This Will Never Be Useful

Fifteen years from today, someone walks into my office.  Of course I have an office- why wouldn't I?  He or she is here so that I can help them either transfer real property or write a will.  Sure, I do wills and property law 15 years from now.  Why not.

Person: "I would like my sister to have my house when I die."

Me: "Sure, well that's easy en--"

Person: "--and after she dies I would like the house to go to my oldest cousin then living."

Me: "I... well... sure, fine, we can--"

Person: "--and she or he can live there until she or he has four children."

Me: "Look, I'm not sure--"

Person: "Oh, and if my current youngest nephew goes to college at any time after my sister dies I would like him to have the house for four years to help him while he pursues his education, unless he uses it as a frat house."

Me: "... seriously?"

As fun as future estates are as a thought puzzle, I just can't see anyone ever actually needing to use most of it.  The most common common-law problem in this area in property law isn't people devising obnoxiously labyrinthine property transfers, but people wording one property transfer very poorly.  

I suppose I see the point in making sure we know every possible iteration, but for today- just for today- it is driving me a little bit crazy.  

Let's see... the sister would have a life estate, the "oldest cousin" would have a contingent remainder (since oldest cousin is an open class and could change) fee simple determinable (child limit- this also gives a possibility of reverter to the estate of the original person) subject to executory limitation (youngest nephew going to college), and "youngest nephew" has an executory interest in a term of years in the estate subject to a condition subsequent (frat house).  The original owner's estate has, among other things, a possibility of reverter and a possibility of right of entry.  And I haven't even gone over it to check whether any of this violates the rule against perpetuities (and I know it does)- that's an entirely separate and equally esoteric analysis derived from an arbitrary opinion by a court 400 years ago (which is ironic, sort of). 

And I'm probably wrong about most of it, too.  And I made up the example.  That's how annoying these things are.  And this is only going to be 10% of the exam.  

In non-exam news... well, yesterday I went to go see 1776 as a study break, so that was very good (John Adams has always been one of my favorites and the music is great).  And also a girl from my class gave me a 24-pack of Monster energy drinks because someone had sent it to her and she hates them, so that was also very nice.  And also Kelsey sent me experimental energy sheets that have not been evaluated by the FDA but "may cause nervousness, sleeplessness and occasional rapid heartbeat," so I guess that's good too.  And also David and I signed our lease for the summer, so... more good news.  

Yay buzz saw!      

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor

Today is the last day of 1L classes, officially.  It is not, however, the last day of 1L work.  I may be a bit radio silent for the next couple of weeks due to intense studying beyond the bounds of any studying I have done before.  The order is as follows, if you want to play along at home:

Tuesday May 1st, Property- take home, all day.

What I learned in Property this semester that I can think of right now- divisions of estates, transfer of estates, regulations of physical property, the takings clause of the 5th Amendment (or: there's a good reason Jefferson wrote "pursuit of happiness" rather than "property" after "life and liberty."), and mortgage law problems.

Friday May 4th, Criminal Justice- open book, three-ish hours. 9AM

What I learned in Criminal Justice this semester that I can think of right now- ALL the Fourth Amendment.  So much search and seizure.  Also the Sixth Amendment was there.  And you, Fifth Amendment, you were there too!  But you could only be applicable to the states because of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Well, that's how we do it now at least.

Tuesday May 8th, Constitutional Law- open book, three-ish hours, 1:30PM

What I learned in Criminal Justice this semester that I can think of right now- Alexander Hamilton was a badass, said "whatever" to the Articles of Confederation and was like "here America, have a Constitution, this is better."  John Marshall sort of screwed up his job as Secretary of State and as  a punishment got to judge the case that arose out of that as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Marbury v. Madison)  Good for him.  The Federal Government can sort of do what it wants (implied powers) and states can't be dicks to the Federal Government for doing so (McCulloch). Habeas corpus is really very important.  No really, you can't take it away.  No, not even if you put people in Cuba and say they aren't in the U.S. so the Constitution doesn't count.  Technology and growing globalism seems to have really confused and upset everyone involved in Commerce Clause decisions.  Non-delegation of powers.

Friday, May 11th, Regulatory State- open book, three-ish hours, 9AM

What I learned in Regulatory State this semester that I can think of right now- Hey, remember non-delegation of powers?  Just kidding.  Congress can let agencies regulate ALL the things.  And we have to give the agencies extreme deference (Chevron) except when they don't give us 1,000's of pages of technical data to back up their decisions (State Farm). Cost-benefit analysis is the greatest thing ever.  Or the worst thing ever.


Keep these exams in mind if you happen to see me post something erratic or out of character either directly before or after the dates and times listed.


