April 30, 2007
A Brief, Sappy Diversion From Your Otherwise Ironically Distant Programming
At Michigan, one quarter of the entering 1L class starts their studies in June. This year, the summer starters took Civil Procedure and Torts, and I was one of those valorous 92.
The fall starters think summer starters are insular; that we stick to ourselves. Maybe this is true. But if it is, it is only because our experience in this intellectual boot camp is unique and wonderful, our bonds are intense, and the summer starters might be all the friends I’ll ever need.
It’s a strange experience, starting law school at an empty law school. As a consequence, the summer starters really get to feeling like the favored children of Hutchins. Michigan professors are by and large an approachable lot. But during the summer, our professors actually played basketball with us on Thursdays at the IM building – to the summer starters, approachable is charging your professor in the lane. When fall rolls around and the rest of the law school shows up, it is a rude awakening: who are these other people? And who are these 2Ls and 3Ls walking around like they own the place?
My summer starter section might have been the greatest summer starter section ever. A year ago we were strangers; today, they’re people I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
My summer starter section
- Includes someone who owns the funniest and dorkiest shirt ever. It has a picture of a drop of blood, and inscribed over the drop: “RNA, the other nucleic acid.” Dorky. But undeniably true.
- Stood on our desks and recited lines from the script of Dead Poet Society when our property professor concluded that we were incapable of collective action. Maybe there was even a sign held up by an entire row of seats.
- Doesn’t favor mornings. Our 8 am contract class was sometimes light on attendance, so much so that our contracts professor e-mailed one student to implore him: "come to class, block-head!"
- Created a mailing list called ‘workhardplayharder’ during the first week of June, and then committed ourselves to living up to that mandate.
- Hosted a caps tournament over the summer. Which, incredibly, was won by a couple of chemistry students who happened to be visiting that weekend.
- This week, used ‘workhardplayharder’, see above, to circulate our favorite quotes from our professors during our doctrinals. At first, thought I’d repeat a few choice ones here, but you kind of had to be there with us. We’re like a family. A very large, dysfunctional family prone to reasoned but constant argument and hopelessly esoteric inside jokes.
And now that our third semester is over, we’re divorced: our doctrinals are completed, and the 92 of us won’t be together again, confused but cocky; enthusiastic but ill-informed. We’ll have to look back on the time our contracts professor gave us the finger as a fond memory; and the time our civ pro professor brought ice cream cups. Ditto the ‘wall of children’ hypothetical in torts and an unusual take on Justice O’Connor’s concurrence in Lawrence v. Texas.
Basically, the way I feel about my summer starter section can be summed up thusly: one of the admitted students I’ve been e-mailing with is an enrolled summer starter. She sent me an e-mail that expressed a bit of concern: suppose, she wondered, I’m stuck in Ann Arbor this summer with a bunch of gunner weenies? This is what I told her: “your summer starter section can’t possibly be weenies, because my summer starter section is awesome.”
I’m really going to miss the Us of being a summer starter. But the best part: the feeling is collective. I’m not going to out anybody here, but maybe there are a pile of summer starters planning to crash a certain jurisdiction section this fall. There’s a strong possibility that we could survive without each other, but it just doesn’t seem right take classes with strangers when we don’t have to.
Work hard, peeps, but play harder. See you this fall.
April 21, 2007
Ann Arbor Moment
It's finals time. I have nothing witty or cute or amusing to say, except that there are a mess of law students in my coffee shop tonight studying, and we've all been here so long we've managed to migrate up to the choice seats near the window.
And a few minutes ago, a jubilant parade of women, men, children, and someone who might be described as an acid casualty, marched down the sidewalk. They were banging plastic buckets, ringing bells, and festooned in ivy wreaths. At the end was a woman carrying a big cardboard planet earth bearing the words 'Happy Earth Day'. It says a lot about Ann Arbor that until we saw her sign, we just figured it was a group that got tired of drumming in a circle and decided to tour the block.
Happy Earth Day, every one, even though no Earth Day is possibly happier than the one being celebrated on the sidewalk outside.
April 08, 2007
Reason #5 That I Hate Law School*
Law School ruined West Wing for me.
