's like showing the professor card after card in a deck of cards, when what she actually wants is the box.

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DATE: Friday, December 06, 2002 -----
I just read that Germany is yet again cutting its defense expenditure, even while it criticizes hypothetical US actions in Iraq. Now, I welcome criticism; our plan might not be the right one, it might be extreme, it might be ill targeted or ill timed, and it might just be wrong, or stupid or crazy. But only peer states can give this kind of advice. Only powers that understand the weight of world responsibility have purchased the authority to stand up and be counted. If we're right, and Iraq is going to funnel arms to Al-Quaeda, it won't be the Germans who are left cleaning up the mess, and who are left to strike in angry desperation. Because, frankly, they can't strike anyone, and neither can Europe. Only the mighty can advise the mighty.

The problem, then, is that the once great European Powers (France and Germany particularly) have lebkuchen ambitions and chocolate eclair backbones. I don't want them to have no ambition; Europe deserves to be a great power, a super power, or even what they now call a hyper power. But let me give them a hint; high taxes, low military spending, and idiotic redistributive welfare states? Not the way to do it.

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DATE: Friday, December 06, 2002 -----
There was a job fair today, sponsored very generously by the black students law association. There were a lot of big firms there, and I talked at least to most of them. It was kind of an education; I made an ass of myself a couple of times, but then they can't have expected we would have memorized what each firm did exactly. Anyway, from the more candid people, it seemed like even some of the NY BIGLAW firms are hurting seriously. Most weren't even recruiting 1L's; they were just here to up their profile for next year. Anyway, it was a really good experience.

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DATE: Friday, December 06, 2002 -----
Responses from my job search so far:
Firms who wants grades: 2
Interviews: 0
Rejection: 0
Pending: Lots


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DATE: Thursday, December 05, 2002 -----
I'm not sure I remember the last time I agreed with anything written in the Guardian. But this, this I agree with.

To set the scene, there is a really, really, really ,famous golf course in the town where I went to university, known largely because it's supposedly one of the oldest courses in the world, and also the home of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. In any case, I know the course rather well, not because I'm a golfer as such, but because on Sundays it closes and therefore is open for the townspeople/students to go tramping around on. When it got a little warmer in May and early June, I would sometimes even go and lie on the course somewhere around the 8th hole, a good 2 miles I would guess out of town. Even in winter, I enjoyed walking around, looking at the townspeople's dogs happily running around (though I'm not personally a big pet person, I do like seeing the animals enjoy themselves) and taking looks back at the town, which got more more picturesque as you got further out. Can you tell I liked the town in general? Anyway.

The 17th hole at this course is undeniably nasty. The drive has to be hit over a hotel (the locals will tell you over which letter in the hotel's sign you should aim), and if you're exactly accurate and the wind isn't up too much, it might just land in a strip of fairway still a good bit from the hole. And now, the fun begins. Because from here, you have three choices.

a) hit it short of the green, at which point you have to do one of the next two things on the third shot anyway, and you're only playing for par even if you do that.
b) try to hit it onto the green, aiming short. At which point the ball will roll merrily off the green into one of the most extraordinary bunkers in golf, from which even professionals sometimes take 5 strokes to get out of, which means you'll inevitably try too hard and wack it past the green to the road and wall.
c) try to hit it onto the green, aiming short. At which point the ball lands either on the gravel path beyond the green, or so close to the stone wall that you can't do anything at all. Even if you're lucky enough to get the ball on the gravel, the fact that it is gravel means you can't really get under the ball satisfactorily, which also usually means that you'll hit it thin, on the blade of the club, which means it will bounce or fly across the green and land in the aforementioned bunker.

At any rate, as the article mentions, they've tamed the bunker, totally ruining all the fun I had as I watched American golfer after American golfer do one or more of the above three things. (the Scots know better, and end up hitting it short and putting it up to the green, from what I could tell). I do hope they reconsider, especially after this clarion call from the mighty, and usually preposterous Guardian.

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DATE: Thursday, December 05, 2002 -----
Well, I just got my first response from a BIGLAW firm in DC. Actually, it wasn't the flat out rejection I expected; they want to see my grades before making any sort of decision. Of course, my grades don't come out till February, because this school has an odd post christmas exam period. So I'll have to email them back just to make sure they know. Still; a not discouraging start.

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DATE: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 -----
I'm just back from a performance of The Messiah downtown. As usual, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but not just for the music. Because I have so little disposable income, living on loans as I do, I always have to get to concert halls early the day of the performance for rush tickets. A a result, I've become quite expert at waiting for concerts, sometimes for as much as three and four hours. I know that it sounds awful, but in reality, I kind of like that time. I usually go have a very plain kind of dinner, either some sort of sandwich or as tonight, some rotisserie chicken, grab the trashiest pulp fantasy or science fiction I can get hold off, and settle down in the restuarant for a couple hours of sipping carbonated beverages and pleasant reading. It's really a nice feeling. No one knows where you are, no one is going to talk to you, and you can't be in the library because you're stuck here, so you just can't feel guilty.The whole thing has become sort of a tradition for me, and it's particularly cathartic at a time when I'm actually working rather hard by my magnificently lazy standards.

Anyway, the concert was sort of mixed in quality, in that I've never heard such a boring first act of this particular piece. For whatever reason, be it design or incompetence, the chorus particularly couldn't seem to care less. In fact, I can't imagine a more ambigious version of the great Chorus "For unto us a child is born . . . and His name shall be called Wonderful! Counsellor!, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father!". It was almost as if they had recruited Seinfeld and a whole coterie of his somewhat ambivalent friends to do the singing. It's "The Mighty God!", definitely not "The Mighty God?". But then it picked up brilliantly; as the music got to its climax, the chorus woke up. I almost think it might be a problem with The Messiah itself. If you want to give the tremenous second act its due, where Handel is at his most imperious and therefore good (see the wonderful tenor aria "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron: Thou shalt dash them into pieces" ), then you almost have to downplay the first act. Anyway, I'm not sure, but by the end my initial impression had changed quite a bit. Maybe even Seinfeld can be roused to passion.

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DATE: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 -----
Along with what seemed like my entire 1st year class, I went to a presentation by the Department of Justice tonight, where they explained what sorts of jobs were available. I have to admit, though, that everyone I talked to left a little befuddled, after the woman representing the DC offices said (to paraphrase); "You were allowed to start applying December 1st. It's now the 3rd. In other words, it's getting late". Yikes. And this for jobs that only pay the piddly sum the law school provides?

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DATE: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 -----
Well, that's it. Contracts is over. One moment, we were doing contracts, the next, he looked up and said; that's it. We're finished. Or words to that effect. Kind of anticlimactic, but there are still classes for review.

Right near the end of the semester, like yesterday, we got to the defense of infancy. In other words, the doctrine that children under the age of majority can only make voidable contracts, which means, to the layman, that children under 18 can get out of any legal obligation they might have undertaken. So where does this leave Early Decision "contracts" for undergrad admissions, whereby a student promises that if she is accepted she will go to that particular college? It seems to me that there's no way they could be enforceable, so that the whole system is either a sham or based on the honor code, depending on how you look at things. Does someone know the answer to this?


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DATE: Monday, December 02, 2002 -----
Someone wrote me recently looking for law school admissions advice. Specifically, they wanted to know if they should mention that they only learned English as a teenager in their application essays. Here's what I wrote back.

Why are you being so coy about a real advantage in your application? You need to beat it to within a inch of its life. Not mentioning it, or mentioning it just as an addendum is almost like realizing that there is a breach in your opponent's battle line, and sending over a squadron of one handed drunken midgets to exploit it. In situations like this, where thousands of well qualified people are competing for the same spots, you ought to be sending everything you have towards that one little hole; not just the midgets, but the minotaurs and the half blind cossacks and everyone else. When the committee finishes reading your application, if they understood nothing else, they should know one thing; you overcame this mountainous obstacle in your path and ended up triumpantly at XXXXX (their college). It's the perfect sob story, short of the one I heard about someone who was kidnapped by pirates.

I think this is good advice, though if someone disagrees I'd like to hear it.

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DATE: Monday, December 02, 2002 -----
Well, I'm off to the races. Out with the morning's post went 60 applications to big firms in DC, another 6 to little places in Virginia, one to London, and another to a corporation in the further suburbs of VA. From now on, I'll be working, much more slowly, on my public interest applications. Those tend not to have the same pressure to get done, and they're also much more likely for me to have some success with. Anyway, I'll be posting results as they come in. Stay tuned for rejections en masse.


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DATE: Saturday, November 30, 2002 -----
To keep myself from going stir crazy (I hate working at home, but the library is shut on holiday), I went over to a local bookstore and read a couple of chapters from a new book I've been meaning to get hold of, entitled something like "You can't see Paris from Here", by Michael S. Sanders. The basic premise is that Mr. Sanders spent a year in the sole restaurant of a tiny town in southern France, though since the action hadn't yet begun when I felt obligated to put the thing down and return here, I don't know what exactly he does. In any case, what I did read reminded me of why the French are so far our superiors in the realm of food.

One episode I thought particularly amusing found our hero waiting intently for the chef to begin cooking on one evening, notebook in hand. The great man arrived almost on cue, delicately sauteeing some liver in the incredible butter of the French countryside. He then removed the liver, nonchalantly fried up some croutons, whizzed it all into a beautiful looking pate, flavoured it to taste with salt, and finally set the whole delicious production in a bowl to cool. At this point, Sanders was in a frenzy of writing, apparently, wondering what sort of amazing amuse bouche or appetizer the chef had created with such mindless panache. At which point, of course, the chef whistled for his dog, put the bowl on the floor, cleaned his hands off, and went off to get started on prep for the real food.

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DATE: Saturday, November 30, 2002 -----
I've spent the last two days hoping that one of my friends is a giant liar, but I know he's not. You see, before his present incarnation as a law student, he was an investment banker. We were talking about my insecurities vis a vis the amount of work law firms demand, when he pointed out that this was one issue he couldn't even comprehend anymore. You see, when he worked as a banker, he spent from 8 am to 1 am at the office every day, and that was a slow week. The harder weeks, he said, involved that schedule plus two days where he didn't sleep at all. In fact, the only way he got through it, apparently, was by having a very hot shower at 5 am, which tricked his body into thinking a new day had started up. Right. Sure.

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DATE: Saturday, November 30, 2002 -----
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope the holiday passed well for all. I stayed here at the law school, but had a great dinner with friends at a hotel. I'll see my family at Christmas.

So, the resumes, after a day or two of rest, are back on the assembly line. I'm getting there, and they'll be mailed out on Monday for sure. I'll post my first wave then, and keep you up to date on results.



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DATE: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 -----
There is a really funny snippet right at the bottom of this article.

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DATE: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 -----
When I first started on these job letters this morning, it seemed hopeless. How was I going to come up with something useful to say for each of these firms? (I'm eschewing a pure mail merge approach, since I think personalizing the letters must help, as I say below). But it's actually amazing how much 'colorable' experience we all have, even when our jobs have consisted of nothing but a bunch of somewhat second rate summer and vacation placements. For example, I was just looking at a smallish firm in my real hometown (a suburb of DC), which specializes in construction contracting. Initially, I was stumped, but then it occurred to me that I actually had helped someone file suit against the SNCF (the French rail authority) while constructing a factory on land we had leased from them. Sure, it's not a big deal, but it's still something to write. Anyway, onward. Only 60 more to go!

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DATE: Monday, November 25, 2002 -----
After driving us like some sort of Egyptian pyramid stone pulling team for the last two weeks, our Contracts professor just went and gave us the day off tommorrow. Woohoo!

In other news, I'm sitting here busily personalizing my letters to DC area firms with information drawn from their web sites. It's kind of tedious, but I hear it might help. I have to admit, though, that I refuse to believe that any of these firms really hire 1L's. What could we possibly be good for? Nonetheless, our career office insists some 45% of our 1L class got (presumably paid) firm jobs last summer. Feh.

Anyway, I'm going to expose my whole job process to my loyal reader(s) here at Waddling Thunder, mostly as a public service effort for 1L's who may come after me. What I hope to answer is basically one major question; in the best of circumstances (i.e, top school, connection to a particular area, lots of effort on my part) does the mail merge letter bomb tactic work as a first year, or is it a waste of paper and stamps? My bet is on the latter result, but let's see.

The fun will start of December 1st, when I'll post my first wave of applications, both literally in the mailbox and figuratively here on the blog. Wish me luck!

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DATE: Monday, November 25, 2002 -----
Fantastic! I got the course I was hoping for, a study of american constitutionalism from 1620 to 1820. So my schedule for next semester will include property, criminal law, more lawyering, and this history course. In other news, I just went and spent 40 dollars on paper and envelopes for resumes, only to find most of my section huddled around the stationary aisle in staples. The madness begins!

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DATE: Sunday, November 24, 2002 -----
Time for my foodly musings of the week .First thing is to acknowledge thanksgiving with this recipe, which I'll be trying later on in the week.Pumpkin Bread and Butter Pudding

As for my own meals this week, I'm feeling the need for some comforting stodginess, as I always do at this time of year. What's stodgier then polenta and sausages? Therefore, here's my recipe for a quasi italian style meal.
Make a tomato sauce, however you do it. Could be as simple as opening a jar or a tin, or as complicated as chopping up tomatoes, simmering with fried garlic, onions, etc. Honestly, though, in the winter I think tinned tomatoes are probably as good as anything gets.
Polenta, for those who don't know, is basically corn meal, though I take it its ground slightly differently. In any case, all it takes to cook, in at least in the form we get it in, is some water and a couple strangely satisfying minutes of boiling and stirring, almost like semolina. Obviously, you can gussy it up with as much butter/cream as you want, though I honestly don't know what the Italians might do with it. Given polenta's rather humble background, though, I'm given to thinking that it and butter have been rather distant relations historically. As for the sausages, just cook or fry them until their wonderful skin is sticky and hot, oozing spicy and delicious juices. Then just assemble, and enjoy. Or that, at least, is the theory; I've never tried it before.

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DATE: Sunday, November 24, 2002 -----
Well, a productive weekend, if I may say so myself. So far I've finished off my open memo, read a rather ridiculous contracts assignment (11 cases, I think!?!), finished off a scholarship application, written my resume (though not my cover letters), read and commented on 7 college admissions essays for my sister, and rumbled through a good three hundred pages of Edmund Morris's biography of Theodore Roosevelt (who, incidentally, emerges as an interesting man, even if he is caracatured by Morris as being something of a lean mean grizzly bear killing machine). This, I think, is the actual point of law school. It's not that anything I'm doing is hard at all; but to some extent, law school is the intellectual equivalent of boot camp. If there was any laziness in you before, it gets ironed out here. Let me guarantee you, there was plenty lazy in me before (as my friends who spent hours chatting with me in the famous 'lobby' will know).

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DATE: Saturday, November 23, 2002 -----
In my spare moments, I've been watching more and more of the Lord of the Rings extended DVD. What I'm working through now is the director's audio commentary over the entire film. There really is some interesting stuff there. Right now, what I particularly remember is Peter Jackson's extreme discomfort with the Balrog; like Tolkien himself, he struggled mightilyto find a way to portray a creature of such terror, of such menace, that even Gandalf could only hope to fall with him into the deep of Moria. In the end, I think he failed, and the commentary gives the sense that he actually knows he did so. The flaming sooty bull thing was somewhat powerful, but not in my mind something that could have entered the mythology of the elves as a bane. Actually, when I took my uncle to see LOTR in Paris, he said something very interesting, given that he had never read the books. That Balrog thing, he pointed out, just wasn't scary enough. And, with his characteristic originality, he argued that a better way of doing him was as a moving shadow of soot and dark flame, but who reflected fire on the walls as he moved. As he put it, giving something physical form just decreases the terror. I think he's right.

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DATE: Friday, November 22, 2002 -----
A couple of weeks back, we read the quite famo us case of Stilk v. Myrick in contracts. To summarize the ruling, Lord Ellenborough decided that two sailors who had been promised extra wages while at sea after two of their shipmates had deserted could not enforce their contract, since there was no consideration, no bargain, for their extra money. In doing so, he affirmed for different reasons a decision by a lower court judge, who had come to the same result via an argument of public policy.

Now, the second I saw the result of that case, combined with the date of 1809 for the decision and 1806 for the events, all sorts of alarm bells went off in my head. A British judge overruling a public policy consideration governing the merchant marine's path to the BALTIC (!)(i.e the source of british timber) in the middle of war with Napoleon? You've got to be kidding. I've been meaning to do research on this for weeks, but haven't got the chance. Since I had a spare hour tonight, I got to work on Westlaw and Lexis, and came up with a very preliminary explanation.

Unless I'm being way too cynical, I'm sure there's a political explanation which goes something like this. The precedent which Ellenborough was overuling in Stilk (i.e Harris v. Watson) had been written by Lord Kenyon, who had been Ellenborough's predecessor in the post of Chief Justice. They, apparently, didn't like each other. In fact, Kenyon was apparently disliked by most of the bar, and especially by the perpetually angry Ellenborough. Put on top of this that Kenyon had distinctly different political positions then Ellenborough, in a time of great political turbulence, and you've got the beginnings of an explanation. What I'm saying, in other words, is that Ellenborough probably wanted to overturn this quite important precedent of his disliked precedessor. The problem, however, was the fact that Kenyon was right; the contract was void for public policy reasons, otherwise you'd have british sailors demanding all sorts of things in the middle of war with Napoleon, which had reached a critical stage at that point (Napoleon had just unveiled, I think, his Contintental system of trade blockades). So he fudged; he found this consideration doctrine, stretched all sorts of facts to make it fit, and got his decision.

