Prom·ised Land
n.
The promised land is more like the second definition. It’s where I was born. It’s where I go to rest and hide from the world.
I was up for about four hours this morning before I remembered that I was born on this day… exams made a man forget his own birthday.
Ok… Volenti Non Fit Injuria just pissed me off.
While it is a shame that Governor Ryan apparently had less scruples in other areas of his administration, I think it is unfortunate that Mr. Volenti lumps Ryan’s graft in with his decision on the death penalty. Governor Ryan released 171 prisoners from death row because the system is broken. He couldn’t stand by and watch people die at the hands of the state when he was uncertain that all of them were guilty. Governor Ryan’s move is one that I applaud. The system is failing - the Innocence Project alone has exonerated 140 people. I, for one, believe that Governor Ryan’s refusal to apply the death penalty to those on his watch was sensible and just.
Volenti seems to be one of those people that believes innocent folks don’t go to jail.
He was probably gonna commit a crime if we didn’t lock him up…
In the course of making veiled jokes about rape and the fate of Mr. Ryan, you managed to insult those innocent folks (not criminals) who were not guilty of the crimes they were sentenced to die for. You have cheapened their lives, saved by a man whom you seem to have some pent up aggression towards (for reasons unknown to me for the time being - maybe you should post on that rather than your jail house sexual fantasies).
update: I shouldn’t have written the two lines below. They were an attack that was unwarranted. I’d like to take a moment to apologize to Volenti for that.
Update 2: There is a fascinating conversation going on in the comments of this post over at Volenti’s blog.
Enough…
To the person who stopped by my blog because google told you I had “black folks macaroni and cheese”
If you find some, please share.
A classmate of mine recently launched Volenti Non Fit Injuria. And 110 West 3rd is diving into the fray. Soon, we will rival all those damn Michigan bloggers
So when my roommate studied Frigaliment Importing Co., Ltd. v. B.N.S. International Sales Corp., 190 F. Supp. 116 (SDNY 1960) in contracts, the professor made special mention that if they ever had to cite the case on her exam, they should just say “blah blah blah blah (chicken)” and dispense with formal citation. She then proceeded to create an exam where every single question required the citation of the case! My roommate cited “chicken” something like 8 times during his exam. I think only Heidi will find this amusing.
I would just like to take a moment to say hello to Section 3. I see a few more of my classmates have come across my blog than I previosuly thought. Welcome. Lucky for me, I never talk trash about you.
(special shout to group k)
This from Cinnamon, in reference to her torts exam. Over heard in the comments on Ditzy Genius’ blog.
“I definitely am suffering from soul battery and trespass of my mind chattels. It’s almost over…”
“Mind chattels” will quickly become one of my new favorite phrases…
I was getting tired of the look of the blog, but before I realized that I didn’t have time to deal with it, I had dismantled the whole thing. So now we are stuck with the old “black and white and red all over” until after finals.
This just might be the funniest law school post to date. Wings and Vodka is on time.
It looks like Professor Solum found my IM debacle amusing.
Wow. I just moved from #140 to #2 in google for searches for Michael Oliver. Number 1 is in my sights, but this guy just might give me a run for my money.
After the debacle that was my torts exam yesterday, it was hard to get in gear this morning. I felt defeated. My friend came over to study though, and I actually managed to get a ton of good work in. I thought studying with someone else in my room would be a distraction (I always study alone). But it ended up working really well.
And I realized that I actually understand a lot more of the contracts material than I thought. I was able to re-read cases and spot the real issues (the ones the court doesn’t talk about, but my professor mentioned) without referring to my notes. I worked through the class hypos again and they are beginning to sink in. For all the frustration I have felt this semester, I am realizing that I have learned quite a bit so far.
Award for most successful statement to make me get over my performance on yesterdays exam goes to my father who said, “well you know enough torts to carry you in your career, regardless of what you get on the exam.”
His point? I wasn’t planning on a career in torts anyway…
Double up. *Ouch* *Ouch*
I suppose it’s a good thing. I am off to my exam…
Done. I am not going to learn anything in the next 12 hours. I am off to have a very small chat with Jack (Mr. Daniels to you…)
If you head over to Jack Bog’s Blog, he has pledged to donate a dollar, to charities that fight hunger in Oregon, for each unique visitor to his site between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. (PST) today.