In other news, I found out yesterday that I was accepted into the Streetlaw: High School clinic for next year!  This means I'll be spending the next year teaching high school kids about law, which will be a lot like that time I spent teaching kids Economics, except this time I have actually had more than one course in the subject I am teaching.

One Down, Four to Go

I'm still not officially allowed to say anything about the ten day take home exam I just finished, and I assume the school rents a large server from the FBI to search all the internet for exam policy violations so I'll just stay quiet on the content.  I think it went reasonably well.  At the very least I finally got a hold of most of the large scale formatting issues that I had been rebelling against up to this point in the year, even if my argument lacked anything that I felt was extremely novel.  I, along with many members of the 1L class, was up until around 5AM on Monday finishing up.

And then I was up til 5:05AM to write my future self something snarky.

I finally got together with Taylor Shaprio, with whom I share a birthday, along with Rob and C'pher to get a drink and some pizza.  We agreed, as we do every year, to try our hardest to have our birthdays on the same day again next year.  We're very committed to the continuity of this project.  I also told Rob that we needed to do a bagpipe duet together sometime soon.  I write this as a reminder of shame to myself later in the summer if this has not happened.

Also, last week I met my boss for the summer!  I volunteered to be a scorer at Street Law's High School Mock Trial competition and I just happened to be assigned to the same room as Mr. Arbetman, the executive director of Street Law, Inc.  We scored a trial round together and had a great time.  I wasn't expecting to see him there so it was a really nice bonus.

This past weekend was Sarah and Nick's engagement/leaving DC party.  The theme of the party was Spring Break and we were told to dress fratty.  

I had to borrow everything I wore.

We're all going to miss our Bambi, but now we have a great reason to visit Miami, so that's nice.

Looking at a possible apartment for the summer this evening.  The plan is still to get a place with David Husband and do an abbreviated reenactment of our years as roommates.  Jeff and I are still working on housing for next year and continuing to have a wonderful time navigating the intricacies of DC property law. 

Birthday Week

I had an excellent birthday week.  It then dovetailed into LRW Exam week, which explains why I haven't been quick on the updating.  I can bullet-point, though.

• Best Birthday Class Ever- Professor Katyal brings in Paul Clement during our class about the health care debate.  

• Birthday Card Win- I got two cards at the same time from two different people.  One made a Star Trek joke, the other made a Star Wars joke. 

• Brian came to visit! And we got sushi with Chris.  Lots of sushi.

• Birthday Party- Friday night at Goo's we had a joint birthday/Mikado cast party.  And Kelsey came up for the weekend!

• House Hunting- Jeff and I are in the process of looking for housing for next year.  We have learned a lot.  I also have discovered that with our access to legal databases we can obtain an absurd amount of information about any given property.  Also, it seems almost poetic that after walking into a "bad" neighborhood, the first person we met worked for Booz Allen and gave us the web addresses of several good neighborhood blogs.  

• Mikado Watching- The Mikado was excellent and featured especially standout performances by Josh and Goo.  This came as no surprise to me since they are both ridiculously talented.  The audience demanded, and they performed admirably, ALL the encores.

• Brief Writing- Well, not writing so much yet, but a lot of researching.  I am not allowed to talk about it, though.  I want to talk about it.  I really do.  But I can't.

• Pleasure Reading- at 2AM last night I picked up a book just for fun after reading hours of legal opinions.  I discovered that my average reading rate of normal books may have tripled since I started law school.  I was pleased by this new power.

• Puzzles- A friend sent this and I couldn't figure it out after an hour.  I sent it to Kelsey and she had the right answer in about thirty seconds. 

Hamfest

Adding meaningless suffixes to common words tends to make great things happen, so I'm going to keep doing it.

Case in point: today Sara/Jeff/Davia/Noah/Ben/Goo and I had our own little Easter brunch in Gewirz.  Sara made eggs and asparagus, Noah added chives- the usual.  Since it was Easter I was forcibly encouraged to put on a button down shirt and tie.

We also dyed eggs.

See?

After brunch the plan was to go up to G12 and sing songs on the piano, but when we got there what we found was a tiny law student slowly throwing away many items of food that represented the leftovers of the Catholic student brunch.  She offered it to us if we wanted it.  Of course we did.  I asked if the offer extended to the giant ham and completely uneaten carrot cake.  It did.  

After taking these things and many trays of fruit and cheese and pastries downstairs we agreed to reconvene at eight for Hamfest.  This was a followup to last week's chivefest, but with a big old thing of ham.  And rolls, a basket of rolls.  And... 

... yes, Noah, and chives.

