Humourous apology for late posting

There is now more stuff here. And will hopefully be able to provide a full and comprehensive 'law school is fun, I have a fulfilling social life' status sometime tomorrow.

Here's a picture of the law bear, because it makes me giggle:

And another thing

I've been told that this makes about as much sense as my 'We the wheelbarrows' post. From which I can gather that a) I have a warped sense of humour, and b) I should stay away from SoC pieces unless I'm prepared to write a detailed explanatory note.

More cheating

Again, this isn't a real blog post, but in terms of reflecting what I've been doing in class I think it's quite a good example. The novel in question is Camus's The Fall, which I've just finished reading.

Oh, yeah, and it's here, on my other blog. The one that doesn't get updated much.

"We the wheelbarrows."

This post is going firmly under 'bizarre,' as it's a SoC piece cataloging some of the more bizarre aspects of American Law School. No disrespect meant to any of my professors, obviously- this is more of a sideways look at some of the issues thrown up by the Socratic method. The title is a quotation from a speech by Douglas arguing that slavery was unconstitutional. I think it may be this semester's Carbolic Smoke Ball Co.

So we're talking about Glee. OK, I'm sure that's relevant- social change or something - the New York mob? Right. How did we get there? Yes, I think we should shoot 9 out of every ten admissions to the court- are we still on Spencer? Oh, yes, we are. I didn't realise the court was actually in charge of preventing deserters in France - Carolinian seccession would obviously lead to nuking Connecticut. "OK, so you like, go to the court, right, and you, like, need a lawyer" - are we still on Spencer? OK, yes we are- I'm so confused... oh, we're back onto crime bosses now- what is it with New England states? "Guilty of lots of murders," right then.... "Where's Whitey" sounds like a horribly racist game. The courts enforcing their own judgments? Why do I now have a picture of machine-toting judges? You know what, I'm not going to take Philosophy of Law next year ... We're not on Spencer anymore?
OK, new case, Bankovic, jurisdiction - what does the weather report look like? Is that a trick question? No one really wants to answer - no, it's not a hospital. "Killing people is morally wrong," excellent ... is that a legal justification? How do you justify wars anyway? Isn't that the whole point? - OK, swimming through NATO countries, still not on jurisdiction. "Recky-Vick," sounds like a boxer - when did we get on to jailing Belguim? Where would they keep that prison? "Was it legal to hurt these people?" Probably not- oh, we're still on jurisdiction. Siobhan could definitely pass as an English actress- she has the face for it- but why would anyone holiday in Hartford?
"There are no perfect countries," still on Bancovic, I wish I could remember how the Commission decided that it was extra-territorial - oh, wow, quick move to Gaima, now I have a picture of Belgium and the Netherlands pushing this poor guy back and forth across the border- at least the Commission took care of him. I wonder whatever happened to the poor guy? How do you end up without an identifiable originating country? And why did they think that the Netherlands was an ideal place to deport him to? Why not France?
Inexplicable? Yes, I think so...

Words. Words. Words.

This week, in order to be generally difficult, I've decided to post my Freedom of Speech reflection on legal reasoning. If you want to see the assignment title you can click here , but I heartily recommend against it- what I produced has very little to do with enchantment or social change. And yes, I am grossly misusing Shakespeare in my title.

I studied law for 2 years before coming to UConn, and never once did anyone ever think to ask what the law was or why we had it, and certainly not what principle lay at the core of legal reasoning. The questions were laughable- no one, I think, assumed that there was somehow a higher power, an omnipotent, intangible Justification of Law. The law was the law, and it existed because Parliament said so, and we were only interested in learning its rules, its application, and, sometimes, its potential for change. If you really wanted a deeper understanding, you took a theoretical class, marked yourself out as a future research student, and, ultimately, learned that the law is nothing more than rules upon rules, coloured by the moral leanings of distant judges. Things are so much simpler in a Monarchy.

And yet, I think that if you question any lawyer for long enough, and get past the parroting of rules and doctrines and principles, you will ultimately end up in a situation in which they try to explain that at some level law isn’t so much about ‘this rule says that A is wrong’ as ‘we know that A is wrong.’ All lawyers- and, for that matter, laypersons- want there to be some deep-seated meaning behind what we do, some justification for making judgments the way we do. We hope that through legal discussion , through the adversarial system, through dissents and concurrences and law reform and picketing, we can finally uncover just why A is wrong, and follow that shining star to a brighter and better world.