Nonsense, you say. A judge, that political? Well, Ellenborough wasn't apparently just a judge. In 1806 he had also accepted a position in the cabinet, the last chief justice to do such a thing in British history.In fact, his entire career had been deeply political, starting with a famous case defending a former governor general of india from accusations of corruption. And could he really be as ridiculous as I make him out to be? Well, he did add ten capital offenses to the British legal code, though I haven't yet discovered what they may be.

* I've just noticed that someone else has made much the same argument as I have, but implicitly. 80 years later, in Foakes v. Beer, a lawyer trying to argue that contracts opting out of legal duties shouldn't be enforced on the basis of public policy actually cites Stilk. In other words, eight decades had turned Ellenborough's fancy scamper into an affirmation of Kenyon's decision in Harris. No surprise, because public policy was actually the only sensible reason there.

By the way, I know this is amateurish. I was bored and sleepy; it's as good as I can do. Hopefully I'll get myself together and actually put up the citations.


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DATE: Thursday, November 21, 2002 -----
I went to watch a moot court adjudicated by a Judge Who Will Remain Nameless (JWWRN) the other day. It was all very interesting, but my habitually perverse mind picked up on one, and totally irrelevant, point. Every time JWWRN made what he decided was a clever argument, he leaned back in his chair with what, to most, was a mystifying look on his face. Mystifying, at least, until you thought about it for a minute, and realized where you had seen it before. It you had changed his race, gotten rid of his hair, and made him a good deal taller and more athletic, he was the spitting image of Michael Jordan after draining another three pointer, or after waltzing lazily around yet another hapless defender. You know the look Jordan got, the one that combined surprise at his own outlandosity with pity for his opponents and worry that he might not be able to contain himself? Same exact thing here.

I shouldn't be surprised, though. I guess these kind of people are the Michael Jordans of the non-athletic world, people who are used to being the smartest person in the room. And just like Jordan, they've all got their own fan clubs among the hopeless nerds of the world. After all, that's the only explanation for the fact that most of the law school had gathered in the closed circuit room with chips and beer to watch. Now I know why their day life is verboten talk in the homes of my married friends; it just doesn't translate well to reality.

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DATE: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 -----
A stylized extract from Torts, to give you a sense of what frustrates us sometimes:

". . . opinion of Friendly, we don't want to go to Wagon Mound. Friendly doesn't want to take the integral of the risk curve, but rather sees it as expansive. America has restricted breach and wider causation, Britain the reverse. Which is better? I don't know; think about what would make the world a better place. But the important thing to remember, the rule, is that the flying octopus is definitely the master of the colapticon. The * Flying * Octopus * is * the * Master! Get it? Thought so: you're all smart, right?. . . "

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DATE: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 -----
I read an article from the WSJ sent to me by a friend (I can't post it because of copyright concerns) which lamented the loss of rigour and intellectual debate, particuarly at Harvard Law School, as part of a general growth in the concern for student's feelings. I don't know all about that, but what I did think about was the difference between Rigour and Pedantry. They're not the same thing.

Rigour: learning the Blue Book through work on memos and journals
Pedantry: having Blue Book pop quizzes.

Rigour: questioning students about cases, and pressing them when they give equivocal answers
Pedantry: Storming out in a show of disgust about unpreparedness

Rigour: assigning a three hour open book exam
Pedantry: assigning a three hour handwritten closed book exam.

Rigour: mentioning that briefs are a good way to learn the logic of cases
Pedantry: threatening to fail students for not having them. (thanks to Nikkiesq for that idea. Ugh)

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DATE: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 -----
Black Hole: The kind of law school student who assumes that if there are several hands raised, and the professor calls on someone, the someone is him. Usually proceeds regardless of evidence to the contrary, including the fact that said professor is looking at a different part of the class, has said someone else's name, or has asked a rhetorical question. Known for engulfing class conversation.

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DATE: Sunday, November 17, 2002 -----
I'm just about to post some revisions to the carbonara recipe. I know you've all been waiting for them.

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DATE: Sunday, November 17, 2002 -----
I saw a cartoon the other day depicting the Supreme Court justices as superheroes. My favorite was the drawing of Rehnquist, shown wearing a green outfit emblazoned with a giant gold 'R'. As the artist put it, the Chief's superpower was that he was blessed with "Federalist Vision":- the ability to see States' rights everywhere. Well, it's still better then "Flatulence Man" of Whose Line is it Anyway fame.

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DATE: Sunday, November 17, 2002 -----
I've been following news concerning the long British road towards serious tuition fees in their universities. The problem is very much like the one their health service faces; tuition fees, which they mysteriously call 'top up' fees, have become the ten ton shibbeloth. Everyone knows they're going to be introduced, but it's very much the love that none dare mention. Superficially, the argument against them can be made sensibly (sensibly, at least, when I dump my antipathy to taxation, government spending, the existence of a large government in the first place, etc). To make the point in brief, 'top up fees' will shut the middle classes out of the university system, bringing back an elitist system of education divided between universities which can charge whatever the want and still get applications, and poor, despondent universities dependent wholly on the government teat. This is bad, so we need to not introduce top up fees. By the way, look at America, where this system exists. Isn't America bad? Argument won.

The problem with this line of argument is that it makes terribly little sense when you look at it through the prism of individal responsibility. Let's go through it that way, shall we?
1. A university education is a valuable asset: Getting a degree from a university radically shifts your maximum earning potential, if you want it so shifted. This is even more true in Britain, where the proportion of degrees is still much lower then it is here in America.
2. People should pay for valuable assets
3. The argument that people do pay for their assets through income tax is BS. The 18 year old mine worker, or the 30 year old non-childed person, shouldn't have to pay so that I can flounce around in the ivory tower as long as I want, or for at least four years.

The taxers do have a response. That's all well and good, they say, but where are people going to get the money?

Well, loans, obviously. I'm taking forty-eight thousand dollars of loans this year, and it doesn't faze me in the slightest. Why? Because I know that the product I'm getting is useful. The kind of fees that are seriously being discussed in Britain (eight thousand dollars a year or so) have nothing to do with the figure above. On top of which, the whole fee thing only kicks in if your family makes above a certain figure, and if you later make less then the legislated threshold, you'll never repay anything. It's totally fail-safe. If you make money later, you pay the money the state put out for your education back.If you don't, you've nicked a free education. What's not to like from the leftist point of view?

The answer, obviously, is not that this plan will limit educational opportunity in the slightest. In fact, it will probably make people more serious about their university experience. If you peer through the various layers of obfuscation, the real problem the left has with private funding is that they'll have one less excuse for their enslaving levels of general taxation. In actual fact, the university funding system is just a redistribution ploy, nothing but a desperate effort to justify yet another few points of income theft. They'll never admit any such thing, obviously. I don't blame them. But pretending it's not true doesn't make the truth go away.

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DATE: Saturday, November 16, 2002 -----
Based on my below irritation, I'm starting a new feature on Waddling Thunder, beginning now and hopefully continuing weekly. Let's call it Waddling Thunder's Recipe of the week, and other such stuff. . I suppose my main effort will be to share what knowledge of cooking for relatively busy people I have. At least, that's how I'm fitting this into the law school rubric.

My offering this time will be something I was discussing with the same friend whose comment about my site I have posted to the right, there. I hope she's not annoyed now that I've stolen both her bon mot and her current food obsession, but if she is you'll notice one or both will disappear. Anyway, to the point. Spaghetti Carbonara.

The first point to make is that you can do this dish pretty much any way you like, can think up, feel like doing, etc. I do happen to think, however, that there are certain necessary components.
1. Pasta- I like fat, flat noodles, mostly because they feel substantial. Others like the thin and round spaghettini, or just plain old spaghetti. Whatever. The only thing I would warn against are shapes like penne or farfalle. They'll work too, but I think they miss the point slightly. Sucking up great swathes of cheesy, eggy, and bacony noodles is half the fun of carbonara, at least for me.
2. Bacon- You can use whatever kind of bacon you can get hold of, honestly. If you can get the mild and delicous italian pancetta, do so. It's fantastic, even if it'll cost you a bit extra. And get it in chunks rather then already diced or, even worse, in slices. I just feel like there's something insubstantial about slices of pancetta; I really want to get my teeth into the meat. But if all you have is a couple of slices of good old American bacon around, you're fine too. It's all good.
3. Cheese- You need grated Italian hard cheese. I like either parmiggiano regiano or pecorino romano. My only recommendation here is to get stuff imported from Italy if you can find it. The gulf between it and the kraft stuff in the green tin is just really big, even though one of my guilty pleasures is to absolutely plaster some pasta with the kraft cheese.
4. egg- You need eggs. From chickens. (just in case I get a complaint from someone wondering why their quail egg recipe didn't work).

Now. I'll post how I do it, but I'll consult with the above friend and see what she does as well next time I talk to her. For my part, I boil the pasta in a lot of salted boiling water (i.e, let the water get up to boiling before throwing the noodles in). Then I take it out, and fry up the roughly diced bacon until it's slightly charred and crispy like. Then the pasta gets thrown in (I will occasionally precede this with a little white wine, which I'll reduce with the bacon to a sticky syrup), along with a knob of butter. I then coat the hot pasta with the butter, which happily melts, hurl in quite a ridiculous amount of cheese, and then, with the fire off, add in a full egg and a yolk. At this point it's a race against time. If you dilly dally, so to speak, you end up with either pasta, bacon, and scrambled eggs or just cold and stiff carbonara. So I whip fanatically until the egg solidifies into a sauce, add some pepper and salt, and then eat as fast as I can. Needless to say, there's a chunk of pancetta sitting in my fridge right now, waiting for when I can eat it. It really is good stuff.

*revisions!
I discussed this with my friend, and we came up with the following additional points.
1. You need to grate the cheese right beforehand. Just tastes better that way.
2. If it's a choice between really bad parmesan and good cheddar, put in the good cheddar. The point at the end is to have something that tastes good.
3. Use lots of freshly ground black pepper.
4. To avoid the scrambled egg thing, beat the egg lightly before throwing it in. Alternatively, do everything as above, and then only add the egg at the table, provided you have warm plates.
5. You probably only need one egg per person. But I'm greedy.
6. If you're using American bacon, you should probably leave out the butter. It's mostly there to loosen up the pasta before you put the egg on, so use pasta water instead.

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DATE: Saturday, November 16, 2002 -----
I hate, hate, hate, pretentious food writers. The mere idea of turning the most basic function of human life into some sort of elitist competition is so irritating I can hardly stand it. Yes, by all means eat the most sophisticated food you can find. And go on and write about it; I hardly mean to suggest that we have to limit ourselves to some sort of quasi-proletarian diet consisting of nothing but buffalo wings, chips, and burgers (all of which I like, incidentally). But we need to recognize that the foods we think are sophisticated or elite either actually are or arose from the most common foods of other people. There is nothing sophisticated about French cheese; some people a few hundred years ago needed some more calories, so they came up with these ways to convert milk into a food. Pizza, even that of the most astonishing quality, is nothing but some dough with sauce and cheese. Even the most complicated creations of French culinary science, such as the various forms of confit, are nothing but desperate efforts to preserve rapidly decomposing food. The point these captains of pretentiosity don't understand is that the basic roots of these foods have nothing to do with how things taste. A good French cheese can be a wonderful experience; being back in America now, I find myself thinking fondly of them all the time. Pizza or bread, alternatively crunchy and chewy, is an equally sublime sort of thing. But they're plain old foods, just as normal and uncomplicated as a Mcdonald's hamburger. The creator of these delicacies is certainly a master, a craftsman of great honour. But he's not some sort of priest.

The wider point is that the more pretentious food writers get, the more the vast majority of people feel that good food isn't for them. It's not at all a matter of money. Lots of people have enough money to buy this stuff. But if there's an insufferable snob sprawled all over the whole subject, stiff with the fear that someone might steal his lingo, you can see how people can be turned entirely off. And it's a shame, because food can be one of life's most accessible and pleasurable pleasures.

By the way, if you want an example of a devoutly unpretentious food writer, look for work by Phyllis Richman, the long suffering and now retired food critic of the Washington Post. She knew her caviar, of course, but she also knew her french fries. We'd all be a little better off if people following her example.

I'm not disclosing what caused this outburst, incidentally. It's a little too sensitive.



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DATE: Saturday, November 16, 2002 -----
Woohoo! I just found the new 4 DVD set of Lord of the Rings on sale. I'm salivating already; extra footage, documentaries, maps!

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DATE: Friday, November 15, 2002 -----
The lawyering class was unspeakable, honestly. Imagine 7th grade English class, and you'll get the approximate idea. Our 2L and 3L instructors did give us some advice about course selection, though, which I found singularly unhelpful. Why? Because one recommended a negotiation workshop which involves a committment on both Saturday and Sunday, and otherwise meets twice a week 2pm-6pm, and the other thought the course we really ought to do was Federal litigation, which is assessed in groups. Neither of these options appeal to me, for some reason.

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DATE: Thursday, November 14, 2002 -----
A mouse ran into our torts class this morning, took one desperate look around, and ran out again in what looked like either sheer terror or acute boredom. I'll try not to point out that a lot of us wish we could have joined him. On the positive side, the professor's extremely sore throat left her sounding like what I imagine a particularly incompetent phone sex operator might sound like, which somewhat enlivened today's particularly foofy discussion of legal duty to rescue. So, on the whole, a pretty good day. Lawyering class tonight, though. I can't imagine what horrors lie in store for us there.


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DATE: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 -----
My, uh, 'sources' tell me that the Chief Justice has commissioned his bust. Take that for what it's worth (i.e nothing).

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DATE: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 -----
Among a whole host of other things, I'm busy picking my one elective course for the next semester. The topic I actually wanted to do, a course on Continental legal history, doesn't jibe with my schedule of required courses. I'm still waiting to hear word on whether he'll let me into his concurrent seminar, which would be great. There is, however, a course taught by someone else on american legal history in the 17th and 18th centuries. Not exactly what I wanted, but it will certainly do.

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DATE: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 -----
For a moment, as the chants of 'USA' began resounding through the arena, my mind went back to the professional wrestling of my childhood. Without sounding too much like my own hypothetical grandfather, things were just much simpler then. Wrestling, to a large extent, was a giant morality tale. The 'good' usually defeated the evil. The great warriors of international liberty defeated, for the most part, the fiends of communist and fellow traveler oppression.

These days, however, the chants of USA lasted for only a minute or two, and in any case, they were for an American wrestling a Canadian, of all things. Everything else has got much more complicated. I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, the fact that Hogan wanted to beat up Andre the Giant, and Andre was sure this wasn't going to happen, was considered a good enough plot for most of us. At the wrestling event I took St. Nylan to last week, this kind of thing wasn't even on the map. Rather, just going from memory, the general manager and owner of the various wrestling leagues were caught in an amorous embrace, another wrestler was accused of sleeping with dead people, someone else was plotting to savage one of her fellow women because she was too 'hot' (but failed after a rancorous negotiation involving her head being slammed into a steel door), and the champion was so afraid of a dastardly cohort that he refused to leave his locker room for most of the night. One of the character's entire schtick, apparently, was the fact that she bends over decorously while crossing the into the ring, the amount of fireworks has increased more then exponentially, and the entire plot of the program consists, I think, of the fact that two different leagues owned by the same person are vying for superiority with each other. Back when I was a kid, the hair snipping antics of Brutus the Barber Beefcake were considered quite entertaining enough. Now we've got wrestlers with names I can't even work out (I think one of the tag teams is called 'two minute warning', but I couldn't figure out whether this was their actual title or merely a helpful suggestion). All in all, a confusing, if entertaining, evening was had by all.

I did learn some things, though. Wham-o is considered a good exhortation by die hard wrestling fans up here. Do it 'F-5' style, whatever that might mean, is just as excellent. Disapproval of things can be expressed by loud exclamations regarding the number of nachos you could be buying, have bought, wish could be delivered, or have already eaten. Ideally, all this should be done while consuming a gaint quantity of vastly overpriced snack foods, such as the afore mentioned nachos, pretzels, coke, and hot dogs. Oh, and everyone knows its fake, but the true afficianados base their preferences not on goodness or badness, but, apparently, on the quality of the wrestling. I really have a lot to learn, but I'll start now. Whamo!


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DATE: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 -----
Linking to the Onion is the worst of blogging cliches, but the last sentence of this article is too funny.

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DATE: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 -----
Geez, I just posted something, but it vanished. I'll post the same things again, but I hope it comes back...

I went to that Republican/Federalist job session yesterday, emerging an hour later both somewhat enlightened and disappointed. Enlightened because I learned some interesting things about what sorts of firms and jobs exist on this end of the ideological spectrum. I was disappointed, however, to find that most of private, law firm jobs, especially in the 1L summer, tend to be secured via connections. Just to be clear, this is only a problem because I'm about as well connected to people who might find me jobs as one buoy in the Pacific is connected to another in the Atlantic, when both of them have signs that say 'I'm not connected to anything at all, thank you', plastered all over them. The whole situation degenerated somewhat further when all the panelists pointed out that 'carpet bombing' with resumes was definitely not likely to work for the private sector. Again, this is only a problem because 'carpet bombing' happens to be my only operative strategy. Ah well. I think I'll schedule an appointment with the career people to see what I can do to help my chances, but it may that my original idea of working for some branch of the government this summer is the more likely one.