Hamfest turned out to be more of a guys night since Sara and Goo and Davia were all working on techs for the Mikado all day.  In celebration of this realization, we watched the most meaninglessly violent movie we could find on instant watch- Suckerpunch- and marveled at the machine-gun wielding samurai and zombie WW-I soldiers.  I would not especially recommend it except in situations exactly like the one we were in.  I would, however, recommend Hamfest.  It isn't quite on par with the dignified operations that are Chivefest or Steaklunch, but it was a good addition to the trivial-events-turned-epic family of activities.

Defer to the Lord High Executioner

Spent most of the day helping out with set for Mikado.  Happy to use powertools again, unhappy to be covered in sawdust again.  Of course, I only showed up for one day.  I'm amazed at the work that Steph and Josh and Davia et al have done on this show, and I know it is going to be great.  At the very least, it already looks great.

Tonight is Amy Reno's birthday party.  Beyond that it looks to be a pretty low key weekend, and that's just fine with me.  I have plenty of work I need to be doing (but probably won't be doing) in anticipation of upcoming exams.

Also, it turns out I'm turning twenty five in five days.  I don't think I'm quite ready for that.  Though I think that's the age they let me rent cars without paying extra fees...

In Which I Take Over Goo's House

I was almost just like a real person this weekend.  I had my own house, I had a dog, I went to the Kennedy Center on Friday night for a concert and on Sunday I had a home cooked meal in which the aesthetics of the plating was taken into account.

While Goo was in Rhode Island I had the privilege of watching Nori, one of the nicest dogs in the world.  Nori is very cute, incredibly affectionate, and knows when to sit still by my side and just look at me while I do my homework.

I want one.

On Friday my friend Chris Lynch, the amazing organist and all around awesome musician, invited me out to the Kennedy Center to see the National Symphony Orchestra Pops.  Wayne Brady was the headliner, doing songs from Sammy Davis Jr. and Sam Cooke.  Very cool show.  He even brought up some women to do a sort of Whose Line Is It Anyway improvisational song and totally nailed it.  Afterwards a woman offered him her lake house in Maine for the summer and another one got up on stage and danced with him.  There is no one that older white women love more than Wayne Brady.

We had excellent seats because Chris had made friends with the conductor the night before.  Turns out he's kind of a big deal and is the director of most of the leading pops orchestras in America, including the New York Pops.  We got drinks with him afterwards and he was a really nice guy.  While talking, he started telling us about a Jim Henson tribute concert he was putting together with characters (and the original puppeteers) from Sesame Street and the Muppets on stage with him.  I asked, jokingly, whether he also had David Bowie queued up to come do a song from Labyrinth.  He replied that he had an arrangement made up and Bowie had agreed to do it, but the concert set was running a little long so he had to cut David Bowie.  I wasn't sure whether to be in awe of meeting a man with the clout to get David Bowie or upset at meeting a man who would so casually cut David Bowie.

Sara hung out with me most of the first day at Goo's and we did homework and she made steak.  I put mashed potatoes in the microwave, because I'm a team player.  Then Davia came over and we went to the dog park.  

Because they have legit dog parks in DC.  Who knew?

We wore Nori out.

Saturday night I went out with Margaret and Steph R and Micah and Ben and Joe (from section 3) to Cuba Libre for Margaret's belated birthday dinner.  We all enjoyed some delicious Cuban food and conversation that almost always ended with a law-related joke.  We can't help it.  It's all we know anymore.

Sunday Noah and Chris (different Chris) came over because I had been meaning to hang out with Chris and Noah promised to cook me something if I let him use Emily's kitchen.  Later on Ben and Davia showed up as well.  I made falafel as an appetizer and only burned myself slightly with the cooking oil.  

 

Noah did not disappoint.  Why yes, those plates ARE garnished with chives.

Jeff and Sara and her friend Jess came over as well for some drinks and Mad Men watching after dinner.  Then I spent one more night alone in my big house with my dog.

Monday morning I took Nori to the dog daycare (those exist) and got back to campus in time for my slew of Monday classes.  After they were done I went to a debrief of the health care arguments being put on by our Supreme Court Institute.  The panel was amazing and star-studded (in lawyer terms), with Professor Barnett (who basically came up with the entire argument against the reform), Robert Long (who argued as a friend of the Court for an issue that neither of the two sides wanted to argue), and three others who had submitted briefs on both sides of the case.  Within the group, they pretty much had all worked with each other at some time or another, making for a very cordial conversation between the fiercest advocates on each team.  I was very impressed.  Whatever happens, this case is going to have an enormous impact on my activities with my internship this summer.