Thanks to Adam.
I wrote a note to a few friends last night, in a moment of sudden panic, asking them to “pray to their gods” that I pass my exams. My friend’s response made me realize that I am the luckiest person on earth. With friends like this, who needs good grades?
Did you eat the exams? Because then you should take Metamucil.
Or perhaps you’re trying to find a polite way to say “no, thank you” when the exams are offered, to pass on them as it were. I’ve always heard that the less demure you appear to be in your deferment, the more sincere you seem.
You can’t (and I mean can’t) be talking about wanting prayers that will influence the assessment of the exams. That would be silly. Our prayers, I think, would be better spent hoping that the professors won’t be so excited with your exams that they fail the rest of the students for their lack of comparable expertise.
We, friends, have found one whose vocation is the law, one voice of reasoned justice so demulcent that it makes judges sway as he speaks and so fierce in persuasive argument that opposing counselors are cleft, solicitors sliced, barristers bashed, advocates eradicated.
Now I will admit that sometimes into our midst a Tort feasor slips, a crackpot with a credential who will stop at nothing to keep you from your destiny.
Against this interloper I will pray, pray that the Lord Almighty strikes their heart with the beatific beauty of divine love, smites the insanity and poor score from their grasp.
Let others come and flaunt their ignorance, let them try to impede your ineluctable successes or distract us with a meretricious display of their loud mediocrity.
We welcome these challenges which prove our resilience.
Without doubt,
With love,
Luke
I thought I had a good grip on the material until I read Heidi’s analysis. Oh dear… Her classmates have got to be terrified of what she is going to do to their curve.
By the way, if you don’t already read Ms. Bond’s blog, I suggest you go directly and stay awhile. Top notch she is.
What exactly is a closed book 3 hour exam supposed to test?
mulct, mulct·ed, mulct·ing, mulcts
Courtesy of Prof. Epstein
I love the formality of the law. I have to get used to saying that, “Bobby was tortiously dispossessed of his chattels” rather than, “Bobby got his shit stolen.”
My friend just used the following phrase with a straight face:
“A reasonably foreseeable grossly negligent raping hobo”
I was informed, in real-time, of the fact that my professor busted me for leaving half way through class. I was sitting at my desk at home when the following IM popped up.
Classmate: YOU JUST GOT BUSTED!
Dispositive: damn
Dispositive: i thought that might happen
Classmate: The entire class is in laughter
Dispositive: tell him it’s kwanzaa…
Classmate: Ha!
Classmate: Will do…
Looks like NYCBloggers got hacked. Damn. There site looks like a subway train circa 1983…
A fellow 1L here offers up the following…
I once got busy
in a Burger King Bathroom
Minimum Contacts
Do UCC What
I see see? A Uniform
Commercial Code, man…
My last torts class was yesterday. My last procedure class was this morning. Why do I have three contracts classes left? Even worse, 2 of them are back to back today and I am not supposed to have contracts on Friday. I am off to 4 hours of contracts, although accoding to my prof it is actually two 2 hour classes because we have a 10 minute break in between to switch rooms. Actually, according to my professor, the second class is actually a pizza party wherein we will discuss contracts and not a class at all. Sounds like four hours of class in a row to me…
I just got two invitations from law firms today to holiday cocktail parties back in my hometown.
I recognized the names of the recruiting directors in my inbox iummediately. Both are in my mailing list for sending out resumes. For a minute, I thought to myself, Wow. That was a fast response… Upon opening the emails, I laughed, realizing that it would have been the fastest response ever seeing as I haven’t actually sent out my resumes yet.
Well, at least I know they are looking to hire a few 1Ls this summer. If I can just get through this exams thing.
According to the Harvard Crimson, there is a paucity of black males attending HLS. Nothing new here…
[Station Break]
I just stopped to count the number of black males, in the class of 2006, that I could think of off the top of my head. 10. There has to be more than that… I thought to myself. I checked the facebook. 10. I checked the facebook again. Only 10.
36 black students in the class of 2006 out of 416. That is roughly 8.7 percent of the class.
Of those 36 students only 27% are male.