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DATE: Monday, November 11, 2002 -----
We had a lawyering class today where we specialized on negotiation. The one really interesting to come out of it was an experiment some psychologist has apparently done about a phenomenon known as anchoring.

The way it works is this; you put 20 or so people in a room, spin a roulette wheel, write the number on a blackboard, and then ask them how many people live in Turkey. The result, we were told, is that the answers always cluster around the number (in millions, of course) that came up on the wheel, which we're meant to take as proof of the fact that people like staying with the first number they hear in a negotiation.

What I found a lot more pathetic then that, however, was that anyone at all could conceivably think Turkey had 14 million people. I mean, the whole experiment is quite clearly predicated on people having not even the slightest clue about the size of quite an important country. Ah well.



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DATE: Monday, November 11, 2002 -----
I'm back from the airport, and have sent St. Nylan back home to England. I hope he had a good time here; I certainly was glad to have him around.

His having left, however, means that the Waddling Thunder work Megaloth has to get under way again, otherwise law school might just engulf it. There are various things on my plate.

1. I have an application for an o-so-generous scholarship boiling in my computer at the moment. It suffices to say that the essays for it are direly difficult to write, especially for the kind of person whose writing process resembles some sort of arcane aging process rather then anything more modern.

2. I have to update my outlines. During my hiatous from active work, we went through consideration and half of promissory estoppel in contracts. Though I think I get it, I'll have to have a good think about them.

3. Job applications- for those who don't know, first year law students are allowed to unleash themselves upon employers on december 1st, just as soon as the firms have finished their real hiring. I need to get some sort of resume together, plus some cover letters intended to convince firms in various citieis that I have some intention of working there. In regards to all this, actually, I'm going to a job session tonight organized by the Federalist society/Republicans, to find out what similarly minded people might have done previously. I get the terrible feeling, however, that most of the jobs they'll be talking about are a) political and b) unpaid, neither of which I particularly want, but let's see. At least this law school offers some pretty serious funding for unpaid jobs.


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DATE: Monday, November 11, 2002 -----
I was ferrying St. Nylan from one tourist site to the other via train the other day, when I noticed a KAPLAN LSAT ad. Absently staring at it, it occurred to me that the student featured on the poster must be terribly bright, what with such a high score and all. And then I realized that I had seen her elsewhere: she is in my section at school. My first reaction was to feel a bit ashamed that someone of such obviously superior intelligence would be sullied by my rank idiocy. But then I realized something rather more useful. Both she, with her whacking gargantuan score, and I, with my more modest one, ended up at the same place. She sits a few rows from me, she reads the same material, we do the same work. I'm pretty sure she doesn't get to wear a hat that says 'I got a really high LSAT score, let earth tremble before me'. She can't have been awarded a scholarship for it, since this school is rather stingy with such things. In other words, she got two benefits from her ludicrously expensive course; a little more confidence heading into application season last year, and bragging rights... Well, she's more or less welcome to them.


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DATE: Friday, November 08, 2002 -----
Well, just an update. I've managed to go a week without doing any work at all, having cobbled together most of it the week before... It's been fun.

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DATE: Thursday, November 07, 2002 -----
I need to be called Saxby Chambliss... What a fantastic name.


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DATE: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 -----
Again, I'm a little bit pressed, but two observations.

1. Great results for the republicans yesterday!
2. That ridiculous tax increase ballot measure was crushed in Virginia yesterday.

Otherwise, I'm off to sight see... Watch for posts soonish vis a vis pro wrestling and other such hilarious topics.


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DATE: Sunday, November 03, 2002 -----
My posts will be short for the next week as I enjoy the company of visiting St. Nylan, as I mentioned before.

However, I will note that I have further proof that this law school is distinctly uncompetitive; my intrepid classmates are busily organizing review sessions for a colleague who was called away from school by a personal tragedy. Good for them, I say.

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DATE: Friday, November 01, 2002 -----
I've found a new source for the Clifford Chance memo.

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DATE: Thursday, October 31, 2002 -----
My home area is voting on a sales tax referendum on November 5th. It sounds, superficially, pretty good. A rise from 4.5% tax to 5X% in return for improved transport. Except, of course, that only 40% of the tax goes in any way to transport. The rest gets co-opted by the gluttonous tentacles of the state. Furthermore, the 'improvements' won't do anything for traffic at all. Most of the funding is, in fact, going to just widen the damned roads that are the whole problem in the first place. The real solution is to provide a widely accessible public transport system which people will want to use, regardless of price, because it gets them to work comfortably and quickly, sans traffic. And that doesn't necessarily need the extra taxes. Just a rethinking of priorities.

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DATE: Thursday, October 31, 2002 -----
Well, I'm relatively proud of myself. My open memo, due Monday, is mostly done. All I need to do is complete the bluebooking, and look it over one more time. All my reading for next week has been dealt with, though I haven't managed to brief everything like I usually do. I'm halfway through the essay for a scholarship I'm applying for, I helped my sister with some college essays (yes, yes, I know the limits of propriety in terms of helping. I"m well within them), read a novel, and planned some things to do with friend St. Nylan, who arrives in America tommorrow. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to update the blog the next ten days or so, but I might be writing every now and again. Anyway, so far so good.



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DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 -----
Well, how about I write about this now, before I forget the content of the memo completely. I've got another post coming tonight at some point about my glorious triumph over my work, but I'll leave that for later.

The memo, first of all, is not as bad as people said it was. There are, certainly, positive elements to the comments of the associates, and they were, to some extent, optimistic about what can be done to help. Of course, my cynical side responds very simply indeed; it could be that the associates involved just don't want to be decapitated by angry partners. Maybe some of them even want to stay with the firm, figuring that they've invested too much already. I really don't know. In any case, the memo isn't as brutal as one would think. On the other hand, it does have some strong language, most of which has been reported fully in the digests of the story.

Heck, if you're really determined to do a lot of spinning you can claim this whole memo flap is actually a positive. Sure, the associates are unhappy. But look how free they feel to tell the partners about their frustrations and their annoyances! Look how liberated they are to make the shortcomings of the firm known! Sure, maybe we're not as prestigious as those firms we claim are our peers, but then again, at least we don't repress our rage, right?

I think, however, that we shouldn't get too overcome with the democratic populism of it all. My friends in Clifford Chance tell me, independently, that the partners hardly care about the memo per se, other then the effect it'll have on their recruiting class. Rather, what they're scrambling to forestall is a lawsuit from their clients as to overbilling, because if the associates admit they're under pressure to pad their hours, then some padding is probably going on. As one of them told me, even experienced associates are worried about the Anderson possibility; i.e, that this overcharging issue is so volatile that their jobs might be at stake. I doubt this is that bad, but then who would have believed the fall of one of the largest accountancy firms in the world just a few years ago? Certainly not me.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 -----
It looks like the FT has cut off my access to the memo... I thought it was available for free, but obviously not. still, try it and see. I certainly read it this morning, and will comment on it later.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 -----
Here it is, the much vaunted Clifford Chance Memo!
Again, Click here for the memo.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -----
Re-reading my post about my class today, I guess it sounds a little harsh. It's just that this sort of debate really frustrated me as an undergrad, and its turned into a pet peeve. You'd be sitting there talking about something a ruler did, and inevitably someone would say something like 'I really think they should have done x'. Except, of course, that x was completely impossible if you'd bothered to look into it. It's just this saying something for the sake of saying something that bothers me, not when people are sharing their legitimate arguments, even if I disagree.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -----
I've been thinking a little more about an issue we worked on last week. To be specific, how much deference do judges owe jury deliberations? I understand the general rule, I think. Unless something like real bribery comes to the attention of the judge, he's under obligation to let the jury do whatever it is they want while deliberating. What I find interesting are the consequences of this position; what if you're a judge, and word gets to you that the entire jury is in the middle of putting together some swords to settle the issue by combat? Or they've asked for a duck, and are busy trussing it securely before checking if it sinks or not? I admit that both of these possibilities are pretty unlikely unless one side or the other is selecting the jury for Monty Python fans, but analagous situations are concievable, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -----
We had an interesting little discussion about whether people ought to be able to contract into marriage like obligations while cohabiting. At least, it was interesting until, inevitably, classmates started talking about their feelings, and what was fair, and what they would like to happen, and what their personal opinions were. Whenever anyone uses any of those words, you know the intelligent debate portion of the conversation is over. They might as well have jumped up and started running around the room yelling, as far as I'm concerned.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -----
Mt. Etna has exploded in Europe, providing all of us with some spectacular pictures. Luckily, however, no homes are in danger. Which brings me to my point.

Without knowing the details of Etna, I suspect the reason there aren't any home nearby is because people historically looked up at the volcano, realized that it occasionally spewed lots of fire all over the place, and figured they should probably not build their homes near it. This approach, of course, makes a lot of sense. But we don't seem to follow it in America; not just in terms of being careful about building near potential disasters, but in general.

The locations of our big cities, it's true, were often chosen by some rational historical process. New York is an amazing harbour; Pittsburg is at the crossing of some important rivers, which caused the French to build a fort there before we snagged it in the Seven Years War. The examples, if you happen to know the details, are endless. (the one exception probably being D.C, which was put in the middle of a bog for no reason I can discern save expediency). The problem comes with our suburbs and smallish towns. The British equivalents, for example, are usually located somewhere historically sensible. Again without knowing for sure, I've heard that Oxford is where Oxford is because people realized this was a good kind of place to get things over the river. A friend of mine's hometown in Germany was a waystation for people on their way to the mighty port of Hamburg. My hometown around DC, however, was a total accident. It's just a big fat piece of land that people thought might be a good place to put a development for no other reason then the fact that it was cheap, and you could build biggish houses on it. What this causes, eventually, is a horrible suburban sprawl of ever more depressing strip malls and chains, totally destroying any historical interest the area might have had in the first place. I'm sure someone reading this will think that I'm not being original at all. That's true; there are plenty of people saying the same thing. But they're people who don't understand the demands of freedom. Most of them want to either legislate or tax people into submission, ot force them to be sensible. Being a freedom lover myself, I would instead appeal to people's own cost benefit analysis; when you're looking at that huge house in the outer suburbs, ask yourself if it's worth the human expense. Is that house worth an hour long commute, having to drive just to buy milk, and the constant sense of being nothing more then an overpaid cab driver? I think it simply can't be; it just takes some thought to break out of the mindset. Though this probably all comes off as holier-then-thou, given that I grew up in such a lush, middle class 'hellhole'. (though where I grew up is now an 'inner suburb'). Still, I'm convinced people would reconsider if they took into account all the costs of living in these places.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -----
From the hits I'm getting, it looks like everyone is in a sort of a wild goose chase for this mysterious clifford chance memo. I haven't had any success either. Maybe I should try my contacts within the firm (that sounds far more serious then it is; I have a few friends who work for them).

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DATE: Monday, October 28, 2002 -----
I've been getting hits via a google search for 'Clifford Chance memo', which now that I've read coverage of, is quite interesting. See law.com's coverage here. Apparently, the London based monster (some 4,000 attorneys) came in at exactly last place in a survey of associate satisfaction, due largely to a crazy billable hours requirement, corrupt work assignment system, and various other factors. A 14 page 'memo' has been circulating which contains a scathing attack on the management of the firm.It's kind of a blow to me, in that this sort of multinational, terribly global firm is the kind of thing I'm interested in, in that it gives me a way to get back to the ancient cities of Europe. But the survey certainly confirms what my roomate last year in England told me (he was a Clifford Chance employee on sabbatical). 'They treat you like s*** and work you like a dog.' At the time, I figured it was the usual French aversion to work, but 2,420 hours a year is well excessive, let me guarantee you.


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DATE: Monday, October 28, 2002 -----
By the way, Professor Bellesiles is actually pronounced 'Belly', as far as I know. Reminds me of one particularly embarassing incident when I pronounced Duc de Broglie as Duc de Broli for at least half an hour before my history professor pointed out that the standard pronounciation was "Broy". I think he quite enjoyed my discomfort.


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DATE: Monday, October 28, 2002 -----
Has anyone else noticed that combs spend their entire useful lives suckering us into trusting them, only to disappear right at the moment of our greatest vulnerability? I mean, seriously, what business did that thing have in not being found this morning? And to what extent is it sensible to ransack your house looking for it? Luckily, I remembered to look under the bed; it needs a little more experience before it can outfox me!

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DATE: Sunday, October 27, 2002 -----
LawMuse has brought some magnificent news to my attention; Professor Bellesiles has done the honourable thing and resigned his tenured position at Emory University. For all those not familiar with the problem, the good Professor had published a book purporting to show that Americans didn't privately hold guns in the 18th and 19th centuries, which might sound innuocous enough. But, of course, the real implication is that if guns weren't held privately in those days, then the 2nd ammendment clearly doesn't apply to privately held guns. In other words, his book was politics masquerading as history.

The problem with his book, however, was that the evidence he had used was almost completely unfindable. When other scholars went to try to find the probate records he claims proved his point, the library he said they came from didn't even have probate records. Microfilm he claimed to have borrowed from one library and read while at home in Atlanta had never been circulated (and was actually uncirculating), and he admitted he had never been to the great Mormon library in Salt Lake, where he could have got the same source for free. When people began asking him for details of his research, his office mysteriously flooded (destroying all his records), someone hacked his computer through his web page (guffaw!), and he suffered an amazing bout of amnesia as to pretty much everything else.

Throughout it all, he defended himself pretty staunchly. Everything could be explained, he said. Academia also rallied around him. My experience in a British history department was that though they all admitted he was probably lying, they figured he had done it for a 'good' cause (i.e eliminating guns in America). As per my classifications below, in other words, Bellesiles was a 'liberated American', someone they could almost co-opt as European. The chickens, however, eventually came home to roost. Emory did an independent study, the results of which show that at best, Bellesiles was a complete incompetent with a penchant for half truth, and at worst, was an ideologically driven serial fibber, I salute the historians and scholars who put aside their own research to pursue this man; sometimes, things just have to be done.

PS: I just read Bellesiles' response. He compares himself, heroically, to Professor Lipstadt, both of them apparently having been 'attacked by extremists'. To make things clear, Lipstadt was sued by a holocaust denier in England for calling him a Holocaust denier. Bellesiles was attacked by American scholars for having lied in the interests of his ideology. Kind of shows what Bellesiles, and the whole left, think of people who don't agree with them, no?

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DATE: Sunday, October 27, 2002 -----
Many thanks to JCA for posting this in my comments. I particularly like what's listed next to Greece.

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DATE: Friday, October 25, 2002 -----
Here's a link I've been meaning to put up for a few days. I just found another 1L blog, this one at Harvard; Jeremy Blachman

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DATE: Friday, October 25, 2002 -----
I'm getting through all that work I promised myself I would do. In some ways, it's kind of satisfying; there was a large mass of stuff to do, and the pile is slowly dimishing. Actually, this has led me to think about a comparison of the amount of work in law school and as a graduate in a Ph.D program. On one hand, law school takes a lot of time. There are assignments every day, and someone who cares if you did them. So on that score, law school is perhaps more difficult.

But compare this to history; as a research student, you're let loose with almost no guidance, and told that you ought to produce something of interest in three years time (at least in England). No one cares what you do day to day, or if you take a week off. This, of course, is one of the ways history is harder then law; all the motivation has to come from within when researching; otherwise, why not just loaf, or sleep, or go to London, or whatever?

The second thing is the scope of the work. Here in law school, as long as you understand the text book and spend some time thinking about the conflicts, you're done. Sure, exam time is going to be unpleasant, but that's only a couple of weeks twice a year. By contrast, the amount of work you have in history can only be described as an ever expanding nebulous blob, restrained only by your ambitions. Finished reading the letters for July 1777 between Vergennes and D'Ossun? Fantastic! There's another 300 for August, all in indecipherable french penmanship. And why aren't you reading the letters between the French minister and the Most Christian King's ambassador in the Netherlands? There might be something there, and well, there's another 20 volumes of Frederick the Great's correspondence. Did the gregarious Prussian ever resist making comments about anything? And wait! The catalogue lists the reminiscences of a minor nobleman in the court of Vergennes; that might have some stuff too. Gosh, I wish I read German....

Compared to that, law school is actually very manageable. Of course, I'm saying that while working on Friday night, so that from that what you will.

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DATE: Friday, October 25, 2002 -----
The Europeans organize Americans into three distinct categories. We're either 'fat and dumb', 'clever and evil', or 'liberated/European like'. This last category, of course, is rather the smallest one in their minds, made up of a small coterie of free thinkers who have left American parochialism behind to run naked through the protean fields of European commu-nazi-ism (Biased? Me?). If you don't believe me, just look at this article from today's Guardian. It's not the first article of the type; indeed, it only codifies the way they actually think about us.

So, for example, Falwell falls into the 'fat and dumb' category. Bush they throw in with the dumb, even though he's not fat (his unfatness is peripheral). Cheney isn't dumb, clearly, so he must be evil. Gore, they think, is in the third group (though if they applied what they said about Bush to him, he'd fall into 'clever but evil'.) People like Nader, etc, are definitely liberated/Europhiles. The farthest the European left will go in developing this analysis any further is to actually point out the existence of the third group, occasionally. Otherwise, they're perfectly happy with the first two.