Well, it didn’t ruin West Wing. But my con law class (that’s constitutional law, for you non-law-people) has revealed a philosophical difference between me and Toby Zeigler, the (imaginary) White House Communications Director. He used to be my second-favorite character. Now I’m kind of thinking he isn’t that smart and not a very critical, analytical thinker. These are bad things, and this is hard for me – so hard I have to tell everybody about it. And, dear reader, that everybody includes you.
A lot of lawyers I know suggested that law school would change me; that it would change the way I think. I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I think I was a born litigator, and my poor parents who were charged with raising me, an outspoken advocate at age four, would probably agree. But law school has put a focus on my general penchant for being a pain in the ass. For example, law school has taught me to get in the habit of questioning each step of reasoning. So if you say, “I’ve concluded the sky is blue,” I might ask the following questions:
- What’s blue?
- What sources are you relying on for your definition of ‘blue’?
- What part of the sky? Like, right above or toward the horizon?
- Do we want to create a rule of law where the sky is blue? What are the policy implications of deciding the sky is blue? Are you the best chooser as to whether the sky should be blue or not?
- Et cetera ad nauseum.
I’ll set the scene: the president is interviewing a nominee for the Supreme Court. The nominee in question is a ‘home run’ that the whips say will get 90 votes in the Senate. Then a law review note authored by the nominee twenty years ago surfaces, and the note suggests the nominee doesn’t believe a right to privacy exists in the Constitution. This is problematic because the right to privacy includes things like, maybe, the right to decide whether or not to have a child.
So the President calls this nominee, Judge Harrison, into the Oval Office. One character asks Judge Harrison if a right to privacy exists in the Constitution and Judge Harrison replies: “the fact that the framers enumerated … specific protections is all the more reason to believe that they had no intention of making privacy a de facto right.”
Judge Harrison: “Gentlemen, laws must emanate from the Constitution.”A year ago, watching this episode, I wanted to stand up and cheer for an executive branch committed to protecting my right to reproductive freedom. I’m still really big on my reproductive freedom, but I’m a little more skeptical of Mr. Zeigler.
Toby Zeigler: “Are there natural laws, judge?”
Judge Harrison: “I do not deny there are natural laws, Mr. Ziegler. I only deny that judges are empowered to enforce them.”
Toby Zeigler: “Then who will?”
Judge Harrison: “That's not up to me.”
(By the way, I do think somewhere in the Constitution there is a right to privacy. The Constitution is only seven pages long. When I get a chance I’ll find it in there, somewhere.)
But like Judge Harrison, I don’t think judges are necessarily the best group to be enforcing ‘natural laws’ either. In Con Law this semester, I’ve learned that ‘natural laws’ scare me: the same ‘natural law’ that Toby Zeigler believes to guaranty my right to choose was used to protect a slave-owner’s property right in a slave in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Any law could permit both things seems a little spooky. So I’m more skeptical of Toby Zeigler now. I don’t think he’s a bad White House Communications Director, but I can’t trust him the same way anymore. The West Wing is no longer entertaining. There’s a lot I miss about being in law school –- skiing, New England, having a job with a paycheck –- but tonight I think I miss West Wing the most.
(*And I don't really hate law school. The reasons I love law school number in the dozens; the reasons law school frustrate me number in the single digits. But they're the most fun to whine about.)
March 22, 2007
Liveblogging from ORIGINs
You may have been wondering where I am in my adventures as an intrepid 1.5L. I will tell you that I've been busy. At the moment, for example, I'm wearing a headset and live blogging backstage at ORIGINS, the Asian and Pacific-American Law Student Association's culture show. I've never really worked back stage at any sort of production before. I'm pretty stoked about the headset.
There are actually some law students involved who have actual production experience. The kid running the light board seems to really know his stuff; the stage manager is running a sound board that seems pretty complicated to me. My sole responsibility is operating the curtain. I open it, then I close it, then I open it and close it again. It doesn't sound complicated, but such a simple description belies how important my role is. I've been doing push-ups all week to train.
I also make jokes on the headset, such that nobody else can understand what anybody is saying. This is called headset chatter and is allegedly counterproductive. So it is driving the other stagehands crazy. If I keep it up, they've threatened to throw me in the pan-Asia fashion show. Without the headset.
March 11, 2007
Road Trip: Law Geek Edition!
I’m all jazzed.