If Michigan (no offense Heidi) or Virginia (no offense Unlearned Hand) has numbers like this, I’m not saying it’s right, but at least I would understand. I am in the middle of New York City.
More after I cool off.
My torts professor just referred to a plaintiff’’s injury as “loss to bodily intergity”
Update: He followed that several minutes later with “There’s some average loss in the community… we’re just gonna call it death.” Man, has he got a way with words…
I had my first real legal conversation today. As I mentioned before, I have been hesitant to express, out loud, all of the new words and theories bouncing around in my brain. I felt an almost adolescent fear that I would say something wrong, reveal my status as an impostor. Don’t get me wrong, I think I deserve to be here, but I feel like some of these kids get The Law in a way that I do not. Out of necessity, I talked with a good friend this morning about a concept I was struggling with. As the conversation unfolded, I realized that while I was confused, I understood the contours of the issue better than I thought. I got to use some of the big words too, and she never once looked at me like I was a dumb dumb. The conversation was so fun and made me feel so much better. I think I will have to try that more often…
This is the scariest thing I never knew I had to be afraid of.
According to the BBC, there is a rare syndrome called Anarchic Hand that has been dubbed the Dr. Strangelove Syndrome. Afflicted patients have no control over their left hand. One patient repeatedly tried to strangle himself while sleeping.
A recent study by Dartmouth College claims that, for white people, hanging out with black folks is akin to blowing a fuse by plugging in the hair dryer while the iron is plugged in, the microwave is heating dinner and all the lights are on.
An explantion of the experiment follows:
For the study, thirty white individuals were measured for racial bias, which involved a computer test to record the ease with which individuals associate white American and black American racial groups with positive and negative concepts. Racial bias is measured by a pattern in which individuals take longer to associate the white Americans with negative concepts and black Americans with positive concepts. The study participants then interacted with either a black or a white individual, and afterward they were asked to complete an unrelated cognitive task in which they had to inhibit instinctual responses. In a separate fMRI session, these individuals were presented with photographs of unfamiliar black male and white male faces, and the activity of brain regions thought to be critical to cognitive control was assessed.
Apparently, black males, in particular, are like Kryptonite to a white person. According to the researchers:
This heightened activity was in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area in the front of the brain that has been linked to the control of thoughts and behaviors. Plus, these same individuals performed worse on the cognitive test after an actual interaction with a black male, suggesting that they may have been depleted of the necessary resources to complete the task.
The researchers concluded that:
Their findings suggest that harboring racial bias, however unintentional, makes negotiating interracial interactions more cognitively demanding. Similar to the depletion of a muscle after intensive exercise, the data suggest that the demands of the interracial interaction result in reduced capacity to engage in subsequent cognitive tasks, say the researchers.
Despite the fact that the press release doesn’t explain the conditions, samples etc of the experiment, I found it interesting that the press release begins by claiming that interacial interactions are “cognitively demanding” and then goes on to show that whites are affected by their attempts to suppress their unintentional racial bias. They never make any mention of the effect that white people have on blacks. Maybe we have another hilarious experiment to look forward to in the future.
I survived the Civ Pro Cage match with my confidence still intact. I ate well and managed to catch up with a few friends over the weekend at my high school reunion. Back at school, people seem even more stressed than they did when I left. Even those students who pride themselves in their “too cool for school” attitude can be caught outside the library whispering in hushed tones about the differences between primary and secondary assumption of risk…
It is going to be a long few weeks. Exams on the 11th, 15th and 19th.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow–
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
I hope Emily got it right.
I am in the homeland for the holiday. Have a great Thanksgiving. I’ll be back to posting on Sunday, November 30th.
I am heading home for Thanksgiving. Normally this would be a nice break from school, a chance to catch up with old friends and the stack of books that continues to grow next to my bed. But this Thanksgiving… this Thanksgiving is not like the others. You see, I have a family member that is also a lawyer, in fact, this family member used to teach “The Law.”
So instead of some light reading and lots of naps, I am going to receive the People’s Elbow over Turkey and Stuffing…
Me: “Mom, this stuffing is great! Could you pass the macar…”
Dad: “Which rule governs automatic disclosure?!”
Me: “Ummm… Can I get the Macaroni and cheese while I think about it?”
Dad: “Do you think the judge will let you get the Mac and Cheese while you think about it?”
