Oh yeah... I have a blog... I have a lot of things on the internet these days, and not enough time or interest to maintain them all properly. But since this blog has a special place in my heart for oh so many reasons, I shouldn't neglect it.
The big news is that I survived the first semester of law school. It is yet to be seen whether I passed, but I'm still alive and feeling not entirely destroyed by the experience. I learned a lot of interesting things: the law does not recognize the use of deadly force to defend property; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was prejudiced against the mentally ill; and Antonin Scalia is concerned that people who engage in homosexual sex will inevitably copulate with animals if the Supreme Court doesn't stop them.
I also learned some things that made my blood boil: the Supreme Court doesn't recognize the right of a citizen to sue their government for not following its own laws; wearing a mask during a rape can get you off scot-free if the statute of limitations has run; a death-row prisoner can waive his right to live with no questions asked, but a terminally ill vegetable can't.
None of these things were on the exams of course. The exams were full of tricky minutia like the law that a defendant can't remove their case to federal court if it is brought in their home state, or that you have to prove the other party acted illegally in order to claim duress in signing a contract, or what constitutes a recognizable injury when suing for environmental destruction.
On the social side of things, I have realized that most of my fellow classmates are barely out of their teens. Life still seems like a hollywood movie to them... every moment has such intensity and drama, and then of course there's the cliques and couples forming... who's in and who's out... everybody is busy putting people in boxes. I have been labeled as a hippy activist type, and the conservative business types (most of them) avoid me like the plague. Sometimes I feel left out, but other times I'm glad to have an excuse not to compete. I have a few friends in the National Lawyer's Guild student club... we seem to be mostly on the same page, but of course then you get the competition to see who is the most radical activist.
I'll just be a dark horse... I won't go for the big bucks, but nor will I be throwing malitov cocktails at lines of cops. I will just get the work done... let my brain be programmed by the system, and then get a kick-arse job for $30K/year with some seasoned hippy activist lawyers somewhere.