First, by way of disclaimer, I’m liveblogging from the preliminary rounds of the APALSA Karaoke Contest. The audience gets to vote on who advances to the finals, and the ballot is complicated the way only law students could complicate something so simple as karaoke.
Now, the reason I’m all jazzed up? Justice Scalia spoke at the University of Toledo Law School today, and sitting about twelve feet away, third row center, was green haired, faux hawked, me.*
Last week I heard on the radio that Justice Scalia planned to visit Toledo; the talk was open to the public. I have a car, and I have willing and able partners in adventure, but my car only starts when the outside temperature is above freezing. We checked the extended forecast -- sixty and sunny -- and a road trip was born.
[Editor’s note: Someone’s dancing on the tables of Honigman Auditorium and singing something by the Pussycat Dolls. It’s very distracting.]
I thought about skipping my con law class, which is taught by a fabulous constitutional law scholar who clerked for Justice Scalia, but skipping a clerk to go see the man seemed wrong somehow. Instead, we cut it close and rolled into Toledo with twenty minutes to spare. We cut it so close, in fact, the only seats left were in the very front rows in the center. A concerned student ambassador/usher asked us if that was okay: it was. So this is what you should know about Justice Scalia:
- He turned 71 on March 11. Happy Birthday, Justice Nino!
- He is a tenor – he sang a few bars of Stars and Stripes for us – and has a melodious speaking voice.
- [Ed: No Karaoke Contest is complete without Boyz II Men. Someone just sang Backstreet Boys, and now Boyz II Men too. Wow.]
- Justice Scalia’s soft speaking voice is actually so enchanting that at a few points I was feeling rather originalist myself. But then I snapped to.
- He isn’t used to having people sit behind him. The organizers had added forty or so seats on stage behind the podium, and Justice Scalia admitted that it was hard for him to make eye contact with those students. Seeing a justice admit his humanity was kind of cute.
- Justice Scalia’s favorite cases are government structure ones. If you know anything about Justice Scalia, you’ll probably know he’s a bit of a fan of the Constitution as intended by the framers. A large part of the text is devoted to structure: we’ll have a Congress, they decided, and it will be elected like this, by these individuals... and so on. So his favorite cases relate to structure, and his favorite dissent was in Morrison v. Olson, which we discussed in my con law class Monday.
- [Ed: Someone just brought her own dance troupe to sway to Buttercup, and they can really dance. If I can figure out the ballot, I’m giving her a high score.]
- Justice Scalia’s argument for judges not getting too carried away with interpreting the Constitution through a modern lens? “I don't know what the evolving standards of the American people are… I live in isolation, inside the Beltway in Washington. I work in a marble palace. I don't know what's going on.”
*Okay, so apparently Justice Scalia came to my law school last year, but I wasn’t here last year, I was in Maine. Justice Scalia and I just keep missing each other.
March 06, 2007
Baby Lawyers, Baby Law Students, and Baby LSATers
I’m a baby lawyer. In the development of a lawyer, I’m not even close to one: I’m still amazed when I close and open my own lawyer fist. As a growing baby lawyer, I like to study with the undergrads in the reading room at the Michigan Union. I like studying with the undergrads because they provide ample distraction, and distraction helps me focus. Left to my own devices I’ll create distraction in the form of music making and art projects so I might as well study in a place that will provide blog post fodder, which doesn’t bother my neighbors or make a mess with the rubber cement.
Setting aside the norms and mores of studying seated at a table with strangers for another post, across the table there was an undergrad studying for the LSATs. Usually, the table is almost too narrow for comfort. This afternoon, though, it couldn’t have been wider. He kept checking out my books and then looking at his LSAT book, and trying to make a connection. I wanted to tell him I’ve been trying to find a connection between the LSATs and law school for months, with no success yet.
And this weekend, baby law students, admits, will visit the law school, to wonder if Michigan is the right law school for them. And I get to recruit what can kind of be considered my replacement. I’m giving tours Thursday, and I have all this insider dirt to share. I know the best row of cubicles in the library for sleeping between classes, and the warmest and coldest seats in room 150 of Hutchins Hall. (Hint: it’s counterintuitive: in 150 HH, cold rises.) It’s supposed to be well above freezing all weekend, and almost fifty on Sunday. It kind of seems like false advertising to bring them out to visit during a thaw (it’s only 14°F right now). But if anyone asks, I also know a great place to buy a warm coat.