Me: “I suppose not. 26(a)?
Dad: “You can have a bean.”
Me: “A bean? But…”
Dad: “One Bean.”
Me: “Mom… Can you please pass the macaro…”
Mom: “You heard your father! Now… Let’s talk about Erie!”
Me: “What?!? Mom! You have a degree in social work…”
Mom: “Well who do you think quizzed your father when he was studying for exams?”
That’s Momma coming off the top rope
ps. The post that Google picked up is not about women by the way… promise. Seriously.
I was curious to know what (if any) study aides folks have found helpful when studying for exams (e.g. Glannon’s E & E, Gilbert’s, etc.)? Any advice or comments from 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls, or PostLs appreciated. Actually, any advice on exams in general is appreciated.
According to Wired, the newest of the new is “IPod jacking.” I had the strange feeling that I was reading about something akin to causal sex. But it sounds cool in a weird kind of way.
via Jason Kottke
For any of you interested in knowledge management and the like, I just posted some of my reflections on institutional memory loss over at Bret Holmes’ Art of Knowledge.
I am listening to De La Soul’s 5th album and I just realized that they edited out a lyric on my copy. The original lyric was:
I had plans to buy more land, plant corn
Bust kernels on heat, work hard like wetbacks
Set backs is gonna get my ass to be hostile
They just scrubbed the word “wetbacks” right out of the song. I know the term is offensive, and while I wish that they hadn’t used the term “wetbacks” in the first place, I can’t believe they went back and scrubbed the cd and then shipped new versions. I hate that. I mean “work hard like hard workers” just doesn’t have the same ring to it…
Apparently saying bad things about your own community is ok as evidenced by the fact that the following line was allowed to stay:
Stay dumb like black folks
Mostly fakin it, to make it
Speaking of inappropriate lyrics… have you heard Eminem’s recently uncovered recordings? Let’s just say black women weren’t his favorite people circa 1993.
I haven’t become comfortable enough with the phrases and vocabulary of “The Law” to utter the words outloud. Many of my classmates have no problem throwing caution to the wind. I overheard this tongue-twister a few weeks ago:
“The promissee detrimentally relied on the promissor’s promise… Does promissory estoppel apply? Ummm… well, the promissor breached the promise to the promisee…”
In comparison, my vocabulary needs a little refinement. I had to state the facts of the case the other day and it came out something like this:
“Two cats were bargaining over the price of a hundredweight of super fine seed”
Half my class thought they had read the wrong case (”I don’t remember reading any cases about felines???”) The other half looked at me with the face that says “Oh no he didn’t just say what I think he said did he?”
I should have said “hep cats” to make myself clear…
I knew Contracts was my favorite class for a reason…
Update: I’ll have to find another reason, because the dedication below is from Procedure, which is NOT my favorite class (Wait no… I mean I love Procedure… thanks for visiting my blog Professor).
The dedication to my book reads as follows:
To Tom and Jerry,
Neither cat nor mouse
I loved that cartoon
Somehow in the crush of preparing for my first law school exam period, I missed the fact that Prof. Lessig is speaking at the Colloquium in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory hosted by Profs. Dworkin and Nagel tomorrow here at the law school. I just downloaded and read his paper (actually it looks like it is the first chapter of a book). I don’t have any time, but I’ll make time.
You should watch this clip from Fox with Wes Clark (Widows Media). Wes IS NOT playing around.
via Unfogged
I absolutely love Michael Barrish’s Oblivio. His talent at observation has me green with envy and he takes “self awareness” to an entirely new level. His post, entitled “Song,” begins:
My thoughts divide roughly into memories, observations, and fantasies.
Desires count as fantasies.
Probably there’s a better word than fantasies, one that encompasses both things, but what would it be?
Also, what is a word for what happens in my head when I read? I want to call this mastication, but that seems a different sort of thing from the things above.
Read the delightful end to this post… here
Tim referred to my post on the campaign to send back your MP3s to the RIAA as a “bit of a wet blanket.”