What's amusing to watch, however, is what happens when they're confronted with someone who doesn't fit into the categories. Here, the elite's snobbery works against them. In my case, I was at a well known grad school last year in England. What this meant, of course, is that they had couldn't use the 'fat and dumb category', because to admit I was dumb would be to admit the possibility that they were dumb (being at the same university as me). So that was no good. On the other hand, I'm not terribly outspoken about my views, in that I'm a pretty friendly guy, and I can put politics aside in personal dealing. Most of my friends in Europe I would categorize as communist, honestly, yet to me it's just an opportunity for interesting discussion. In any case, there were certainly plenty of people who I dealt with daily who didn't know my terrible secret (i.e I voted for W and Dole), and actually, people spent a lot of time chuckling suggestively at me after comments like 'boy, I wish the guy from West Wing' was president. I think they even thought my distinct lack of humour at that pronouncement was because I considered the fellow too moderate.

When they actually found out the truth, however, the reaction was invariably priceless, ranging from total disbelief ('haha, very funny.') to anger. In all honesty, I don't think I could have upset those dinners any more if I had suddenly pronounced that I was considering some black art, or selling my soul to the Dark Lord, or some other abomination. Which all means, of course, that they're guilty of the same near sighted parochialism they're so happy to accuse us (often rightly) of. Remove the plank in your own eye before the stick in another's, etc.




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DATE: Friday, October 25, 2002 -----
I've mentioned before that I've been helping my sister with her college applications. She finally got her SAT score yesterday and decided to call me so we could discuss her firm decisions on where to apply. We had a long talk, in which I presented her with two possible strategies.

Strategy 1: The hyper-agressive approach; you apply to six extremely selective universities, backed up with about four where she would both be happy to end up and we both think she'll be accepted (and are also very cheap).

Strategy 2: The conservative approach; this is the one usually recommended by college counsellors. To wit, you apply to a couple of places you think you won't get in, a few places you think you have a shot, and then the aforementioned safeties.

Now, it seems to me that Strategy 1 is far wiser in a global cost benefit analysis. If your risk pays off, you get the choice of ponying up more money for an arguably much better product. Otherwise, you save money and go to the safety. If none of the top six come through, then you're still fine; you have safety schools you're happy to go to. Now, of course, the same can be said of the second strategy; you either get into the top places, or you might end up at a less selective place which is still better then the safety. But here's where I think this strategy has problems, which I've discussed at some length below (I really should figure out how to cite within my own blog). The difference in quality between the 'safeties' and the 'targets', to use the usual nomenclature, isn't at all evident. The only appreciable difference I can find, actually, is in the gargantuan price gap (which does exist in between her 'safeties' and 'targets'). Now, granted, what I've just said doesn't apply if the safety in question is East Kilmazona state polytechnic college, and the target Harvard. But her situation isn't quite so extreme; I graduated from one of the so-called 'safeties', and I'm doing perfectly fine. Anyway, I left her to think about it.

But what I'm really writing about is the amazing difference in personality between me and my sister; it astonishes me how the same mix of genes produces such total opposites. I had a really high SAT, as I remember it, and lousy grades. My sister has pretty good test scores and tremendous grades. I hated school events; indeed, I didn't even go to Prom. My sister organized last year's prom. My attitude to high school homework was to do it during lunch; she has charts and little progress maps taped up all over her room. And, finally, I'm a died in the wool introvert; when our career services tells us we've got to be good at parties to get into some firms (I'm quite serious!), I literally paled. It's not that I'm dysfunctional socially, but it takes a serious effort for me to do the party thing. I'm drained after a night out, even if I enjoyed it. She, on the other hand, is a little social tornado. That's why I'm so loathe to give her specific advice on which university; we're totally different people. All I can do, then is give her the kind of theoretical treatment above. And yes, I realize this is probably all together to serious for college admissions, but then again, it's a big money investment for my parents, and a potentially fork in the road kind of decision for her.


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DATE: Friday, October 25, 2002 -----
Senator Wellstone of Minnesota has been killed in an accident. As much as I disagreed with everything the man believed, this is a sad day for all of us.

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DATE: Friday, October 25, 2002 -----
Hurrah! The sniper in my home area of Washington D.C has been, in my opinion, definitely stopped. I' m sure everyone who lives there (including my parents and sister) are grateful to law enforcement around the country.

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DATE: Thursday, October 24, 2002 -----
Our civ pro 'assignment' for tommorrow; devise an arbitration clause so convoluted that it's not evident that the proposed arbitration is, in fact, Russian Roulette. I'm on it.

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DATE: Thursday, October 24, 2002 -----
I woke up to a poignant little reminder of the rule of law; police are stuck waiting for a federal search warrant before they open up the car of the man detained in the sniper shootings.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 -----
A useful bit of advice from a 3L; if you manage to snag a job at a firm in your 1L summer, leave something in the office that you'll accidentally have to pick up on the weekend. No better way to find out if every associate save the pampered summer ones are burning the weekend oil.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 -----
I'm just working on my lawyering class's first open memo. In other words, the first memo we've written where we have access to the full library of this law school as well as to the WESTLAW and Lexis-Nexis databases. The case we were given to prepare work on is in regards to a covenant not to compete. Stripped of legalese, this is the agreement you sign with your employer that says something like 'If I quit or am fired, I won't compete with your company for x amount of time in y region.'

As I was leafing through the treatises to get a sense of the law, however, what I noticed was the very interesting history of this covenant. The first mention of something similar we have, apparently, is in the wake of the black death of 1348, when it seems that a court emphatically declined to enforce such a contract. Knowing the history helps us to understand the public policy problem the court tackled; in a world where 1/3 of the available work force has gone and died, covenants that keep people from working are very bad news indeed. Anyway, look out for something more through from me on this, since it has definitely piqued my interest.


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DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 -----
We had a fascinating little demonstration of class chemistry today. A week or so ago, Professor 'Theory is God' of Torts assigned us what I thought was a little exercise in mental gymnastics; to paraphrase her, she asked us to argue in two or three paragraphs what standard of negligence we would institute for the mentally retarded, if we happened to be the infamous social engineer. I conferred with a friend or two, and decided that this assignment merited about 15 minutes of work. So I sat down and wrote a brief snippet analogizing both from the restatement rule regarding insanity and physical disability, and ended up saying that the rule for the retarded ought to be ordinary care.

She handed the assingments back today. They were, of course, ungraded, but she did put comments on them. She also spent about ten minutes in class discussing what she thought of our various answers. What emerged very quickly was that a substantial chunk of the class had somehow interpreted the words 'brief' and 'two or three paragraphs' to mean something more like, 'why don't you undertake a gigantic research based assignment of about five pages?'. I can't even imagine what these people were thinking. It's all fair enough if they were legitimately interested, but even then I'm pretty sure that if you present your supervising attorney with the answer to a different question, he's not going to be pleased at all. Could this be the first real evidence of what's going to happen at exam time?


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DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 -----
These bar review people are really nothing more then opportunistic thugs. I know other people have mentioned this, but they've only recently really kicked up their recruitment efforts on this campus. You can see my classmates beginning to wonder if they're missing out by not signing up now (as if the 100 dollars you'll save is really of even the slightest bit of consequence). Their ploy, you see, is that they supposedly offer exam preparation this year as well, if you just bite the bullet and give them a deposit. At other schools where I've talked to people, I hear their pitch works off this is to argue something along the lines of 'get the edge you need to get a job'. They can't quite get away with that here, in that we all get jobs. Rather, they're trying a different but just as insiduous approach, based largely on peer pressure. Well, I may be pretty close to libertarian when it comes to business, so they're wlecome to do whatever floats their boat, but believing in freedom also means I can hope they go bankrupt. I can't say I'm optimistic though, given that they seem to be shaking even the confident (some say arrogant) people who wander around here.



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DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 -----
Well, my plan to up my work load is working so far. I should finish the last of my reading for the week this afternoon. And no, that's not because it's a particularly easy week; I figure it's an average one at best, or perhaps a slightly heavy one.

Adam comments below that I've got the makings of a legal academic. (let me note that I'm flattered, but realize academia is a tough row to hoe) I have to agree that academia is somewhere I eventually see myself if my grades behave (after all, I was two years from a history Ph.D) , but I'd like a more or less long stop off in the private sector first. This is both to pay off my momentous loans, and also because on principle I believe the lawyer's raison d'etre is initially to practice. I hate to say this, but I'm beginning to think I might be interested in big litigation as a sort of career choice; the idea of representing companies possibly on the brink of annihilation sort of appeals to me. The problem with it, however, is that I really don't think I'll be able withstand the frantic pace of the litigation attorney. But that's what the next couple of years and the summers are about; finding a niche which will eventually let me retreat back to the academy. Now, if I can eventually sort out a joint St. Andrews / Ivy league law school appointment, I would be in total nirvanna. I'm sure, though, that reality will at some point remind me that St. A's doesn't have a law department. Oh well.



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DATE: Monday, October 21, 2002 -----
My law school does a pretty good job of preparing us to make a career choice eventually. Tonight I went to one of an ongoing series of lectures given by legal practitioners, which are essentially meant for us as information sessions (and for the professionals as vaguely illicit recruitment opportunities). The topic this evening was International Private law, which given my interest in travel, language, and the fact that I've spent so much time overseas seems like my likely destination. In any case, it was a diverse and relatively interesting group, ranging from a lawyer for the state department to the head of an international trade law group for the London giant, Clifford Chance.

The most important thing I learned from the whole thing, however, was that I'm definitely not doing securities law, overseas or otherwise. Not unless I suddenly develop a terrible urge to take Corporations, advanced corporations, personal and corporate tax, securities law, and the various other courses he thought were mandatory, all as a prelude to a life of practice restructuring debt. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but this is definitely not it.

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DATE: Monday, October 21, 2002 -----
I'm very clearly going to have to push my work throttle up from the sort of puttering nonchalance I'm in now to a slightly more intense fury. The obstensible reason is that in 10 days, good friend St. Nylan is coming over from England for a visit. So I'd like to have as much of my work done, including various lawyering memos, so that I can spend time ferrying him around the place and enjoy the sites myself. More globally, however, I'm seeing this period as the first real test of my work ethic; can I force myself to work more then I do now? Onviously, if the answer is 'no' even to this very limited question, then I had better avoid law firms, both when I graduate and during the summers. Should be interesting. . .

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DATE: Sunday, October 20, 2002 -----
I'm just back from the concert, which I think I should talk briefly about.

Initially, I had worked myself into quite a lather about the eighth full concert hall. However, the thing eventually filled up, so you're spared from my exhortations in that direction. I guess people just like cutting it close here.

The concert itself was mostly good, though not excellent. I do have to note, however, that the wheels entirely fell off (albiet temporarily) right at the end of the Missa. As I remember it, there is a little aria by the bass where he sings Quonium tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe. At least on my CD recording of the piece, this is a moving and important moment where the the hunting horn poignantly echoes the soloist. Here, however, due to an almost completely incompetent brass section, it sounded more like a duet between the vocalist and a gassy rhinocerous. This problem was rather exacerbated by the fact that the second soprano sounded like she had been found at Captain Bobo's Rent a Singer and Bait shop. However, both she and the hornist were banished for the second hour, so things improved dramatically. To be entirely fair, the last few arias and choruses were really very good. Anyway, I enjoyed the thing as a whole, which brings me to my main point; isn't it amazing how awful the performance has to be to ruin Bach? In that way, he's very much like pizza.

The other thing that bothered me was the immediate standing ovation given by the audience. What was that about? It was pretty good, I admit, but standing ovation good? I've already discussed the very evident disaster right before the interval; to my mind, that's quite enough to remove it from the realm of standing ovation. But even without that, I'm sure a more discerning listener could have found all sorts of other problems. The only reason for the standing ovation I can think of is the existence of a serious difference between American and European audiences. Maybe we're just a lot more generous with our praise?



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DATE: Saturday, October 19, 2002 -----
The person with the raisin problem, incidentally, reminds me of a friend of mine when I was a teenager. His version of this disfunction, however, was rather more extreme; he sort of used the cheese on a pizza as a tomato sauce lozenge, and once it was exhausted, put it back on his plate. I'm really glad I'm not in high school anymore.

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DATE: Saturday, October 19, 2002 -----
The law school related corrolary to the below is that my decision to go with a city based university over a more campus like affair is slowly being vindicated. For those of you who are aspiring law students, put some real thought into where you would rather live. Law school, unlike what people tell you, gives you plenty of time for amusement. Make sure the kind of amusement that amuses you is available.


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DATE: Saturday, October 19, 2002 -----
This city is getting more liveable as I find out more things about it. Case in point; there is a full, six part Weinachts Oratorium being performed in December! I mean, I love the Messiah as much as anyone, but Bach's masterpiece is very probably my single favorite piece of music. Now all I have to do is wait for December, though the B Minor Mass tommorrow, along with a newly discovered weekly Cantata series should tide me over till then.

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DATE: Friday, October 18, 2002 -----
I've figured out what the girl with the two bagels was up to yesterday. She wasn't picking at bits of dough at all. Actually, she was picking the raisins out of the bagel, and leaving the rest. I really ought to ask her why a box of raisins won't do instead.

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DATE: Friday, October 18, 2002 -----
Let it never be said that universities aren't risk averse. As I passed by the infamous construction site this morning, I noticed that they had added 1 (one) policewoman to the previously flimsy barrier. Liability issue rather conclusively solved.

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DATE: Thursday, October 17, 2002 -----
We get free bagels, donuts, etc on various mornings throughout the week, dependent on whether we have a class or not at the singularly barbaric hour of 9 a.m. What's interesting about this is the developing arms race. Until recently, people generally waited until the mid-class break to really dig into the various snacks. Sure, some people snagged a particularly lonely looking donut hole or two, but basically self restraint was our collective policy. In the last week or so, however, this has all collapsed into a tawdry free-for-all. Most of the food was gone before the professor had got anywhere near the room, or at least most of the interesting food. Juice was being horded by particularly astute classmates. And one girl, who gets the award for most enterprising guerilla tactics, took two (yes, two!) bagels, a donut, and a cup of fruit salad, only to discard the bagels after a desultory effort to pick at some of the dough. Has all our competitive spirit been diverted from grades into food? Stay tuned.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 -----
Adam, commenting on the post just before this, has done me a great service. All this while I've been trying to think up a way to express my theory that a certain type of professor makes things more difficult to make herself seem brighter. And now it emerges that Nietzche has beat me to it; 'They muddy the waters to make them appear deep'. That, folks, is precisely it.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 -----
It's raining outside today. There's also a small construction site lying in between my apartment and the law school. Which, unorthodoxly, sets up an interesting demonstration of whether people consider tort liability in their everyday actions. Do you take the muddy, unpleasant path through the grass, around the site? Or do you just tramp on through? Well, obviously, if you barge on ahead through the barriers, it seems to me that you're contributorily negligent; but does it really matter? Aren't you likely to avoid the construction site just because you don't want something bouncing off your head, liability or not? Normally, I would think so. But I watched people's behavior for a few moments while finishing off a bottle of soda, which was especially interesting because the location is just at a crossing point of the law school and the undergraduate campus. The younger students, in other words those who looked like undergrads, looked up, looked at the barrier, looked at their shoes, and then pretty much slogged through. The law-school types (distinguished entirely at random from looks, dress (it's OCI time) etc) looked up, looked at the barrier, looked at their shoes, and then froze. You could almost see the little wheels turning in their head, subconciously or not. And a whole bunch of them went through the mud. So there you have it; the lesson for today is that law school muddies your shoes.

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DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 -----
The British are planning to merge two universities; University College, London and Imperial College, London. For those who don't know, these are individually two of the top universities in Britain, with UCL having strengths in arts and humanities, while Imperial concentrates on science, technology and medicine.

The interesting thing, though, is the stated reason for the merger. The theory is that the American universities are as wealthy as they are because they're very big. Here is an example of that theory being propounded. Therefore, what you do to rival Harvard, Yale, etc, is to create giant super-universities. As anyone who knows about American universities will tell you, however, this theory is ridiculous. The reason the universities here are so rich is a combination of extremely high tuition fees, corporate/government contracts, and extremely generous alumni donations. The british unis, even if you created a single national university of 500,000 students, wouldn't have any of these apart from a few corporate alliances Oxford and Cambridge have cobbled together. In fact, I'm not sure that if you really did combine every British university, it would have the endowment of Harvard. Furthermore, I'm quite sure small american colleges, like Dartmouth, are far richer then either UCL or Imperial, and probably even wealthier then the new conglomerate. But, for whatever reason, the British have convinced themselves that these mergers will let them rival the great American universities in wealth; perhaps, I could hypothesize, because they don't really want to make the tough decisions on funding.*

*I don't buy the argument, incidentally, that endowment does terribly much for the undergraduate experience. But I could be wrong.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 -----
One of my best European friends wrote to me today, noting that Waddling Thunder reads like a cross between Cato the Elder and George W. Bush. Coming from her, I'm pretty sure that's not a compliment.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 -----
Sua Sponte points out, in response to my post of yesterday, that the law school complainers she knows are under real pressure, and thus have real reason to complain. As she puts it,

They're complaining because they're wearing themselves down to raw stumps fretting over all the things that they aren't nailing, over the fact that they are failing to nail things for the first time ever

That real pressure might exist in law school is certainly true. My argument never was that the pressure simply doesn't exist. What I meant was that people have to recognize that it's a part of the profession we've chosen, and to find ways to get around it. If given the fact that right now we're at the least point of stress in our career trajectory (and who can argue this, given the factors I mentioned yesterday; to wit, having other students around, the vibrance of the university setting, the lack of bosses, etc?) then what's going to happen to these people when they go into firms? Well, I think the answer is obvious. They become the type of lawyers who are terminally dissatisfied with their jobs, wish they had never gone into law, etc. I may, of course, just be speaking entirely from inexperience. I also know that just because I feel good now doesn't mean I'll last any longer then the complainers in a firm. But really; school is a fun time in our lives. Let's treat it that way, so that when the brutal stress of the workplace arrives, we'll still have reserves to draw on.