March 05, 2007
I can’t work in fast food all my life
Well, I know you can't work in fast food all your lifeMore than a little about law school involves delayed gratification. Last year I skied forty days. This year I skied zero. But I’m hoping that after graduation I’ll be able to afford to ski in France. That’s the plan, anyhow.
But don't sign that paper tonight, she said, but it's too late.
I don't remember what I read, I don't remember what they said,
I guess it doesn't matter, I guess it doesn't matter anymore…
Sell out, with me oh yea, sell out, with me tonight
The record company’s gonna give me lots of money and everything’s gonna be all right.
Skiing; weekend-long birthday parties; Coachella Music Festival; my thirty-inch waist: these are all casualties of law school. I was feeling a little bummed because I hung around Ann Arbor for spring break. I had the money to either go to Miami for spring break or eat during finals, so I chose eating. It would almost sound like you could add ‘fun’ to the list of the missing.
That said, spring break in Michigan, although oxymoronic, wasn’t half-bad. I caught up on movies; had dinner with the funniest eight year old ever; did some baking and dinner party-ing with friends; played a lot of cornet; went to the art museum; found a parking spot in downtown Ann Arbor. (If the last doesn’t seem amazing to you, you must live in a land filled with parking spaces and unicorns.)
And despite my constant complaining about the weather, grad student penury and how bad law school is for my eyes, gratification comes quickly: I’m going to be making money this summer. The reason I came to law school is that I wanted to work in socially responsible investing and shareholder activism, and I found a summer position doing exactly that. I landed a gig with the good folks who manage the pension funds of the AFL-CIO in Washington DC. I couldn’t be more stoked.
And losses to law school are never total either: when I went to the Coachella web site to check the spelling for this blog post, I discovered that the band I really want to see is also playing in San Francisco at the end of August. So that’s where I’ll be before coming back to Ann Arbor in the fall, practicing for my midlife crisis with enginerd friends from undergrad. If you have some floor space you can spare for the weekend of August 18th, I can bake a chocolate cake that will make you believe in god.
(That song quoted at the beginning, by the way, was Sell Out by Reel Big Fish. In case you were so moved you want to go listen to it now.)
February 06, 2007
The Coldest Winter In Seventeen Years
When Michigan invited me to blog on the Law School website, which is probably the closest a girl can get to a book deal without actually having to write a book, they didn’t have to beg. That’s because I think that every blogger is constantly in search of a taller soapbox and a brighter spotlight. At least, with respect to my constant opinions about all things, always, that’s the case for me. So here we are.
Some introductions are in order: my name is Jennifer Pepin, and I’m a first year summer starter at Michigan Law. I graduated from the University of Southern Maine last winter after an eight year on-again, off-again college stint that progressed concurrently with a career in socially responsible investment research and ended with a degree in media studies and political science and a burning desire to change the world. I like cheese, Bob Dylan, and run-on sentences, and I won a spelling bee in second grade. I grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, a college town not unlike Ann Arbor. The spelling bees were cutthroat, especially after I moved into the multi-syllabic word division.
In either event, I won, and it’s mostly been downhill from there.
That’s all anybody really needs to know about me for this blog to have some sort of context. For now, I’ll leave you, nascent readers, with a semi-precious gem of an observation from a 1L: when in doubt, ask Tom. It has come to my attention that for almost every law school related dilemma there is a Tom Cruise character with a quote directly on point.
For example: do I spend Sunday driving around to thrift shops trying to find a used trombone for the law school rock band? Or type up my growing pile of notes from jurisdiction, which at this point resemble nothing but chaos? For an answer, look no further than the first few minutes of Top Gun:
Charlie: Listen, can I ask you a personal question?Translation: here, the message couldn’t be any clearer: I should take a crack at outlining my jurisdiction notes. Because the truth of the matter is that I can’t even play trombone.
Maverick: That depends.
Charlie: Are you a good pilot?
Maverick: I can hold my own.
Charlie: Great, then I won't have to worry about you making your living as a singer.
I’ll post regularly, and keep you tuned into the exploits of a 1L summer starter. This morning it was warmer in Moscow than Ann Arbor, so if I don’t post for a few weeks, it’s because the entire state froze.
(Kidding! But only a little bit kidding.)