That got me thinking about law school and its effect on my level of risk aversion. Law school teaches us that a bowl of cheerios is risky business. We begin to see danger on the playground, liability in a Frisbee. I, for one, do not want to view my life this way. There are certainly risky activities that I choose not to engage in. My personal risk calculus is unknown to me, but it works below the surface, stress on the word “works.” One of the issues I have with law school is that it tries to bring this unconscious (subconscious ?) neverending math problem above deck in a away that seems unnatural and is threatening to destroy my sense of wonder.
I liked the way I dealt with risky behavior before. I think I haven’t changed that much, but I constantly have to remind myself to push those decisions back below the surface. I just do not trust my conscious self to make the right decisions through the use of reasoning and logic that my unconscious (subconscious?) self has been making just fine through some algorithm that I will never understand.
From the AP Newswire
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Columbus judge says he’ll let an inmate stay in jail instead of moving him to prison right away so he can see the Ohio State-Michigan game on TV this Saturday.
Jeff Renne told Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Richard Sheward yesterday that he would plead guilty as long as he could stay in the county jail through the weekend. Inmates at the jail can watch TV, but it’s off-limits at the Orient reception center, where they are held before they’re moved to one of the state’s prisons.
Renne was charged with forgery. He says if the Buckeyes win on Saturday, he’ll still be “on cloud nine” despite being in prison.
Judge Sheward says he granted Renne’s request because it’s Michigan week
and he thought he should do his part for the Buckeyes.
Many folks in the blogosphere are linking to a website that wants to start a campaign for everyone to send back their MP3s to the RIAA.
It sounded like a cruel joke to me when I first heard it. The RIAA doesn’t own the copyrights. So in essence, you wouldn’t be sending them back, you’d be forwarding them on to the RIAA (along with your personal info).
Ernest Miller has this to say:
The problem is that emailing MP3s to the RIAA is a violation of copyright (the RIAA doesn’t actually own the copyrights). Additionally, by emailing the MP3s, you are (unless you are carefully taking precautions) telling the RIAA exactly who you are. At a minimum liability of $750 per MP3 mailed, the joke could turn sour very quickly. While I don’t think that the RIAA will actually sue people who do this, they just might, or at least take a closer look at those who have (are you sure the RIAA doesn’t have any evidence of your previous file-sharing?).
I have been reading a good deal of poetry recently to guard against the possibility of “The Law” causing irreperable harm to my ability to feel deeply. I recently came across one of my favorites from 2001 Pulitzer Prize Winner Stephen Dunn.
Welcome
By Stephen Dunn
If you believe nothing is always what’s left
after a while, as I did,
If you believe you have this collection
of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here
behind the silence and the averted eyes)
If you believe an afternoon can collapse
into strange privacies-
how in your backyard, for example,
the shyness of flowers can be suddenly
overwhelming, and in the distance
the clear goddamn of thunder
personal, like a voice,
If you believe there’s no correct response
to death, as I do; that even in grief
(where I’ve sat making plans)
there are small corners of joy
If your body sometimes is a light switch
in a house of insomniacs
If you can feel yourself straining
to be yourself every waking minute
If, as I am, you are almost smiling . . .
This gem is from Not For Sheep.
“Calling your professor “Dad” in the midst of a heated argument is not only embarassing, but also breaks down any hope of further discussion because everyone is laughing so hard.”
I just finished Clay Shirky’s The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, mostly because Shirky is fast and loose with words. A favorite:
This sentiment is attractive precisely because it describes a world simpler than our own. In the real world, we are usually operating with partial, inconclusive or context-sensitive information. When we have to make a decision based on this information, we guess, extrapolate, intuit, we do what we did last time, we do what we think our friends would do or what Jesus or Joan Jett would have done, we do all of those things and more, but we almost never use actual deductive logic.
He touches on the Friendster problem I mentioned earlier.
Furthermore, when we see attempts to enforce semantics on human situations, it ends up debasing the semantics, rather then making the connection more informative. Social networking services like Friendster and LinkedIn assume that people will treat links to one another as external signals of deep association, so that the social mesh as represented by the software will be an accurate model of the real world. In fact, the concept of friend, or even the type and depth of connection required to say you know someone, is quite slippery, and as a result, links between people on Friendster have been drained of much of their intended meaning. Trying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn’t clarify the meaning, it destroys it.
I decided to do some poking around because I don’t have enough of a background with the semantic web to know if Clay is on point. Michael Barrish points to several rebuttals here.