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DATE: Monday, October 14, 2002 -----
I just read Le Monde's analysis of Bali. For the most part, they've got it right. Bali should remind us that the threat of islamic terrorism is out there, and ready to strike at any time. The ending of the Taliban was only a first step. But then the paper tries to take this argument to another conclusion, saying that Bali shows precisely why the American obsession with Iraq is so dangerous. After all, will attacking Iraq not gain millions of recruits to Al-Quaeda?

My answer is simple. Maybe it will. But I'll tell you something that is more important. If we do not negotiate powerfully with Iraq, we will simply be watching while the provider of weapons (Iraq) and the human delivery systems (Al-Quaeda) reach towards each other. Right as we speak, their fiendish arms are straining, writhing evily in their effort to make contact. The moment they do all of us are in a heap of trouble. I can guarantee you happy twiddling won't do a thing to stop them.

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DATE: Monday, October 14, 2002 -----
I do have to admit to a desire that America was the slightest bit more class concious; no presenter on the BBC would ever refer to the DC area sniper as a 'gentleman', as the local news did here last night.


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DATE: Monday, October 14, 2002 -----
Robert Fisk examines the bombing in Bali, and extracts the lesson that since allies of the US are now being struck, the best plan is to no longer be an ally of the US. Tremendous logic, Bobby.

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DATE: Monday, October 14, 2002 -----
There are few things that get me angrier then law students in my position complaining about the difficulty of law school. Before I say anything else, however, let me be clear. 'Nothing I say here refers in the slightest to people like the ever courageous JCA of Sua Sponte, who is juggling a massive commute, a marriage, and law school. Nor am I referring to anyone else in even more difficult positions, with responsibilities for children, aging parents, or whatver. All this is about is people like me; just out of college, completely unburdened professional students.

Now, what could possibly be difficult about law school in this position? We're surrounded by young people, even (let me add!) those of the opposite sex. We're studying interesting material; material made interesting, let me be clear, not by my personality but by its nature. We study the very bones of our society. Outside the law school, many of us live in interesting places, and at least the rest of the university is around to provide entertainment. We're mostly young and healthy, and in general, the work is demanding but not overwhelming. And, if the great problem of life for many of us is finding something to do, then, law school fits the bill exactly. What, then, is the problem? Do people expect endless hilarity?

Actually, I think people do expect to be constantly entertained, and consequently, when they're not, they become unhappy. For my part, I learned a lot from hanging out with a small time bric a brac dealer in Paris named Mohammad. Mohammad has, in some ways, one of the most boring jobs in the world. His shop sometimes is empty for weeks at a time, and in general, his methods make it completely unprofitable (his methods consist of having no knowledge of antiques, which lead him to sell all sorts of things at anything ranging from a hundredth to a half of market value.) And yet, you never hear a complaint from Mohammed. Rather, the man is an expert at enjoying the banalities of life. I've hung out with him in the summer on occasion. After working a ten hour day, sometimes having sold nothing more then a three dollar plaster chicken, Mohammad packs up and heads to the student quarter of Paris, whereupon he does nothing more then buy a small glass of pineapple juice and settle down for a long session of watching the women go by. Sometimes he'll change cafés, sometimes he'll change juice, but he's basically happy.

Indeed, the French in general are very much like that. They make an event of going to the market to buy the simplest of things. They enjoy sauntering down the street to their favorite baker for a baguette. And that's what I aspire to. Because, you know, our jobs sometimes just aren't going to be very interesting. Certainly, they'll be more demanding then law school. And at that point, it's going to be these daily routines that are going to save us from complete depression. It's going to be the gentle sizzling of the onions in the pan, the stirring of the risotto, the weekly walk to the supermarket or to the dry cleaners or whatever, that's going to keep us going. If you see the basic functioning of your life as a chore, then you place too high a burden on the rest of your life to be fun and interesting. When the rest doesn't deliver, you're probably going to be in trouble.


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DATE: Sunday, October 13, 2002 -----
I've been complaining merrily about torts for the last couple of weeks. Everyone else in the class seems to be on board, confessing ever increasing levels of confusion in the face of our decreasingly comprehensible professor. But I've got too much experience to be taken in. You know someone in the class has got to be lying, claiming ignorance when in fact they've taken to the subject like Frederick the Great to war. After five years in the homeland of sandbagging, I know enough to be vigilant. You never believe a Briton when he tells you he hasn't done a thing for class, and I think it's a safe enough assumption for law school as well.

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DATE: Sunday, October 13, 2002 -----
Did you know that the Supreme Court requires a quorum of six justices to decide a case? In other words, if four have to recuse themselves for personal reasons, then no decision can be made. Which seems to say to me that some entities effectively have no possibility of appeal to the Supreme Court (assuming there are some groups who commonly interest four of the justices). My curiosity was initially roused, incidentally, when my Civ Pro professor mentioned that unless there was some statutory measure he didn't know about, one justice could technically decide the case himself. Turns out, though, there is such a statute.

There is a more interesting point, though. All historians know instinctively that if there is a law, then people have been doing something that necessitated the law. For example, if you're reading 18th century history and suddenly there's a law mandating death for cutting down a specific kind of tree, you can pretty much assume people were cutting down that tree. So what happened in 1948 (when I think this particularly provision was added) that necessitated a quorum of six? I'll try to find out.

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DATE: Sunday, October 13, 2002 -----
There has been a terrible attack in Bali, killing at least 180 innocents. The French oil tanker that exploded last week seems very likely to have been attacked as well. You'll note, I hope, that neither of these targets is in the least bit American, which should start to teach the nitwits who try to link American support of Israel to the existence of Al-Quaeda that things aren't that simple. What these apologists don't realize is that our entire civilization has passed the line of no return to these people; there's nothing we could negotiate away, short of our freedom, that would satisfy them. In other words, they want to fight a war with what they see as a corrupt, invasive west, and I'm quite sure nothing but our eventual destruction will do. They had better not complain when we fight back.

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DATE: Saturday, October 12, 2002 -----
I scored tickets to a Bach B minor mass for next Sunday! What's funny about this, though, is that on Monday I plan to buy tickets for WWE wrestling. Let it never be said that I'm a man of narrow interests.

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DATE: Saturday, October 12, 2002 -----
Talk about globalization. . . People in India have apparently rioted over something said by Jerry Falwell on American TV (re Islam and its founder). Maybe the good reverend will now do us all a favour and leave history to the brained, but I'm not all that optimistic. And if outrage is my reaction, given the fact that I think 1453 is about as bad as 1939 in historical terms, how about people who are a little less biased? Sheesh.


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DATE: Saturday, October 12, 2002 -----
I've just heard from my senior editor; he's happy with the bluebooking, thankfully. However, he needs more photocopies of the sources. So guess what I'll be doing tommorrow?


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DATE: Saturday, October 12, 2002 -----
An editorial in today's Le Monde makes clear what kind of America France wants. As they put it, Jimmy Carter is the incarnation of the alternative America. The America, they say, that deserves the Peace prize.

Of course, they also note that Carter's hesitations led to great complication in Iran, and that by the end of his rule America was mired in a national morale depression. Oh, and he also let the Soviet Union almost out of control. But all of this, they say, was counterbalanced by his efforts to bring peace to the middle East, and by his life after his presidency.

I don't doubt that Carter himself is a good man. But if he was president now, as I've said below, we'd almost certainly be getting ready to clean up some sort of massive attack in one of our great cities. Idealistic peacemaking is a luxury of uninteresting times. But the real point of this article is the note of almost trenchant regret, which I'll paraphrase as follows; 'If only Carter ran America, France could again take its rightful position as Lord of Europe and arbiter of the world. Maybe this prize will help make it that way again.'

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DATE: Saturday, October 12, 2002 -----
A question for you anti-death penaltyers out there: (and, for good measure, for those Europeans who oppose real life sentences). What do you suppose the proper punishment for the DC area sniper might be? Is there any point at all in not imposing the death sentence?

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DATE: Saturday, October 12, 2002 -----
For those of you who wonder about socialized medicine,
here's yet more proof that it's not a good idea.
We've had Lipitor for years in America, even with the FDA's somewhat fanatical conservatism. My dad, just as one example, has been on it since early in my undergrad, as I remember it. But there, they've just decided it might be a useful drug; I can't even imagine how many people suffered unnecessarily. When I get in these moods, I only wish I had a European friend around to remind me that we're the barbarians. Sometimes, for some unexplained reason, I seem to forget.

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DATE: Friday, October 11, 2002 -----
There is an episode in the Lord of the Rings where Gollum leads Frodo and Sam through a marsh enchanted by the spirits of long dead warriors. One step off the path Gollum set, one slight detour towards one of these ethereal entities, and the hobbits would be lost.

I feel much the same way about torts. Abraham's torts treatise is my Gollum, torts itself the swamp, and as for the misleading spirits, I can point to none other then the professor herself. Figments of her overactive imagination litter both sides of the narrow road. They tease us, cajole and harangue. Sometimes, the social engineer and the Coase theorem link arms to the bewilderment of my mind. And yet, I must stay strong. For there is eventually an escape at the end of the swamp.

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DATE: Thursday, October 10, 2002 -----
In Civil Procedure today we studied the particularly famous case of Hickman v. Tayler. For those who don't know it, it's a landmark discovery case from the 1940's, in which the US Supreme Court decided that other lawyers' personal notes were not discoverable. In other words, opposing lawyers couldn't ask for them as part of the customary pre-trial sharing of information.

Now, the Supreme Court explicitly talked about how what it called 'sharp practice' would ensue if it allowed such sharing; lawyers would no longer write things down, clients would be more poorly represented, etc. Obviously, they're right. But I thought there was another subtext which they perhaps didn't want to note explicitly, based on a sense of elitism.

Let's face it. Supreme Court justices are elite people in general, but were perhaps especially so in the 1940's. Furthermore, they must tend to see the law as an elite profession, a forum in which the intellectually able can prove themselves by nothing more then their force of mind. Now, what is the effect, do you think, of forcing lawyers to hand over their notes and thoughts to their opposition? Would it not simply have reduced the importance of intelligence or skill in the legal arena? I think so. Discovery to the extent outlawed in Hickman would have led to Socialism within the legal world, a sort of redistribution of mental energy from the more gifted to those less so. And elite people, I can guarantee you, do not like this one bit. I know there's someone out there thinking that this sounds almost 19th century of me. I concede there is a somewhat unsavoury taste to what I say; but consider the fact that most of us are at the law schools we're at because we chose them over other law schools. And consider the fact that many of us would bridle ferociously at any lowering of the bar at these schools we're at; in fact, what we want is a fair competition, not a 'just' result. When you remember that Supreme Court justices are people who have won this competition in the most total way possible, I think Hickman becomes more clear.



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DATE: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 -----
Watching a federal appeals court in action reminds one why the Socratic method exists. I say that because one of those august bodies held their session in our mock trial courtroom yesterday, and our Civil Procedure class was predictably sent to observe. What was odd about it all was the fact that but for the people in robes, it might as well have been one of our classes.

For example, one case was about a rather complicated financial joint venture scheme, that it seemed like the government wanted taxes on. That, at least, was all I could surmise sans brief. In the middle of it, however, one of the judges decided he had had enough of the appellant's rather accounting heavy argument. 'What if', he said, ' you had a hundred sheep. And then you sold me the sheep for x dollars, but asked for a share of the profits. .. etc'. So there you have it; by the end of 15 minutes of discussion, the entire business had boiled down to two ivy league educated lawyers arguing about 100 throughly nonexistent sheep.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 08, 2002 -----
It is rare that an academic text is funny enough to cause me to laugh out loud. My contracts textbook, however, has managed to do so, with the following passage

The medical press of the period regularly reported on new developments in the field of medical appliances, so long as a regular doctor had invented . . . them, describing and depicting, for example, such contraptions as Dr. Blenkarne's Improved Insufflator with Adjustable Tongue Depressor, which it claimed, surpassed the old established insufflator associated with the name of Dr. Osborne. Also advertised in this way . . . in 1890 was the more alarming New Vaginal Insufflator. For no human orifice was safe from the assaults of Victorian medical science, and vast ingenuity was expended in pefecting suitable instruments, or even mechanisms for storing them in serried ranks, ready for instant use, such as the Reynolds Enema Rack, who virtues were extolled in the Lancet in 1892. . . . It was the age of rubber, gutta percha, and vulcanite. It was also the golden age of the enema, which reached the summit of its development in America with the invention of the J.B.L Cascade, promoted by Dr. Charles A. Tyrell, author of the Royal Road to Health

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DATE: Tuesday, October 08, 2002 -----
I don't want to diverge into politics too often. This is a law blog, in the end, and that's what I'd like to talk about for the most part. But in the wake of the president's important speech last night, I wanted to lay out a few historical examples that may sharpen the real point of debate for us all.

The first is the most obvious one. If someone, anyone, had unilaterally stood up to the big A in the 1930's, we could have all been spared an enormous amount of carnage. Sure, a strike against Germany in 1935 would have been stridently aggressive. Certainly, it would have occasioned moral outrage. But it was no secret that Hitler was gathering strength around him, and that war was his likely trajectory.There were people around in Britain and France who did urge action. But those in government eschewed it, saying to some extent that combat then would be unjustified, that innocents would have been put to the sword. All certainly true, but the final result was rather more tragic.

The second example is perhaps nearer to our hearts. In the mid 1770's, American leaders had an important choice to make. Should they threaten military force as part of their negotiation with the British monarch, or should the threaten it only as a last choice, if all else failed? Of course, they eventually decided on the former method. Indeed, if the latter had been chosen, we might never have won independence. A clever Prime Minister could very easily have negotiated in such a way as to make war impossible to pursue on the grounds that there was no alternative, because he would always have left one. Of course, there is the possibility that the Prime Minister would not have been clever; this was a common enough affliction among British leaders of the time. But can anyone say that if Lord Chatham, the great Pitt, had been given the reigns he could not have negotiated the Americans to oblivion? Of course, my example here is tainted by the fact that orders from England would only reach British negotiaters in America a long time after they were dispatched, so things could always go wrong, but I think the point is relatively clear.

The third vignette is rather an esoteric one. For most of the second half of the 17th century, everyone and their brother knew that when Charles II of Spain died, there was going to be chaos. For those not in the know, this was because there were several things wrong with good old Charles. Firstly, he was mentally disabled. More distressingly for the 18th century mind, he was also quite sterile. And this sterility meant that the only available heirs, unless something was done in the will, happened to be scions of the Hapsburg Emperors. Scions, I should note, that the Hapsburg emperor would have been quite happy to dispose of if it meant he had personal control of Spain. The reason this was contentious, of course, is that it would have left France directly in the middle of a giant Hapsburg sandwich, and in that situation, no French King could have morally justified inaction. The fact that the King in question was Louis XIV and not one of his only slightly more docile successors or predecessors made things even more concrete. There would be one giant war when Charles finally died.

Now, if you wanted to stop the giant war, what you would have done as either party is to have threatened overwhelming military action much earlier, unless your opponent settled down to a sensible negotiation. Certainly, with either of the powers we're talking about, people would have taken them seriously. But neither power did this; in fact, I suspect they rather wanted the great confrontation. What ended up happening, inevitably, was that Charles II died, left Spain to Louis XIV (!) in his will, and the long awaited massive war took place. 14 years later, after preposterous casaulties by 18th century standards, they reached a settlement that could easily have been reached with some muscular negotiation before the war, or at least a result not far from it. One of Louis XIV's relatives was installed as King of spain, but forever severed from the family line. Which is why, of course, the Spanish Kings still carry the name of Bourbon with them forward into the 21st century.

So what the hell was the point of all that? What the vignettes demonstrate is the weakness of most of the anti-war argument. Clearly, the 'it costs too much' argument is ridiculous in the face of the 1930's. If there is a threat from Iraq, who cares what it costs to diffuse it now? It costs more to pick up the pieces after a nuclear attack, let me assure you. The unilateralism red herring is shot down by the same example.

The 'let's use force only as a final alternative argument' (pushed largely by the French) falls to the second. It fails because if we pursue that course, Hussein will always be able to negotiate an out. He's not quite so stupid as to paint himself entirely into a corner, if he knows that military action will only ever come if he does so. And so, another ten years on he'll still have all his weapons, and we'll still have all our worries.

The third example addresses the 'why now?' argument. why can't we wait? Well, just as in the late 17th century, the situation here is a ticking time bomb. If you accept that Iraq is a threaten, then it is only a matter of time before he allies with those forces who also wish the US ill. If I was Hussein, that's precisely what I would do, for with Al-Quaeda ability to deliver weapons into the US, and my own ability to manufacture weapons that make those of 9/11 look quite pleasant, I've suddenly got quite a potent method of blackmail. Add this to the fact that Hussein, when he feels himself failing physically, might want to go out in a ball of fire, and you've got a situation very analagous to the Charles II problem. If we wait for the inevitable attack to come (assuming Hussein is a threat at all), then the war that we'll have to deal with will be ten times worse then the war now. Put aside what will happen to our people. How many Iraquis do you think will die from the inevitable US tactical nuke counterstrike? If Iraq is a threat at all, then acting now will short circuit a much greater conflagration later.

