Things TDot Likes: Scalia’s writing

Say what you want about the man and his views on American jurisprudence, but the further I get in CivPro the more I consider Antonin Scalia a damn good author.

We’re currently going through the whole Erie lineage of cases, and I just finished reading Scalia’s dissent in Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, Inc., 518 U.S. 415 (1996).  I’ll stipulate that I’m not yet competent enough in the law to have an opinion on whether I think his reasoning is persuasive.  But his writing style? The words practically jump off the page.

Compare the majority opinion to the dissent.  The former is bland and matter-of-fact-ish, but for the dissent I can practically envision Justice Scalia saying it aloud as I read.¹ It’s not quite as incendiary as the Burnham v. Superior Court case that amused me last semester, but it’s still good stuff

Off to read about concurrent estates in Property before heading to bed. Have a great night folks!

1. It’s actually kind of like one of those badly-dubbed kung fu movies, where the voice is based off snippets of interviews he’s given and the text itself is a subtitle on the screen [↩]

Tags: About TDot, CivPro, The Supremes

And it starts (again)

Get home late.  Check.

Eat fast food for dinner.  Check.

Read case law until midnight. Check.

An eminently predictable start to 1L year Round 2…

Heading to bed, CivPro @ 9am — good night y’all

Tags: 1L, CivPro

Ouch…

I see why folks told me to be grateful after reading my complaints about not yet having grades back. The CivPro final exams got returned about an hour ago, I got mine soon thereafter…

…and I nearly failed

This is the same class where I can quote you nearly every case we’ve studied by name, along with the relevant points of law. The only class where I actually felt comfortable with the material. The class I professed my love for after riding the curve to an A on the midterm.

The final wasn’t nearly as kind.

I rocked out the multiples (16 out of 20) but got eaten alive on both essays (14.5 of 20 on the first, 20 of 35 on the second, 2 of 5 for writing style). That leaves me with a 65%, on the test that makes up 80% of my grade.

Part of me feels bad for thinking it, but I’m hoping history repeats itself and all of us did sufficiently bad that there’s a tremendously huge curve. Fingers are firmly crossed…

Tags: 1L, CivPro, Exams, Law Grades

A Quantitative Look at 1L Fall

I shamelessly borrowed the concept for today’s post from this entry by Miss Julie Anne Ines (aka the Blawgirl), so if you haven’t checked out her segment of the intarwebs yet, please do so now because it’s Good Stuff™

As my fellow Legal Eagles and I enjoy the agonizing wait for our grades — one section got their Contracts grades back; that section was not mine — it’s easy to forget just how far we’ve gone down the road to lawyerhood (attorneydom? JDness?).

So to illustrate the point, here’s a quantitative look at the semester

—===—

Number of pages read in Civil Procedure with MDG:
~238

—===—

Number of pages read in Torts with Professor Torts:
~360

—===—

Number of pages read in Contracts with Professor Ks:
~439

—===—

Number of pages read in Property with the Traveling Professor:
~187

—===—

Number of useless writing assignments in Legal Reasoning & Analysis:
11

—===—

Number of supplements consulted:
4 (an Emanuel’s for each class)

—===—

Number of visits to the law library since orientation:
-0- (see next item)

—===—

Number of searches on Lexis-Nexis:
212+

—===—

Number of Lexis-Nexis Points earned:
2,630

—===—

Number of times overheard swearing in class at WestLaw/TWEN’s poor website coding:
7+

—===—

Number of days waiting for grades:
12, and counting…

—===—

Imagine where we’ll be 5 more semesters from now

Have a great night folks!!

Tags: 1L, Blawg Love, CivPro, Damned Lies and Statistics, Ks, Law Grades, LRA, MDG, Prof Ks, Prof Torts, Property, The Traveling Professor, Torts

Lexis-ing… for fun

I guess it was only a matter of time. I’ve officially turned into one of those people who randomly pull up cases on Lexis-Nexis for the hell of it

It started earlier this week studying for CivPro. Venue is the last topic we’re learning before final exams, and one of the cases in the notes involved one of my favorite presidents — Livingston v. Jefferson (15 F. Cas. 660).  Reading that case reminded me how under-developed our judiciary still was back in the early 1800s, which somehow in my mind prompted me to look up one of the landmark cases in American jurisprudence: Marbury v. Madison (5 U.S. 137).

Then I used Lexis’s built-in Shepardize thing — I didn’t actually discover what it was/did until a couple weeks ago — and started poking through cases that referenced Marbury. And once I ran out of reading material I started picking some other major cases we all learn about in high school history and civics classes.

Long story short: pulling up old cases is almost as addicting as reading blawgs

Finally separating myself from the laptop to go back to CivPro studying. Have a great night everybody!

Tags: 1L, About TDot, CivPro

Serendipity

Every now and then it’s nice to know The Big Man Upstairs is keeping an eye out for you

I had to give some friends a ride to campus this morning (they go to a certain university in an adjacent town) so naturally I was significantly late for CivPro. Unlike Professor Contracts, the standing rule for late people in CivPro is that you don’t enter if the door is shut and/or MDG has started the lecture.