And yet, as we have seen, people don’t change their minds easily, and, more often than not, this fiery exchange of ideas takes place almost exclusively in the lawyer’s head, or within the pages of an obscure journal. Never where we would like it to be, outside in the open, where it can influence the collective mind of ‘the People,’ and lead to true democratic change. When these debates do come to the public’s attention, they are inevitably reduced to the level of short, cant banners, to all-caps YouTube comments, to easy-to-remember slogans. Discussion and debate are thrown out of the window- and it is questionable just how much they would help, even in an ideal world. I know that my views on DOMA and the same-sex marriage issue are right, and while I’ll happily debate them until the sun goes down with anyone foolish enough to volunteer, I also know that I will not change my mind easily. Given that human nature is what it is, and that there are many, many more versions of myself out there on both sides of the debate, the entire operation is rendered worthless.

And so sometimes the law is changed, not through the collective voice of we the People, but according to the personal beliefs of 9- or, more realistically, 5- members of the Supreme Court, through the use of highly persuasive, beautifully drafted, and above all, logical judgments, none of which can withstand a thorough philosophical investigation into its reasoning. Which, it seems, is why we don’t look: it is very scary- close to anarchy- to be reminded that the law is nothing more than words, interpreted by morals.

Bringing you the news as it happens.

This guy has been hanging outside my bedroom window for over a week now, and has been christened 'the baby glacier' in some of my letters home. As I type, however, the entire house is shaking, as my landlord, sat on the roof with some sort of pick, attempts to dislodge the mega-icicle. I'm guessing because tomorrow it's predicted to get above zero for the first time in a long while, and even in these sub-zero temperatures Pu very narrowly avoided icicle-related death.

I must say, though, that the glacicle (or, as Jaap called it, the "ice stalactite;" how he knows stalactite and not icicle is beyond me) will be missed- it's been fun to get up every morning and check on its progress. I always knew that when it was bigger, it would take me three times as long to get on to campus. Rip, glac.

In other news, I almost, almost, actually-put-them-in-the-bin almost, threw away my collection of guitar music. And no, I don't know how. And yes, I am a moron.

About snow.

So yes, this is a delayed blog post. And yes, it is snowing. The two are only connected in that I spent most of yesterday feeling rather ill, and am blaming it on the extraordinary amounts of snow currently abounding Hartford. And when I say extraordinary, I mean up to 3 feet's worth.

It's no secret that I love the snow. Last Friday's trip to the park found me literally up to my neck in the stuff when I decided to make a snow angel and sank through the layers like a stone. Even after being back for over 3 weeks, I still run my hands through the piles lining the sidewalk, and make snow balls and minuscule snowmen, and write little messages for those who might follow me. My walk to school is simply breathtaking, through streets of big, old, distinctly American houses, covered in snow and fringed with icicles.
There are downsides, of course, the main one being the freezing. Noon today got up to 1C, the highest temperature we've had in a long time. As I write, it's approximately -8C outside, and that is comparatively quite warm. This freezing has meant that the piles lining the sidewalk are now very clearly composed of layers of ice, snow, more ice, and snow again. Hence why the pictures of the park trip are mostly of me on my knees: when there's an inch of ice underneath 5 inches of snow, which is itself covering another 2 foot of snow, walking becomes surprisingly difficult. Which is fine when you're out to play in the park, but less fun when walking to school. Even less fun were the few days when the temperature stayed stubbernly around -10C, and no one cleared the sidewalks: Pu and I made a video of our desperate attempts to get from the Law School, to the pharmacy, and back to our house. This normal 20 minute trip took us over an hour.

Yet I still love the snow: an obvious give-away of the fact that I don't have to shovel my own driveway yet. There's this little stretch on my walk to school where the world seems to change to black and white- even when the sky is clear. The trees are striking contrasts of black and white, with the snow collected on their dark limbs or in clumps in the higher branches of the pines. The houses look like they've stepped out of It's a Wonderful Life, and the Law School in the distance is grey. Other than that, the world is a great expanse of white, reaching up to the sky. There's a washed out traffic sign of some description there, which works to reinforce the illusion. At night, the Law Campus looks like Narnia, especially with its penchant for Victorian-style street lamps and high, gothic windows. The light really does shine out yellow, especially when it snows, and the whole place looks nothing more than the painted backdrop for some fantastical romance movie. Maybe that's why I love the snow so much: it really does transport you into another world.


JJ