From the sounds of the response below, I think Clay is on to something as usual.
This piece is also metacrap, crap built on crap - he links to himself, to a Mark Pilgrim piece which links to the dread Cory Doctorow Metacrap piece. What truth lies below this material actually points in favour of Semantic Web technologies. Yes, human-crafted metadata can be dodgy. That’s why we should use the machines as much as possible. Metadata is just data. Doctorow, Pilgrim and Shirky himself are happily publishing RSS feeds jam-packed with metacrap.
I just received an email in my inbox from Yahoo Promotions with the following subject:
Watch R. Kelly video show, Ashanti photos + hip-hop radio station
My very first thought was, “why is Yahoo sending me porn?”
I like speaking regular language to regular folks whose life is not made up of the things lawyers do. For whom I need to translate the daily shop talk of the profession into real life impact. We joke, I absorb and deflect their stress. I help them think more clearly about complicated transactions, help them understand things that look scary.
Scheherazade, thanks for helping me keep the faith.
Over the next few weeks I plan to “purposefully avail myself of the benefits and protections” of the library. Kulko v. Superior Court, 436 U.S. 84, 89 (1978). I will attempt to maintain “continuous and systematic ties” with this blog. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 315 (1945). However, in the event that I cannot maintain such ties, I am confident that by maintaining “minimum contacts” with this blog over the next few weeks, any posts that arise out of said contacts will not offend our “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” Id. at 320.
Update: I realize that this isn’t funny for non-law school students (it may not be funny for law school students for that matter). It goes more to my state of mind.
I am reviewing jursidiction for my procedure class. This quote by Justice Stevens, in dissent, put me in stitches for some reason…
It is undisputed that appellee maintained no place of business in Florida, that he had no employees in that State, and that he was not licensed to do business there. Appellee did not prepare his French fries, shakes, and hamburgers in Michigan, and then deliver them into the stream of commerce “with the expectation that they [would] be purchased by consumers in” Florida. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 487 (1985).
I just got this wonderfully funny picture of someone wearing one of those BK birthday crowns, sending Burgers, Shakes and Fries down the stream of commerce… Oh dear, I think I need to get some more sleep.
I feel like I am hearing the English language for the first time. The following was in the New York Daily News:
A real-estate lawyer who knows both men said the two made an odd pair.
Omansky, he said, is a hard-edged type whose bald head and “Fu Manchcu mustache” give him an imposing look.
Schlosser, whose speciality is finding and structuring property deals for third parties, “looks and comes across like a milquetoast,” he said.
I thought he was calling that dude some kind of breakfast…
I am reading Brogan v. United States, 522 U.S. 398 (1998), wherein the court is deciding whether an “exculpatory no” defense should be allowed in cases where a defendant has made a false statement to the Government. I was intrigued by the court’s use of the word trilemma. Up until this point I had used dilemma to mean “a problem.” I had not thought of it as “a choice between alternative courses of action.” Note below, Scalia’s humorous use of the singular.
He argues that a literal reading of § 1001 violates the “spirit” of the Fifth Amendment because it places a “cornered suspect” in the “cruel trilemma” of admitting guilt, remaining silent, or falsely denying guilt. This “trilemma” is wholly of the guilty suspect’s own making, of course. An innocent person will not find himself in a similar quandary (as one commentator has put it, the innocent person lacks even a “lemma,” Allen, The Simpson Affair, Reform of the Criminal Justice Process, and Magic Bullets, 67 U. Colo. L. Rev. 989, 1016 (1996)). Brogan at 404.
Note from Dictionary.com:
It is sometimes claimed that because the di- in dilemma comes from a Greek prefix meaning “two,” the word should be used only when exactly two choices are involved. Nevertheless, 64 percent of the Usage Panel accepts its use for choices among three or more options.
Also interesting to note - Blogger’s spellcheck tried to change trilemma to “trillion” and MS Word tried to change it to “dilemma” or “trireme.”
Update: I wanted to promote Heidi’s interesting note from the comments -
“Lemma” is actually a word, y’know. It’s used a lot in mathematics. It’s kind of like a theorem, but not as cool. So saying “I have a lemma” is like saying, “I can prove an interesting result.” In other words, you can demonstrate that logically, you must choose that one option.