This leaves the anti-war protesters final argument, which is that Iraq is not a threat. If they're serious about opposing THIS war rather then war in general, this is the only argument of any substance. Because clearly, if there is a growing threat from Iraq, acting now with the full negotiating weight of military power is the best alternative. If, however, people can show that Hussein doesn't have weapons, that he's not interested in Al-Quaeda, that he's not a ticking time bomb, then the pro-war case falls flat. All the history in the world doesn't justify war for someone who isn't a threat. I happen to think that he is, but this is an argument that can be made outside a strict (and in my opnion morally untenable) pacifist position. I wish I heard those who oppose war making it, because I'd be interested in hearing details.




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DATE: Sunday, October 06, 2002 -----
We went to the contract's professors house for a rather sumptuous brunch this morning. Much fun had by all, or as much fun as such an event can be. And by the way, you can apparently do rather well as a law professor. The man and his wife live in an absolute palace.

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DATE: Sunday, October 06, 2002 -----
Well, that's it, then. I just sent my edited journal article and memo to my editor. I don't know if I've done well. I don't know if it'll be thrown back in my face. And I don't know if I can do that again. But it's done. Oh, by the way? That memo with a list of mistakes is six pages long. And I'm sure I missed plenty.


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DATE: Sunday, October 06, 2002 -----
At the very real risk of outing myself to those who can guess which law school I'm at, I just can't avoid noting a triumph by my alma mater. ; apparently, they've been named 'university of the year' by the definitive Times Good university Guide. But my real comfort is knowing that when the old university loses its notoriety with the graduation of Prince William in a couple of years, and slips again under the radar screen of most students and academics, there will still be few places in the world I'd rather be then in the grey auld toon. And that, I think, is the real mark of a good university and a pleasant town. Not some ranking.

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DATE: Saturday, October 05, 2002 -----
I once heard somone say that giving advice is, in fact, no more then telling the listener how to become you. In this case, that's precisely true. The recipe below is exactly what I did to get here and as such, It's not applicable to everyone. But still, I think there's some validity hidden somewhere in what I've written. Comment or add thoughts, please. I'm interested.

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DATE: Saturday, October 05, 2002 -----
My sister is just now in the middle of applying to college, so I've been trying to give her some advice over the last couple of months. I thought what I would do is just post the gist of what I was trying to get across here, in the hopes that someone to whom it may be useful might stumble across it.

Going to university, it seems to me, is a big step. And as such, people get overexcited about it. Parents, on one hand, think that if their child doesn't go to college x, y, or zed, (or in Princeton Review speak H, Y, or P), they'll be doomed to a life only slightly better then involuntary servitude. Students are sometimes more realistic, but still, the most competitive among them want to go to the best place possible. I'm not against that. But I also want to point out something even more basic. Particularly if you're a liberal arts major, the possible utility of just an undergraduate degree is relatively low. There are few jobs where your average historian can be of any use, despite my efforts to convince companies that they might need a specialist in 18th century diplomacy. Even a biologist, say, is worth relatively little in the market without a Ph.D or an M.D. What I'm trying to say, then, is that if faced by the reality that grad school is your only way forward in the future, then going for a degree that will put you in such debt that your future moves will be constrained is not a good idea. Now, I understand the response; that going to a 'bad' undergrad to save money will constrain you more, by limiting the grad schools you can get into. Let me submit to you that this is outrageous nonsense. I'm at a very prestigious law school, and we have people from all over the place. I've been in another selective grad school, studying history, and yet again people from every imaginable undergrad populated the halls.

Yes, I understand that people do have egos, and they want to be proud of their school. I also understand that one's milieu is vital; I owe much to my friends in Britain. I'm categorically not saying one should sacrifice all this and go to community college. And I also understand that this doesn't apply if you want to be an engineer, say, because in that case the undergrad degree is initially terminal. But what I am saying is that if H,Y or even P don't work out as an undergrad, don't despair. Go to the university you go into, or that you can afford, as long as it's not too bad. Work hard, and make sure to develop interests and specialities rather then pushing forward a general education just to graduate. Keep whatever goal you've set for yourself in mind, and plan to get there as well as you can. And then, four years later, go to the best damned grad school you can manage, if it matters in your field. At some point, you'll realize its all working out.

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DATE: Friday, October 04, 2002 -----
To add just a thought to the previous post, this kind of thing honestly makes me want to go into litigation, on the defense side. At least I could get worked up for the job. Flaming heck. . .

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DATE: Friday, October 04, 2002 -----
Everybody and their brother seems to be linking to the 28 billion dollar jury award, so I'll leave you to their tender mercies for that. I just wanted to add that such decisions depress me. Not because it's going to be paid, in the end. I suspect some court or other will throw it out. But what preposterous logic! As much as I hate smoking, the idea of being compensated because it apparently never occurred to you that it might be dangerous, and that the companies might not be telling the whole truth, is a bit too much for me. Which part of sucking smoke into one's lungs seemed healthy to these people? Was it the part where they breathe it in, or expel it again? Just to pull out an old chestnut, James I of England/VI of Scotland knew better then that, and he became king of England at a time when prescribing enemas for colds was still considered cutting edge medicine. (see Louis XIII) And to continue the logic, let's say (accurately), that I have a weakness for unpasteurized cheese. Does that mean I get to sue for $28 B in punis when I take ill, even if I were to find such forbidden fruit in this country? Ridiculous.

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DATE: Friday, October 04, 2002 -----
I hate to sound as if I'm always complaining. Let me be clear; I really enjoy law school. The things I mention here are just outliers.

Having said that, I really have to wonder about this subciting. What, precisely, is the point of rules that are so exigent that the italicization or not of a period after another word is an issue of serious consquence? On what conceivable ground could such a thing be of any importance at all? Have there been disputes about what was meant in a footnote that arose out of lax italicization of periods?

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DATE: Friday, October 04, 2002 -----
The Times reports that the UN will severely rebuke the United Kingdom today. . . for refusing to illegalize child 'smacking' (i.e mild spanking). And then the UN wonders why Americans tend to see them as a collection of somewhat aimless busybodies.

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DATE: Thursday, October 03, 2002 -----
We were talking about children's liability for neglience today in torts. Apparently, the only reason people tend not to sue kids is because they don't have many assets, or traditionally haven't at least. I have to think, though, that with how expensive toys are these days, having the sheriff confiscate their possessions would probably net you a good little settlement. I mean, imagine what you could flog an x-box and a collection of games for.

Interestingly, much of the debate in class centered around the nature of children, how children think, how they develop, etc. This, unfortunately, was entirely beyond me. I don't even know when they grow feet, or start talking, or whatever else they do. The less said about them the better, I think.



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DATE: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 -----
Well the see generally imbruglio has been resolved. Senior editor commands me to change all the discursive footnotes into see generallys with parentheticals. Fun, fun, fun. *

*thanks to those who gave suggestions. . .

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DATE: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 -----
On Campus Interview season has kicked into high gear at school. Suffice to say that it is as odd as other people have said it is, what with the previously t-shirted hordes turning into besuited lawyers overnight.

But what really struck me on seeing OCI in action was the extent to which we’re here being credentialized rather then educated. (this point is obviously not original with me) I mean, think about it. Last year at this time, I was a university graduate in a relatively prestigious Ph.D program. There was no way I could convince anyone to pay me more then, say, 650 dollars a week, regardless of how hard I worked. Indeed, over this last summer, armed with both a college degree and a grad degree, I worked for considerably less then that.

Fast forward to today. As I understand it, there is a relatively small (though real) chance that I secure work at a private firm this summer. If I get particularly lucky, perhaps due to the strength of this school, I might even find something at a first run kind of place. These kind of jobs pay outrageous multiples of my previous highest possible salary per week. And yet, I’m going to be applying to these jobs in December, when I’ve been in law school for a grand total of three months. Even by the end of this year I won’t know enough law to even be remotely useful. All that’s changed from my previous condition, then, is the fact that in the interim I convinced a law school that they might like to accept my application. One of my lawyer friends in England told me to expect this transformation from unmarketable slob to potential lawyer, but I didn’t really believe him. I guess now I have to admit that he was right.

The whole thing reminds me a bit of the Japanese university system. Brutal competition to get in (though Japan is worse then law school), and then X years of relatively manageable ritualistic study until the hurricane of working life. To put it mildly, I’m not convinced of either Japanese or American wisdom on this issue. On the other hand, the Germans always complain of their own method, which consists of nonexistent entrance standards but brutal study. As they point out, without the gatekeeping function performed by admissions, people waste incredible amounts of time and money only to fail the extraordinarily unpleasant final examinations. One to ponder, I think.


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DATE: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 -----
When I make comments about various types of people in class, by the way, I never mean to imply that I'm not occasionally one of them. My only hope is that I notice when I succumb.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 -----
This site meter deal is brilliant. I've apparently got people finding this page looking for information on the Sedmak case I mentioned earlier in the blog. Talk about the blind leading the blinder.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 -----
The great problem with having a very large research library is that other people also want the books in said library. Which means, of course, that my effort to find the sources for my review article is going less well then it might. Oh well.

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DATE: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 -----
You know those people who ask particularly difficult questions knowing that the professor is likely to just turn it back at one of their neighbours? I've taken to thinking of them as land mines, in honour of their proximate blast radius. It just occurred to me, however, that the french have a much better term for the kind of people who stir up trouble only to escape it themselves; fauteurs de merde, or, literally, 'stirrers of s***' .*

I'm hoping both my translation and spelling are right. I'll check them later...




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DATE: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 -----
On a side note, I spent five years studying in Britain endlessly being told by friends and Junior Year abroads how much better American college sports facilities were. Apparently what we had compared to these valhallas of fitness like Swaziland compares to the Netherlands. Well, here I am, at an incredibly expensive, top notch American university. And you know what? The athletic facilities are kind of blah. Sure, there's a pool and whatnot, but the judo club has to make do with mats that the club at my incredibly poor undergrad university would have rather eaten then used, the weightlifting facilities are pretty sub-standard, and there isn't a golf course anywhere. I'm not saying they're aren't better at all, but between the hype and the price differential, I expected miracles.

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DATE: Monday, September 30, 2002 -----
I remember when I was in high school the major racial issue was to be found in the snack machine, in the form of the most unfortunately named snack in the United States. I still cringe to think of it, but it was actually, legitimately, in reality, called 'The Plantation Brownie'.

I only mention this as some explanation for why I broke down laughing at seeing the same brownie in our machine here, thankfully named something else.

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DATE: Monday, September 30, 2002 -----
The lawyering class isn't getting any better. In fact, as I told some friends, I'm not sure today's session could have ibeen designed any worse even intentionally. We had written a memo, and so the instructor was going to make us go through an interview with our 'supervising attorney' (i.e, her). What we thought is that she would turn the spotlight on one group (the 40 of us are divided into six groups), and ask the rest of us to observe. What actually happened is that each group was interogated for about twenty minutes each, which doesn't sound so bad until you realize that it was a very limited memo, so we all were constrained to say precisely the same things in response to precisely same questions.

All I could do to avoid falling asleep was to watch what other people were doing to avoid falling asleep. One guy was folding and refolding his cap in what appeared to be wild eyed desperation. Another group was watching someone else try to get his computer to play chess. Personally, I was trying to commit at least temporary hari kari via house key. At least next week we don't have class, to allow time for our memos to be graded.


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DATE: Monday, September 30, 2002 -----
Hmm. I'm having trouble figuring out the difference between the signals see and see generally. If someone has a footnote like 'for background on this, see XXXX', do I need to change it to see generally? I would think so, but then my journal has a house rule requiring a parenthetical after see generally, when the author has instead stuck it in the sentence. Do I then change it to See generally XXXXXXX; (for background on blah)? I think an email to my supervising editor is in order.

Those of you who don't do journals, or aren't law students, just take this as an example of what I've been reduced to.

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DATE: Sunday, September 29, 2002 -----
Oh, and I'm aware the below sounds vaguely like Marxism. I think it suffices to say that I'm not a marxist (in fact, not anywhere near that end of the political spectrum) , but I certainly do think on a general level that certain forms of government won't 'take' without particular conditions. What I really think is that government is an organic sort of thing, and so no form created from outside the state is likely to stick around for very long, or to be successful. Make of that what you will.

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DATE: Sunday, September 29, 2002 -----
Going somewhat unnoticed amid the realpolitik happening vis a vis Iraq is the incredibly tragic ferry accident in Senegal. It seems now that a full thousand people have perished. What's most depressing is that this kind of thing is almost par for the course in Africa. And yet, nothing will be done, and in a couple of years, all this will happen again. Why? Because the only people with the authority to do anything are precisely the people who caused the accident in the first place, and they tend to see their countrymen as little more then living fodder. But, then, what can you expect? If you buy my long term historical view of things, Senegal and its neigbours still have a few centuries of historical development to get through before such things can be ironed out. What they actually need now is their version of a king, who at least would be burdened by his responsibility to God, or some other higher power, to look after his people. What they've got now is men with the theoretical powers of an 18th century king, but without both the moral and logistical restraints. God help them.

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DATE: Saturday, September 28, 2002 -----
Counterstrike! Gtext's Garret Moritz has turned his considerable talents to countering my effort to enter the laptop debate. 'Waddling Thunder', Moritz argues, 'and the other defenders of laptops, display a widely held misconception that the goal of attending a law school class is simply to generate as much text as you can. As if at the end of law school those with a million words of notes win out over those with 200,000.' This is a relevant argument against laptops, he continues, because handwriting notes forces you to eschew brute force stenography for judicious and targeted notetaking.

Moritz also makes the argument that the mere existence of laptops has little to do with whether it's a good idea to use them or not. To paraphrase flippantly but, (I hope) fairly, Moritz takes my contention that computers are a tool of the modern world and responds 'So bloody what?'.

To take this last position first, I would agree if professors were coercing the use of laptops in class. Indeed, I am under the impression that a certain West Coast law school does exactly this, and I don't agree. Gtexts is right; just because laptops are a modern tool doesn't mean we're compelled to use them, or that they're inherently superior to previous tools. But my point there was simply that Professors ought not forbid them. Actively expelling them from class because You as the professor think they're distracting or useless is simply blinkered.

Now, for the other argument, which I think is the more important one. Before I actually attempt to address it, however, let me point out that Moritz's point is very similar to a continuing debate within the chess programming community, or at least it was when I last checked. The question there is whether one ought to teach the computer the rules of 'good' chess, and thus let it think about fewer possible moves, or whether the it is more efficient to simply pump the computer full of the most processing power possible and let it figure things out. Even there, the answer is still unclear, so I don't think the silliness of brute force is that evident.

However, that isn't my real answer. I'm not a brute forcist. Indeed, I completely agree with Moritz that the point of a law school class seems to be the thinking process, and not the rote copying of everything that the professor says. As other people have pointed out, the fanatical typing method of note-taking does have the effect of shutting down the analytic portions of the brain, and thus turning us all into sorely underpaid typists.And, furthermore, I am notorious as someone who took almost no notes in class as an undergrad, though that has something to do with the UK. But the point, surely, is that the computer does not preclude judicious notetaking at all. One is no more obligated to take copious notes with the computer then when handwriting. Actually, I think Morritz is driving an unnatural wedge between work in the library, where he says the laptop is the best tool, and work in the classroom. For me, at least, these two are linked. I take a short brief into class, and ammend it as I further understand what the case actually stands for, and as further background reveals itself. Certainly, this could also be done with pen and paper, but why should it be? This way I can keep a virgin copy of my notes for later perusal, as well as the ammended notes, with a minimum of effort. My beginnings steps at outlining are also much easier if I have the ammended notes available for me to cut and paste directly between the two mediums.

Anyway, that is entirely too long, and a lawyering memo is Sword of Damoclesing over my head. But I thought gtext's thoughtfulness deserved a response.

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DATE: Saturday, September 28, 2002 -----
Note to self: Wear blindfold while walking by soft serve stand near supermarket. Pistachio soft serve is the work of the devil.

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DATE: Friday, September 27, 2002 -----
Is anyone else sick of people telling them that entering private practice is tantamout to admitting one is no more then a money grubbing and possibly mindless lemming? Or that by going into a big firm, you've basically sold your soul to one of Satan's minions, if not to the Master of Evil himself? I mean, I don't know who stapled these people to their white horses, but in my world, private practice is the raison d'etre of the lawyer. Yes, by all means work for the government or for an NGO. They're both honourable career paths. But helping to grease the mighty wheels of capitalism is at least as important, and at least as virtuous. It's no coincidence that the one of the first things socialism seeks to dismantle is the power of the private lawyer, and that's because the private law stands as a great bullwark against the power of the state.

And I don't want to hear some nonsense about how the idealism will be beaten out of me by experience. I'm not an idealist. Indeed, it is patently impossible to be a student of 18th century history and emerge as anything but a jaded cynic. I know full well that the practice of law is often unpleasant, that it chews people up and spits them out with a total lack of ceremony, and that lawyers are usually nothing more then grist for the mill. That's why I might not last very long in private practice. But you know those that do persevere? There's nothing wrong with them. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be like them either.

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DATE: Friday, September 27, 2002 -----
First of all, let me thank gtexts for the mention in his blog. It's always good to hear that people are actually reading things I'm writing.

But now, it seems to me that Waddling Thunder is constrained to wade into the laptop debate I've been following on various blogs. Should they be allowed in classrooms? And should we decide to use them? Well, I won't belabour the point for too long. The simple answer is that they're part of modern life, and it borders on the totally ludicrous to exclude them. As for the objection raised by gtexts, that they've become as much of a fashion statement for law students as babies are for actresses, I have to disagree. I'm something of a contrarian myself; I understand the impulse to be irritated by the herd. Furthermore, there is indeed something particularly enlightening about writing rather then typing. But for work, the computer wins every time. Sometimes the herd is right.