And as much as I love talking about venue, I wasn’t going to press my luck

So I finally make it to campus, end up parking in a lot now thoroughly muddy courtesy of the ongoing wind/rain leftovers from Hurricane Ida, slowly trudge to the law building… and hear a sound over the wind.

It’s faint. But distinct.

I look up from under the umbrella, and think I can see 1 lone strobe light flashing.

The sound gets a little louder as I walk a little closer.

In disbelief, I pick up the pace and walk as fast as one can with a wind-tossed double canopy umbrella in one hand and a 5″ binder + 3 textbooks in the other. I get to the granite porch outside the entrance and can’t believe my good fortune.

The fire alarm is going off

For a couple brief seconds I feel bad for my classmates who had to evacuate the building in this miserable weather (mid-40s and pouring rain a mere day after we broke 70ºF), but then I realize folks will have to be walking back into class and I might have an opportunity to sneak into CivPro. I double time it to the classroom, and sure enough see a pair of my classmates walking in.

I head to the door. MDG sees me, and gives me a raised eyebrow like he doesn’t remember seeing me in class before but he isn’t 100% certain. I give him a look along the lines of “Of course I was here earlier, I love CivPro!”  I walk in, make it about a fifth of the way to my chair…

…and apparently the rest of my classmates noticed I wasn’t there when class started, because the whole room busts out laughing.  MDG lets me slide though since I’m in my chair before he can say anything, then he starts laughing too and goes “Well I guess we know who pulled the fire alarm.” And the rest of class went off without a hitch… though I still didn’t sign the attendance sheet, out of recognition I was 30 minutes late to a 50-minute class

He did hit me with his trademark wit before class was out though, the price I paid for being late. My left-side neighbor Karl(a) raises her hand to answer a question, and in recognizing her he slips and goes “Mr. TDot. Miss TDot. I mean Miss Karl(a). I’m so so sorry, I done married y’all. And let me tell you, y’all would make some uuuuuuuuggggllllllyyyyy babies.”

The words can’t articulate how hilariously funny it was, both in terms of timing and delivery — even though it was a (well-deserved) swipe at me, I was laughing for a solid 2-3 minutes (as was Karl(a) and everyone else in class).  The man is hands-down, without any sarcasm in this statement, my favorite professor this semester.

And all because of a serendipitously-timed fire alarm

Tags: 1L, CivPro, Gang of Eight, MDG, Serendipity

Tweet-sized Tuesdays #10

Enjoying the Scalia-vs-Brennan cases in CivPro Future interests in Property? Not so much. btw, not a fan of darkness @ 5pm. EST ftl…

Tags: 1L, CivPro, Property, The Supremes, Tweet Tweet

Tweet-sized Tuesdays #7

Best mile & 400m in my life @ PT this AM… I hurt Caught up in Property + CivPro (Asahi Metal is an ugly case). Reading torts til bed!

Tags: CivPro, Property, Torts, Tweet Tweet, USMC

About those midterms…

A couple keen observers noticed that my last three entries completely avoided any reference at all to my final two midterm exams in Torts and Property.  The omission was intentional — I discovered on Friday that the N.C. Central School of Law is apparently one of relatively few law schools that even have midterms (which just seems strange to me) so I didn’t want to dwell on the topic in deference to my non-NCCU readers

But then we had CivPro this morning…

Now remember I mentioned a few days ago that I thought things turned out better than expected in CivPro. And although I got [K]O’d in Contracts, I also felt pretty good about Property and at least so-so in Torts (I n00b-ishly didn’t watch the clock and ran out of time on the essay, but blazed through the multiples).

And then Mean Dean Green¹ took all that confidence — both from myself and other students in the class — and dashed it across the cold, jagged rocks of reality.  He noted we will be having a “debriefing session” on Friday.  That translates to “extra class,” which triggered alarm bells in my mind since a midterm that generally turned out well could just use a snippet of pre-existing class time for review.

He also noted at several points that we would be “kicking it up a notch.” And if that didn’t adequately convey the point, he also noted that “y’all are not where you need to be.”

::cue the little siren GIF from the Drudge Report::

So to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, after class I went to his office hours and inquired about the class grades. He wasn’t willing to divulge much information, except to note that “the class average on the multiples was failing. And the essays I’ve read so far are much, much worse.”

I’m going to be pulling out the little bit of hair I have left on my head waiting to get my paper back on Thursday…

Off to study Contracts and Property for tomorrow, and hoping those midterms turned out better.  Have a great night everybody!

1. An appellation that, as previously noted, really doesn’t fit the man at all. [↩]

Tags: #fml, 1L, CivPro, Exams, Ks, Law Grades, MDG, Property, Torts

Tweet-sized Tuesdays #6

CivPro midterm tomorrow! Studying all night, with a brief break planned for jogging. Keep your fingers crossed for me Good night!

Tags: CivPro, Exams, Tweet Tweet