I just took the speed reading test and scored a surprising 350 wpm. I say surprising because I have always considered myself a fast reader. Apparently I am somewhere between an oral reader and an auditory reader. I am told I need to work on suppressing my sub-vocalization (apparently I am one step away from moving my lips when I read).
via Unfogged
Arrested Development (of early 90s Hip Hop Fame) is suing Fox for trademark infringement. Thomas v. Twentieth Century Fox, No. 03CV10389-4 (DeKalb Super. filed Oct. 16, 2003). In the complaint, the band calls the name of the new sitcom a “confusingly similar imitation” of the band’s name.” Wait a minute… that looks like the “same name” as the band’s name. The funny part is that AD alleges that Fox’s new sitcom is causing “irreparable harm” to the band’s name and reputation.
Ok, guys. I was down with “Tennessee” and “Mr. Wendal” back in the day. But let’s be serious - your reputation has been shot for about a decade. You should hope people get confused…
Via Cicero’s Ghost
Update: Speech had this to say about the law suit - via Launch media:
Fox has no more right to use ‘Arrested Development’ for its show than a band would have to name itself after one of Fox’s sitcoms
According to the article, Arrested Development, which broke up in 1996, has re-united and is currently working on a new album, Among The Trees, which will be released in 2004. I think it is hilarious that this article is on KKYX.com a “Classic Country” radio station’s website.
The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court is gearing up to wade into the issue of whether prisoners at the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to access to civilian courts to challenge their open-ended detention.
What’s fascinating about this case to me is the fact that both sides agree that if the detainees were held on U.S. soil, they would be entitled to some constitutional rights. But the Executive branch is using the fact that Guantanamo Bay is not on U.S. soil to claim that under Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), the U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to hear any case brought by detainees.
According to the Washington Post:
How to characterize Guantanamo Bay is of such importance because it is clear that noncitizens do have certain constitutional rights if they are within United States territory. On the other hand, the court has frequently invoked the Eisentrager precedent, even out of its wartime military context, to stand for the proposition that outside the territorial reach of the United States, aliens have no such rights.
The brief filed for the Britons and Australians by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a liberal public interest law firm in New York, told the court that “we alone exercise power at Guantanamo Bay” and that the base should therefore be treated for jurisdictional purposes as part of the United States. In the administration’s view, not only is that conclusion incorrect but it is not one that the court is free to make. The determination of sovereignty over a particular territory is “not a question on which a court may second-guess the political branches,” Solicitor General Olson said in his brief.
The court seems a little hot and bothered by the audacity of the Executive branch. The Post notes:
It was evident on Monday that this, too, was a question on which the justices want to have the final word. That conclusion emerged from a comparison of how the administration phrased the question presented by the two cases with how the justices phrased it in their order granting review. Solicitor General Olson said the question was whether the federal courts had jurisdiction to decide the legality of detaining “aliens captured abroad in connection with ongoing hostilities and held outside the sovereign territory of the United States at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.”
The Supreme Court, by contrast, said it intended to decide the jurisdiction of the courts to hear challenges to “the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.” The court’s question incorporated no assumption about whether the base was or was not “outside the sovereign territory of the United States.”
I am working on my memo for my pass / fail Lawyering class. I find it amazing that I always end up working harder and longer on assignments for this class than my graded courses. I think it has something to do with the fact that I feel as if I am accomplishing something when I write for this class. It’s hard to know if you are on the right track in, say, contracts since your only feedback on whether you are learning the material comes at exam time. Lawyering provides me with a sense of how far I have come.
My memo is starting out much like Heidi Bond’s. But sadly, unlike Heidi, I don’t even have a clear enough understanding of the issue to offer an emphatic “Hell No!” to the client.
II. Question Presented
Does 18 U.S.C. §1001 govern the making of staments to the federal government that will more than likley be false in the future?
III. Short Answers
Probably not?
IV. Discussion (long answer)
I am pretty sure probably not?
I have got a long way to go tonight.
There is an interesting article in this month’s Fast Company about how Mapquest gathers its data. There are actually people who drive around all day long recording details about various roads and routes. Shocking… I couldn’t think of another way to do it, but it seems so… so tedious.
Have you seen General Wesley Clark’s video o