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DATE: Friday, September 27, 2002 -----
The post just below this used to be much longer but I noticed I had duplicated something further back in the blog, so its now gone.

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DATE: Friday, September 27, 2002 -----
Our travails with the overly theoretical professor of torts continue. Today's particularly marvelous class featured multiple appearances of the much loved 'Philosopher King', as well as an extended cameo by his distant cousin, the 'social engineer in the sky'.


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DATE: Thursday, September 26, 2002 -----
Perhaps frustrated by our efforts to understand the importance (or lack thereof) of venue, our Civ Pro professor pointed out the obvious. Personal Jurisdiction, he said, is the big enchilada of this area of law. Venue is a mere tortilla chip.

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DATE: Thursday, September 26, 2002 -----
Hey, I've got a link on JURIST. Cool.

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DATE: Thursday, September 26, 2002 -----
I suppose, for those non-law student people who might be looking at this, I should explain what a journal is in the context of law school. If you have some academic training, I'm sure you think the answer is obvious. A journal is a peer edited review of the most important articles in a field, right? Well, no. In law school, a journal is a student edited periodical, based on the almost preposterous notion that people who have been studying the law for months, or even a couple of years, have the ability to change, correct, and reject pieces by professionals of great experience. At any law school, the king of this unruly jungle is the mighty Law Review, the only one of these journals which typically weeds out students by academic achievement.Look, for example, at the grand-daddy of this genre, the Harvard Law Review, or its peer publications, such as the Stanford Law Review or even the iconoclastically named Yale Law Journal.

However, underneath these giants of legal scholarship are a whole range of topic specific journals. These aren't quite as prestigious, or important, but the important thing is that they allow first years to work for them and they don't care about grades. I've joined one of these since coming here. So whenever you hear me complaining about journals, that's what I mean.


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DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 -----
One of my university buddies from the UK is coming over to visit in November! The question, however, is where to take him that might demonstrate some of the spirit of the country. He hasn't been in the land of the free for a long time, I think since he was a kid and his family made the obligatory Disney world trip. I thought initially about a rodeo, but this is way too far north for that. Even in my home suburbs of Virginia, I could probably find a monster truck derby or a mud racing meet a short drive away, but I don't think they're up here either. I think, though, that I'm in luck and the Wrestling people are going to be up here around that time. Anyone else have any suggestions along these lines? Hooters, maybe?


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DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 -----
I've looked preliminarily at the article I need to subcite for my journal. After a couple of minutes, several rather disheartening facts revealed themselves. First of all, the author, being a foreigner, doesn't seem to have realized that contractions are no good in academic writing. In fact, he seems to almost revel in inflicting them with almost malicious frequency at every possible opportunity. It's diabolical. Secondly, I'm sure people have heard of the anti-Christ, right? Well, this guy must have the anti-Blue Book. Whatever style manual he's using, its the exact opposite of what you're supposed to actually do. Random words are in ALL CAPS. There are bizarre non-standard abbreviations all over the place, seperated by almost entirely gratuitous bits of incorrect punctuation. Half of the titles are in Portuguese and Spanish (which means I obviously can't check the quotes for accuracy) , and those that he's remembered to cite in English don't have authors. The periodicals? I can't find any of them anywhere, apart from one lonesome citation of the New York Times. And the grammer is either incredibly complex or totally incompetent, and it doesn't speak well of me or him that I can't tell which it is. I'll get it done, I'm sure. It isn't going to be much fun, though.

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DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 -----
I just noticed this site,... Good idea theoretically, but I'm not sure it's one of those that might work on this particular planet.

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DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 -----
Í'm now involved tangentially in five politically aligned organizations, a journal, a sports team, and a ethnically based social group. Also, I think I'm a student. Overcommitment much?

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DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 -----
I got really, formally, called on for the first time this morning. More specifically, my Contracts professor looked down at the face chart, looked around our none too indicative visagesm and said, 'Mr. Waddling Thunder? Let's see what you made of this case.' Luckily, however, the case I was asked to elucidate was a relatively easy one, Sedmak v. Charlie's Chevrolet, Inc. In this small-time brouhaha, which I think will sound somewhat familiar to anyone who has been the victim of a car dealer bait and switch, Sedmak gave Charlie's a deposit for a particularly snazzy, limited edition Chevrolet Corvette. When the car duly arrived, however, Charlie's renegged on delivery. Obviously, though the case doesn't say so specifically, our friendly Chevrolet dealer got a higher offer for the coveted auto.

Now, the question the case poses is relatively simple. Can Sedmak force Charlie's to deliver the car? Or, in lawyerese, can Sedmak coerce specific performance of their contract? Well, based on traditional precedent, the answer is a relatively simple no. Specific performance pertains only to real estate or items of such uniqueness that they cannot be found otherwise, such as pieces of art, etc. But the reason this case is in the casebok is because modern precedent has expanded this definition to include things like limited edition cars. As the court put it, roughly, finding another car of this sort in similar condition would have been almost impossible.

What interested and amused the class most, however, was the contention by Charlie's that no contract even existed for the car. According to the car dealer's keen minded 'manager', the deposit the Sedmaks put down was for an offer to bid for the car, not an actual deposit for purchase. His enthusiasm for this particular train of argument, however, was apparently extinguished when it emerged that none of the other potential customers for the Corvette had even heard of this bidding deposit.Sort of reminds me of the whole 'I need to talk to the manager' rigamarole we all go through at the dealers'.


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DATE: Monday, September 23, 2002 -----
As an aside, I really don't understand the point of our lawyering class. Yes, I know we have to learn how to write memos. And yes, it's equally clear we ought to know other aspects of day to day lawyering, including the use of the WestLaw and Lexis databases. But a course that gobbles four hours a week for the entire year? We hardly devote that much time to contracts, if you consider that once the exam happens in January, the only course that continues into the second semester is lawyering. Everything we've been taught to date all of us could have figured out with a couple of well drawn up examples, one class, and a good teacher. But, well, the school is on a quest to make sure our curriculum is relevant, so we've got to suffer through this preposterous sham. Hope its useful this summer, as they promise...

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DATE: Monday, September 23, 2002 -----
The amount of free pizza served in this school is truly amazing. Before I came here, actually, I wondered how anyone could conceivably get tired of that most excellent of foods. I'm beginning to find out. Pizza tonight at a political organization meeting. Pizza last friday for a journal. Pizza in the middle of last week, for something I don't even remember. And pizza last weekend for something else. And, just to top it off, pizza tommorrow for another political organization.

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DATE: Sunday, September 22, 2002 -----
Though it's still a little unclear, the Germans seem to have plumped for the worst of all possible worlds. A completely non decisive election, where the Greens, of all people, are the kingmakers. I'm quite sure that if the goal was to put the German economy on a solid footing again, this was not exactly the answer. Indeed, almost any other result, including a Social Democrat/Free Democrat coalition would have been a hundred times better, but it looks just now as if the largest country in Europe is going to be stuck with a crippled, quasi lame duck government beholden to the extreme left. Not good. Not good at all.

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DATE: Sunday, September 22, 2002 -----
On another note, I can feel law school gradually taking over my intellectual space, like some sort of gelatinous blob. I mean, its obvious that this would happen, but I didn't ever think I would sit there watching a pass interference call during a football game, and suddenly think, 'huh. Expectation interest remedy'.

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DATE: Sunday, September 22, 2002 -----
Law school is slowly beginning to make its presence felt workwise. I just got a considerable chunk of an article to subcite, about which I still have no idea, and also there's a lawyering assignment sneaking up on me. On the other hand, I've almost plowed through my contracts reading for the next week, and I have a schedule perfectly attuned to my working style of pulling 8am-5pm days. So let's see how this week goes.



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DATE: Sunday, September 22, 2002 -----
In general I prefer European culture and amusements, even as I hate the Old Continent's politics. However, sometimes Americans come up with things so outrageously bizarre or so demonstrative of the American spirit that I have to smile. One of these is the truly wonderful NRA gun museum in Fairfax, Virginia (they have one of Charles II's guns. Charles II!) . I just saw another one on television, which is possibly even better; school bus demolition derby. How cool is that?

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DATE: Friday, September 20, 2002 -----
Spotted the first in class game of Solitaire today! A definite milestone.


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DATE: Friday, September 20, 2002 -----
On another note, at around 4 pm today I had some 'training' for the legal journal I've decided to join. The only problem with this enterprise was that after an hour of quite comprehensive chatter, I haven't even the foggiest hint of an idea as to what I'm supposed to be doing, or how I'm supposed to do it. From the description the fellow at the front gave, it seemed as if detecting mistakes in footnotes necessitated that you already have an encyclopedic knowledge of Court Reporters, citations forms, and abbreviations, which of course none of us have. I suppose, though, I can take solace in the fact that I wasn't alone in my mystification. Safety in numbers!

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DATE: Friday, September 20, 2002 -----
I went to a debate between a Famous Professor and someone else about a legal issue of considerable contemporary significance yesterday. You'll have to excuse the vagueness of that description, but I think my anonymity in terms of which school I'm at depends somewhat on not saying who or what... In any case, I was not impressed with said Famous Professor. I'm not saying he isn't incredibly bright. Clearly, he is. But his responses to his opponent's measured argument consisted of nothing more then a) yelling and b) wild counter-claims of greater and greater irrelevance. I mean, I could do that too if I wasn't restricted by a sense of propriety. Is that what law school teaches, then? Shamelessness?


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DATE: Thursday, September 19, 2002 -----
There is definitely some tension building between our section and our Torts professor. It's not that she's unpleasant in any way. Far from it, she's tried hard to be solicitous and pleasant. The problem is that she's one of these people who seems to think that law is only an acceptable intellectual discipline if it happens to be entirely incomprehensible. I ran into this same problem with my historian colleagues when I was a grad student. They feel inferior because their brain isn't built in a way to let them do things that are actually difficult to understand, like high level mathematics, and so they intentionally make their own work equally obtruse to compensate for this apparent deficiency. You have no idea how many times I've told people that when you're talking about 17th century women's costumes, (or something similar) game theory, paradigms [shifted or otherwise] and wildly overblown debates about post-modernism vs. post-post modernism really have no place. And its the same with this woman.

The result of all this is that no one in the class understands anything she's saying, and thus we end up stewing in our seats until the end of the class, at which point everyone streams outside to complain.[everyone, that is, except the one or two people who claim to have it all under control] And what's worse is that we all understand the cases, and the tensions pretty well, I think. It's just the quasi-philosophical mutterings people object to. But I'm hoping sometime during the semester we all go, 'duh, THAT's why she was talking about all that stuff'. For now, though, we're just swiming in the fog.


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DATE: Thursday, September 19, 2002 -----
I thought that as a 1L, we're not supposed to have any contact with firms till December... So what is this firm advert doing in my school mailbox, exactly?

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DATE: Thursday, September 19, 2002 -----
I've discovered a new species of classroom creature to add to the sidlers, chargers, and the babblers discussed below. I think we can call this one the 'cackler'. What is a cackler? Well, I'm sure you've had them before as an undergrad, but briefly, a cackler is the one person in the classroom who finds every joke the professor makes so outrageously funny that he can barely contain himself. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a joke. Even the most tangential hint of humour typically sends him into paroxysms of laughter.

I only add this today because our section's cackler outed himself in this morning's Civ Pro class. At one point, apparently overcome by the virtuosic performance of our professor, the Cackler gave up, removed his glasses, and placed his head on the desk. This was presumably to allow the full scale of the class's hilarity to course through his veins unfettered by the demands of conciousness. What must distress the instructor, however,apart from the constant worry that one of his students might die of seizure, is that at least 50% of the comments that elicit the cackling weren't necessarily meant to be funny. Being an eccentric, (after all, he's a law professor at a top school) it just seems that way, and I'm not sure he particularly appreciates Captain Hilarito in the front row there. But what are you gonna do? Issue little chits that allow a limited number of chuckles, guffaws, and laughs per day?

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DATE: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 -----
What precisely is the difference between a great composer and merely a decent one? I ask because I'm sitting here listening to some of Frederick the Great's flute compositions, having earlier listened to some of Handel's opera Theodora. Now, Frederick was clearly a tremendous warrior, what with the Seven Years War, the magnificent theft of Silesia in 1740, and the rest of it. And I have great respect for his sharpness of mind; you don't read his invariably sarcastic but perceptive letters to his many ambassadors without realizing this. But his music falls flat, even though it superficially sounds precisely like any other music of the time period. Contrast this to Handel, whose glorious work is not only beautiful, but just sounds right in a way I can't explain. And I won't even bother bringing the even greater Bach into the discussion. Or to take another of my favorite artists, why does Schubert's Wintereise make people want to hurl themselves off a cliff in desperation, while other Lieder sounds like the depressed crooning of the drunk guy down at the subway station, if the drunk guy only happened to be German? I guess good music is a little like pornography if we take the famous definition of the latter to heart; 'We know it when we see [hear] it'.

NB [ I know that Frederick and Handel are of slightly different vintages, but the difference isn't big enough to matter, especially if you figure that as one of the leading professional musicians of the age, Handel's work was cutting edge)

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DATE: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 -----
Has anyone else noticed the wave of keyboards that spring into action when the professor says something of importance? Perhaps we can figure out some sort of scale to signal whether something is important enough to write down or not. In fact, I think like the Scoville units that measure culinary heat, we need a [Waddling Thunder author's name] unit for determining the level of clacking noise in class. Three [blanks], for example, could mean that between 70 and 80 percent of the class has started to type, while a paltry one would signal something only the most fastidious of notetakers is bothering with. This is definitely something that needs to be worked on.



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DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 -----
Oh, and before I realize that I ought to be doing something else, close personal friend and co-history conspirator StNylan has arrived on the blogging scene! Join him and experience the hilarity of being that most forlorn of Britons, the principled conservative!


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DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 -----
Waddling Thunder friend Sua Sponte comments that California Supreme Court Reports sounds, if I'm remembering it right, like an 'abstract creamy dessert''. Without making any editorial comments on that particular sentiment (which would be like the pot calling the kettle black, given what I'm about to say) , it did remind me of my biggest pet peeve concerning the Italian team during the late World Cup. To wit, most of the team had beautiful, chewy, juicy names.;Totti, Zambrotta, Donni, Vieri. It was almost as good as watching Molto Mario on the Food Network, or would have been, had their infernal goalkeeper not been named Buffon. I mean, come on! Buffon? Don't they even have the decency to add an 'i' to the end of that? It ruined my entire football experience with the Italians, to the point where I didn't even mind too much when they were cheated out of a win. (whoops, did I say that? What I meant was that the World Cup referees were all scrupulously fair. Yes. That's true) And yes, all you Italio-philes, I know. It's a perfectly normal Italian name. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be.


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DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 -----
Following up on Greek Communism, or actually on Greek government in general, I am really pleased to report that an Appeals Court ruling in Thessalonika has relegalized video games in that wonderful country. The government had previously made them verboten in a somewhat dubious effort to banish unregulated gambling, which has to rank as one of the great knee jerk reactions in the mighty annals of knee jerk reactions.

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DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 -----
My hometown team, the Washington Redskins, were totally, completely, utterly crushed yesterday. Crushed. As the newest candidate for the funniest movie in the history of the universe* has it, 'woe unto me'.

* This refers, of course, to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which has now joined UHF, My Cousin Vinny, and the Vogon Confederation's The Travails of a Man named Zilpnot, who defied The Mighty One and then was struck down by His Providence And Greatness, and thus Shewed the Unworthiness of his People on that august list. **

**The Vogons only recently discovered Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, but have, I am told, mistaken them for early human comedians.

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DATE: Monday, September 16, 2002 -----
Having been totally demolished in the last election, the French Communist party has put their heads together to figure out what went wrong. According to Le Monde, they've decided that voters saw them as far too moderate

'Si la gauche plurielle a été sanctionnée, c'est pour des raisons beaucoup plus profondes : ses abandons, son refus d'entendre le peuple, son refus de s'attaquer au cœur du système, à la puissance de l'argent, à une Europe du recul social'

For a party that manages to say things like 'renationalisation' with a straight face, this takes some major chutzpah. What even wierder policy could they possibly adopt? Maybe they'll take up the extraordinary form of Communist nationalism practiced in Greece. At least that version of Lenin's curse is amusing...

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DATE: Monday, September 16, 2002 -----
I wonder about casebooks sometimes... Specifically, I was reading a case for contracts today (Shirley Parker v. Twentieth Century Fox) in which the studio repudiated a contract it had with the plaintiff actress for a movie, and in compensation offered her a role in another film entirely at the same salary. She sued for breach of contract, which Fox admitted, and was awarded the full sum of the contract plus interest by the trial court. So Fox appealed, arguing that since contract law requires the victim to mitigate her damages, Parker was under obligation to take the proferred role.

