Otherwise Alienating:

In this case I agree with Greg completely, but in more general terms I like listening to debates about Constitutional law and the such. I find it all intensely interesting. Enought that occationally I find myself thinking that law school would be a hell of a lot of fun.

And then I remember that I have the memory capacity of a walnut, and if I can't derive what I am supposed to remember from first principles I am hopeless, so if I had to remember case references and specifics of laws and procedures without having them right in front of me, I'd be done for.

That was Sam, in response to an earlier post of mine.

First, it always pains me to see a snippet of something I've written posted somewhere with a typo. I didn't put a whole lot of effort into editing this particular rant, but it would still be nice to avoid such things. In the section quoted, there was at least one clear typo and a couple of sketchy (requiring further analysis) grammatical choices.

For Sam and others, it is important to keep in mind that there's not a whole lot of actual argument (or even intellectual discussons) in law school. This particular rant came from a companion site on Westlaw's TWEN (The West Educational Network), which we were required to participate on (More of my take on TWEN happenings here and more generally, here.) What I've found is that many of my classmates appear completely unwilling to take on these topics energetically. There were actually two more responses by the guy I questioned in this post, but that was pretty unusual, including for him. In fact, my style was intentionally somewhat different here. You might note that I actually questioned his views, rather than writing a more detached response. I was largely hoping to elicit a response.

In class, almost all discussion focuses on the case decisions being analyzed. There's not a lot of debate or even philosophical discussion, though we did touch a bit more on that in Con Law than in others.

Actually, Prof. Adler, our Con Law professor, encouraged more such interaction than most. He mandated participation on TWEN, and he also held 5 class exercises, and in all but one exercise, students represented either Supreme Court Justices or attorneys representing parties in simulated oral arguments. I participated for the first time in one of these last night as, after some lobbying -- thanks, Mr. Peters, Justice Scalia. (I felt we hadn't had enough Scalia injected by previous Scalias, so I did my part to try to inject a little more Scalia than usual.) These exercises gave us more opportunities to actually treat these things more philosophically.

Despite my general distaste for TWEN's technologies, I also appreciated having that avenue to discuss these things. I tend to like to see my ideas before speaking about them, and class discussion doesn't really lend itself to that. Using TWEN, I can write out hopefully cogent arguments. If someone comes back and can convince me I'm wrong, so much the better. I've learned. Or, I can write a response back, clarifying their points. Again, hopefully, we've both benefited by seeing other views, being questioned, and having to defend our perspectives. (Prof. Adler mentioned that he was pleased they occasionally even got feisty... and then looked at me.)

At the end of class, during the usual process of telling us how much he enjoyed the semester, Prof. Adler pointed out that this was the last time our section was going to be together as a group. With the exception of a few who have dropped out, and a couple we picked up for one reason or another, all but two of my classes this far have been with the same group of students I started with 4 semesters ago, in the fall of 2004. Last night was the last regular meeting of our scheduled required classes (we meet for a Crim Pro review session tomorrow night.) He handed out copies of our seating charts to memorialize the group. It was right up there with Prof. Travis handing us keys (a different story.)

I don't believe I've previously posted this here before, but if you're curious to see the sort of folks I've been hanging out with the last couple of years, here's a photo Professor Osborn commissioned of us, as we ended the second of our two semesters of contracts with him (click for the full-sized version):

Starting next semester, we go our separate ways in scheduling.