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I should be doing my readings for Contracts now, but I am not. I have an hour and a half, and we're behind in the discussion, so the situation is not yet desperate. Scuttlebutt has it that the professor is alternating working up from the bottom of the alphabet and down from the top. Opinion is mixed on whether talking in class gets you a checkmark without being called on, but as a Davis, I think I would've been called on by now if he was going to. So we'll see. If nothing else it's fun to try and outguess the teacher.
Crim law was hard today. Not only the cases, though one of them was for an English court and it was a little slice of hell to try and figure out procedural history, and even what the ruling turned out to be. We were discussing forcible rape, and some of the cases were very disturbing. I've never been a victim myself, and if someone close to me has they haven't talked about it, but nonetheless the topic is very viscerally disturbing. I think a lot of people in the class found it that way, especially since one of the techniques the casebook uses is to pick out cases that seem to be blatant miscarriages of justice and then describe the laws based on them. I hate the thought that there may be a time in my career that I have a case like that, where the crime is terrible and all the evidence points one way, and then a jury comes along and says "Well, she was wearing a miniskirt and lace underwear, and that's consent even if he abducted her at knifepoint from a parking lot."
On the other hand, cases like that do affirm my convictions that I want to work on the government's side of criminal law, no matter how shitty the pay is. How much money would it cost to get up and make an argument like that, and win, and be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards? I still tell myself I'm keeping my options open, but nothing has grabbed my interest and attention this first semester like criminal law. Maybe because it's so different from everything else. Property, torts, contracts, they're all important, sure, but with a very few exceptions, no one's life is hanging in the balance, no great threat to society. You may get one or two tort cases in a career that really make a difference, where the rest are figuring out who was responsible for putting salt on the sidewalk and screws in a railing. With criminal law, every day you affect people's lives, for good or bad.
'
Anyway, that's just the continuing argument I will probably have with myself for the next three years, so stay tuned for updates. In other news, today is cleaning and insurance day. We need health insurance, and people are coming to visit this weekend, so we must clean! I'm very excited about all the guests we'll be getting. Lauren's mom and little brother are coming up Saturday for the Christie picnic, and then Reid and Loren are coming to play Aberrant! Woo-hoo! I am way over my head on this gaming thing, but so far I'm still all right. Getting to school two hours early every day helps, since it gives me some quiet, undistracted time to do my readings. I'm sure that when finals rolls around all games will be Coriless for awhile, but until then, well, anything that breaks the stress without breaking the law, right?
Crim law was hard today. Not only the cases, though one of them was for an English court and it was a little slice of hell to try and figure out procedural history, and even what the ruling turned out to be. We were discussing forcible rape, and some of the cases were very disturbing. I've never been a victim myself, and if someone close to me has they haven't talked about it, but nonetheless the topic is very viscerally disturbing. I think a lot of people in the class found it that way, especially since one of the techniques the casebook uses is to pick out cases that seem to be blatant miscarriages of justice and then describe the laws based on them. I hate the thought that there may be a time in my career that I have a case like that, where the crime is terrible and all the evidence points one way, and then a jury comes along and says "Well, she was wearing a miniskirt and lace underwear, and that's consent even if he abducted her at knifepoint from a parking lot."
On the other hand, cases like that do affirm my convictions that I want to work on the government's side of criminal law, no matter how shitty the pay is. How much money would it cost to get up and make an argument like that, and win, and be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards? I still tell myself I'm keeping my options open, but nothing has grabbed my interest and attention this first semester like criminal law. Maybe because it's so different from everything else. Property, torts, contracts, they're all important, sure, but with a very few exceptions, no one's life is hanging in the balance, no great threat to society. You may get one or two tort cases in a career that really make a difference, where the rest are figuring out who was responsible for putting salt on the sidewalk and screws in a railing. With criminal law, every day you affect people's lives, for good or bad.
'
Anyway, that's just the continuing argument I will probably have with myself for the next three years, so stay tuned for updates. In other news, today is cleaning and insurance day. We need health insurance, and people are coming to visit this weekend, so we must clean! I'm very excited about all the guests we'll be getting. Lauren's mom and little brother are coming up Saturday for the Christie picnic, and then Reid and Loren are coming to play Aberrant! Woo-hoo! I am way over my head on this gaming thing, but so far I'm still all right. Getting to school two hours early every day helps, since it gives me some quiet, undistracted time to do my readings. I'm sure that when finals rolls around all games will be Coriless for awhile, but until then, well, anything that breaks the stress without breaking the law, right?