Now, mitigation only works if the available employment is 'substantially similar' to the original contract, and in this case the judge ruled that the two films were too different. And here, folks, is where it got interesting, because the casebook author apparently decided that this decision necessitated some sort of feminist explanation about how the reason the second film wasn't good enough to qualify for mitigation was because unlike the first film, the subject matter (it was a Western) turned Parker into a submissive female. Fine, I suppose. But this entirely misses the whole point,which is that its bloody obvious that two films are almost never substantially similar. Let's say you pay Arnold 20 million bucks to act in a movie where he invades Australia, kills most of the inhabitants, and then sets himself up as God-Emperor. But then you repudiate the contract, having received word that this movie didn't do well in the focus groups, and offer him a hilarious romantic comedy where he trades witty repartee with Adam Sandler. Do you really think he's under obligation to take the movie? No, of course not, because people in general have the right to choose what kind of jobs they accept. So why is there this bizarre feminist discourse by Mary Joe Frug in the middle of everything? There's no real evidence to explain why she didn't want the other movie; all that matters is that she didn't, and that it was different enough.


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DATE: Monday, September 16, 2002 -----
A quote from the most extraordinary idiot in the British government, George Galloway, to start off Monday for you:

'If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. '

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DATE: Saturday, September 14, 2002 -----
On another note, that's the end of the second week of law school. Hell has yet to appear, so for the moment I'm going to assume it doesn't really exist, in the context of this place at least.

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DATE: Saturday, September 14, 2002 -----
Not law related, but Robert Fisk, Master of Nonsense, unleashed another volley of preposterousness today. In his latest babble, Fisk claims that amid the general wave of anti-arab sentiment in the US, he sees a few slivers of light; an Egyptian who passed through airport security without difficulty on September 11, a speech he gave in Virginia, the people who came out to hear him and his message. Very touching, Bob, and very typical. For this is what Fisk does, when he's not engaged in wild and outlandish accusations against the United States and Britain. He tells us about the bad situation in America, and then apparently praises those few working against the barbarian tide. Except, of course, that there is invariably no barbarian tide. The amount of Anti-Arab reaction in the United States has been incredibly minimal, given the circumstances. Indeed, the very lack of reaction shows just how far America has come in tolerance since WWII, when a similar, though much less brutal attack by the Japanese occasioned even official repression. Rather, it is Fisk's Holy European Union, at the soiled feet of whom Fisk worships, who has the problems with tolerance. It wasn't in America that Jean-Marie LePen defeated the mainline Centre-Left candidate, was it? And it certainly isn't America where Neo-Nazi groups have grafted Anti-Muslim mantras into their already silly arguments. And it wasn't in America, I'm quite sure, where the homosexual far righter who saw the Muslims as the bringers of intolerance was almost elected head of government. This is not to say that I think the European reaction has been unreasonable. September 11th happened at a difficult time for them, just as they were under incredible pressure from an immigration trend which they not only aren't used to, but is a particularly difficult one. Pim Fortuyn did, indeed, have a point, and America did not react to similar immigration particularly well either. But all this has nothing to do with Fisk's accussations, and indeed he would make more social progress turning his shotgun of nonsense towards himself. But then, I'm not even sure I should bother contradicting Fisk. He just keeps writing the same nonsense, happy that it generates publicity and satisfies that couple percent of English idiots who believe him.

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DATE: Friday, September 13, 2002 -----
So, pursuant to a conversation with a classmate...

What about commenting in class? He and I, at the moment, are keeping ourselves to at most one comment in a class, though usually none. That seems to be the best way to do things, at least for us. Say one cogent thing, if you have one cogent thing to say, then stay quiet. As he put it, its the law school equivalent of George's tactic in one episode of Seinfeld; tell your one joke, and then get (figuratively) out of the room. Some of our classmates obviously don't agree with this strategy, given the number of times their hands race to the sky in one session.

But I'm wondering about this. Let's posit that the point of participation is to build some sort of reputation for intelligence among your classmates and professor, leaving aside the idea of 'stealth class participation' I mentioned below. (and no, I don't think most classroom participation is an effort to understand the material) You just want to be known as a bright person: let's say the reason is to secure recommendations from your prof and interesting contacts among your classmates. In any case, you don't want to be known as dumb. So is it smarter to just keep talking, hoping to eventually say something telling, or to generally keep quiet and to only interject when you know you have something useful to say? To put it another way, who wins the fight? The boxer who keeps punching away, oblivious to the fact that 90% of their punches are either missing entirely or getting blocked, or the patient power puncher, who only occasionally winds up and strikes, but almost always connects? I really don't know the answer to this question, but I suspect the real answer is that one ought not to worry about things like this.


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DATE: Thursday, September 12, 2002 -----
My contracts professor asked our class yesterday how many of us were in study groups. Basically no hands went up, as I thought. He frowned, chuckled, and then proceeded to mention how useful they could be. After all, when he was in our position at this same law school, they were 'ubiquitous'. He has, of course, some good points. Clearly, there's no better way of learning the law then trying to explain it to someone else. But I don't think he's fully aware of the kind of storm he might unleash. Does he really want dozens of frightened 1L's desperately trying to put together groups because the Contracts professor told them it was a good idea? I don't think so, but without knowing it I think he shoved some people towards the precipice of insanity. Not me, though.

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DATE: Thursday, September 12, 2002 -----
JD2B reports, through the Harvard Crimson, that the Harvard Law School has magnanimously allowed the military to recruit on Campus, threatened with the loss of some 300 million dollars in Federal funds throughout the University. I understand their point about 'Don't Ask Don't tell', but the idea of Harvard excluding the people that keep Harvard and other places like it from being reduced to pathetic rubble is plainly offensive. And its even more offensive that they were only pushed into their belated discovery of virtue through their wallets rather then through principle. Dis-bloody-gusting.

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DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 -----
I notice I've been linked from some blog list pages, and am even now on Google! The Thunder shambles on!

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DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 -----
September 11th, today. A day of justifiable mourning, and I join in it.


I'm also glad to report that the Guardian, reporting out of Manchester, has begun scare-mongering in earnest about our possible war in Iraq. Iraq, we are told, is not Afghanistan. It certainly isn't. The interesting thing is that when we went to war with complete justification in Afghanistan, we were told by the self same Guardian that 'Afghanistan is not Iraq', pointing out that the Americans would (unfortunately but by their own fault, of course) be caught and slaughtered in the murderous snows of the 'Stan, for how could capitalists succeed where the Great Soviet Union failed? This, of course, is the strategy of the Guardian. Whenever any military action pops up, it first insists it can't be won, then says if it's won it's no good, and then blames the winner for winning. Very clever, but a bit repetitive.


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DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 -----
The other interesting thing, and I'll add it separately I think from my post five minutes ago, is watching the post class dynamics. Who dashes out? Who slinks? And most importantly, who either sidles or charges up to the professor to harangue them with what are sure to be inane arguments? I've heard this professor mobbing was more of a problem at a certain first semester gradeless law school which will remain nameless (and which also had the pleasure of rejecting my application for admission) , but apparently it happens here too. So what are these people trying to accomplish? Well, a long graduated and self confessedly jaded friend of mine says that what people are doing is trying to re-inject a class participation grade. How, you say? Well, it's simple. If they keep using certain phrases and spouting certain ideas around the professor, they figure that on the anonymously graded examination, the professor will see their pet phrase and reward them for it. Great Plan, in that if you say the words 'Social Justice' (for example) often enough, the professor may indeed recognize you. Of course, what he may recognize you as is that annoying idiot who so blatantly doesn't belong here that he's planning to have a talk with the admissions people about your undergrad. And this, folks, isn't the newspaper business; any publicity isn't good publicity.


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DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 -----
Like most 1L's (and specifically like fellow Blogger SuaSponte) I've finally run into the inscrutable Pennoyer V. Neff, and I have to admit it took a couple of readings to even begin to understand it. In fact, on some of these cases I think any other combination of words is just as likely to make sense; it's just that the judges chose these particular ones, perhaps through some sort of arcane game of judicial mad libs. I hope one day I'm able to do it myself, though I think I should start thinking up sentences now; How about "The pecuniated reliance interest balances the dual and competing policies of state sovereignty and due process with difficulty, but in the end, drawing a red fire line under the Talponof test to avoid this legal quagmire seems to lead to undesirable consequences"? But in any case the problem with Pennoyer isn't really that the concept is difficult. Once you get it into your head that this is the very beginning of modernish personal jurisdiction jurisdprudence, it begins making more sense. Or at least I think it does. That judgement is pending my class.


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DATE: Sunday, September 08, 2002 -----
This is the first time I've been temporarily barred from entering my house because a head of state was just about to give a speech next door. I guess that's what happens when you live near a school of government.

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DATE: Saturday, September 07, 2002 -----
"Hell wasn't what Rincewind had been led to expect, although there were signs of what it might once have been- a few clinkers in a corner, a bad scorch mark on the ceiling. . . 'I don't understand, said Eric. 'Where are the furnaces? Where are the flames? Where,' he added hopefully, 'are the succubi?'

I came across this passage in one of Terry Pratchett's wonderful comedy science fiction fantasies, Eric. The reason it amuses me just now, is that it very much sums up both my and most of my classmates reactions to law school till now. Law school, and especially this law school, is supposed to be an unpleasant and somewhat disgusting procedure one goes through prior to cashing in, rather like a root canal at the end of which, for some reason, you get offered a high paying job dusting. As I've said a couple of times below, it hasn't been that way so far. No flames, no demonic professors, and no non-human succubi. All we have left are a few vestiges of the old horror, mostly relegated to being used as funny anecdotes by the dean at school functions. Long may it stay that way.

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DATE: Friday, September 06, 2002 -----
Wow. The long awaited end of the first week, and you know what? I'm psyched. Most of it was literally, absolutely, totally great. The people were friendly and bright, and the various members of faculty helpful and interesting. I'm pretty astonished, especially about the last. Of course, things should get tougher, but I'm ready to go. But now I need to think about what to cook this coming week. This pea and garlic soup sounds good (ask for recipe), and that should cover two nights, but what about the rest of the week? My favorite spaghetti carbonara is too wintry for now, I think, and I don't think I can afford any fish. (though let's see at the supermarket tommorrow) How about some chicken with a wine, lemon and basil sauce? That sounds good, and I can always use the extra basil for some pesto...

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DATE: Thursday, September 05, 2002 -----
Waddling Thunder learned last night that living next to a pizza place has its down sides. Like, for example, the occasional 4 am delivery of flour. Well, at least I know they make their own dough, on those occasions when I'm craving pizza but can't be bothered to put it together myself.

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DATE: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 -----
I'm sure I'm going to eventually laugh at my own naivety, but at the moment, the work here in law school isn't that bad. I had my busiest day today, with three classes, and neither the preparation for today nor the work I did afterward took all that long.On both occasions, I was done by 6 and happily esconsed at home a mere quarter of an hour later. Now, my post work activities weren't as successful as I would hope (the gym very distinctly didn't happen yesterday, and doesn't look like its happening today either) but otherwise, it's all steam ahead for now.

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DATE: Monday, September 02, 2002 -----
With my first real class (Contracts) looming like a giant looming thing tommorrow , it's just about time to find out if I've really understood what I read over the weekend. I mean, it seemed easy enough, but as people keep telling me, its when things seem easy that you should be worried. As long as I'm not personally called on, though, it should be all right, since I'll be the only person who knows about my ignorance. Oh, and I just got access to the school's course evaluations for previous years. All is well, except, apparently, for my Torts Professor, who is said to be 'sarcastic' and 'rude'. Let's see how that assessement holds up, but it doesn't sound promising just now.

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DATE: Sunday, September 01, 2002 -----
Orientation, thank goodness is done, and I am really glad. Actually, I think everyone is,since the thing I heard most from people was that they were anxious to get going on their real work, and to be fair, so am I. As for details, I am glad to report that I have met my Civ Pro professor. Aside from a rather pronounced lisp, which really doesnt bother me, he is not that scary. Having said that, though, I have to admit that he looked less than happy with some of our responses to the sort of practice case we had been given to work on, and if he was unhappy then, he probably is not going to be terribly amused when things turn serious.

But having said all of this, I wonder about something he spent a considerable time on. We had, as an orientation activity, a small mock trial of what apparently is a famous case. Essentially, without going into details, a person was injured by something owned by a large company, and was suing for damages. The 1L jury brought back a verdict for the defendant, which, given the fact that certain things we heard in trial made it clear that the plaintiff must have been jointly negligent made sense to me (and apparentlyto most of my classmates). But Prof Civ Pro was dismayed, saying that in the real case, the jury had sympathy for the little guy, awarding him a considerable amount of money. In fact, he said, he was surprised that we would vote in so hearltess a way, which puzzled me, because in the end, are we not in law school to follow the law rather then emotion? I mean, even we misunderstood the law, it would seem like we had taken the better path... Oh well.

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DATE: Thursday, August 29, 2002 -----
That, I think, was the first full day of orientation. I have to say that I don't really know what happened today, nor will I ever remember, I suspect. Just a bunch of introductions, speeches, funny and supposedly useful anecdotes, and mounds of free food. In fact,what I do remember was basically the same thing over and over again. Roughly, the Law School cares, and you'll be all right, because it isn't all that bad, even though its rigorous, and you're bright enough to handle it because the School picked you and thus you'll be all right despite the fact that you're nervous, and think you can't handle it, and aren't sure you're supposed to be here. The only other thing I remember is thinking how much like high school this all is, what with the lockers and the herding to and fro by older or more experience quasi authority figures. In any case, its done for now. All I've got to do now is my first bit of homework, a bit of pre-first day of class prep. It should be fine.

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DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 -----
An update to the books situation, since I have a moment now. The first thing is that I was surprised as to how many of the people I've seen buying books have already been gobbling up the various commercial outlines/helper books. I saw one guy literally dump the entire selection of two different companies into his basket... Bizarre, but I suppose people want to get that leg up. My innate cheapness, however, is saving me from what I believe to be a mistake. The second thing is that I seem to have the only Contracts book I've ever seen that doesn't start with the famous Hairy Hand case. Am I mistaken in thinking that the Hairy Hand is a contracts case? Instead, I've got what seems to be a vasectomy.


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DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 -----
Just bought books... 3 Classes plus first year lawyering, plus obligatory dictionary? 499.97 dollars. Oh boy.

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DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 -----
Banners flapping limply in the breeze, Waddling Thunder is Mobile! Today is 'move to the city where the school is located' day.

And going back to that post about feeling intimidated (sled dogs, et al) a couple of days ago, I've decided on a more descriptive description. What I actually feel like is one of those pasty fat Englishman (of the kind that the English and Scots do so well; no one else's pasty people are as excellent) who enjoys going to Butlin's Holiday Camp, but instead has found himself in a small cage with two hungry looking wild dogs whose tags read, respectively, 'I like eating Pasty People' and 'Booya! You're lunch'. It's all rather ungood.

[note to my English and Scottish friends: I don't mean you in the above description. If you really want to know who I was thinking of, its someone who was in a 'leadership' position in the hall of residence I lived in, back at University in Scotland. Yes, him. Eaten by dogs.]



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DATE: Monday, August 26, 2002 -----
Help! Last minute paper shuffling.... Medical forms, done. Now all I have left is to set up the gas, the electricity, return some library books, clear out my bank account here, call the people I bought my bed from up at school to make sure its ready, write someone a bereavement card, buy a lock for my laptop, and call the admissions office to make sure they got some transcripts I mailed. Yeeha! And I'm sure there's something else too...


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DATE: Sunday, August 25, 2002 -----
Everyone I talk to recommends this book,The Bramble Bush for the novice law student. It's supposed to be the best exposition of legal education available, and thus useful to read sometime before 1L exams. Of course, in such cases it is inevitable that the local bookstore (in this case a Borders ) is entirely out. I'll see if I can find it up at school, but my enthusiasm has been snuffed brutally by my setback.

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DATE: Saturday, August 24, 2002 -----
Hmm. Desperately trying to sort out post grad school bits of paper before going to law school. Do I really need the program to the Parsifal I saw in London up at school? How about the menu to a formal dinner I was at last year? Or this postcard telling me my application is complete at Georgetown University Law Center? What if for some reason in the future I desperately need to know when I applied to Georgetown, huh? Where will I be then if I throw it out now?

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DATE: Saturday, August 24, 2002 -----
As I say, I'm leaving for school on Tuesday, though Wednesday to Friday are just orientation days. It should be great. So what am I worried about? Well, essentially, that I'm not quite good enough. I've never worked really hard, or pulled all-nighters, or felt like I was pushing myself. In essence, I've got to where I am through some talent, some work, and some luck. So what's going to happen when I run into people who have more talent, and work like particularly determined dog sled pulling dogs? I don't really know.

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DATE: Saturday, August 24, 2002 -----
Well, okay, here I am. Or, as a 1980's computer programmer would say, 'Hello, World'. But I'm not a computer programmer. Indeed, aside from a brief flirtation with that jungle of hilarity in high school, (this flirtation involving a magnificent text adventure called 'Uncle Bob's Adventure, whose sole distinguishing feature was that it was entirely and intentionally unsolvable) I've stayed as far away from the skeletal workings of computers, and more specifically, mathematics, for my entire life. What I actually am is a 23 year old British educated American, who majored (if you can call it that in the British context) in 18th century history. More apposite to today, however, on Tuesday next I head north from wherever I am right now to law school, in, for once, the United States. I'm not going to say which law school in particular, as anonymity seems to me the more prudent route, but suffice to say you've very likely heard of it, and probably in a good way. In any case, if I just came out and said where I was going to study, that would make this a lot less fun, and those of you who know me will know where I go anyway. That, of course, is assuming anyone reads this, but since I don't know how well I'm going to do keeping this up, I'm not terribly bothered. By the way, I can't avoid saying hello to the person who gave me this idea, and whose law school blog is not only better, but far more advanced. Here she is, Sua Sponte.



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