Amber Taylor has advice (in response to Jeremy Blachman) about preparing (or not) for law school. Given that I'm going . . . somewhere . . . in about half a year, I thought I'd see how I measure up. Comments interspersed below:

- Don't read One-L or any of those other stupid law school tell-alls. No matter where you go, it's never like that.

Oops. Too late. I also read Brush With the Law and (I'm afraid to admit) The Law Review.

- Don't watch The Paper Chase. It's a product of its time and has not aged well.

Never been interested. Check.

- Do something fun this summer that's not related to the law. Your law school summers will probably be spent at some poorly paid public interest job or in a firm. Have you always wanted to take an art class? Travel to Asia? Do some full time volunteer work? This is your chance.

In progress. If you have the power to help me do something really fun, please contact me.

- Relax. You will be a giant ball of stress once classes begin and so will everyone else. Why start working on your first heart attack now?

Oops. I'm a giant ball of stress already.

- Socialize with friends and family who you may not see once you start law school. Having a strong personal network is key when the first inklings of exam-related despair set in around November.

Working on it; up to four different co-bloggers and ex-co-bloggers (which is to say, friends and family) may be visiting in the next few weeks, which may lead to lessened blogging here, especially on weekend.

- To second Jeremy and Waddling Thunder, don't waste your money on a prep class. Your school may send you a list of helpful or recommended reading. There is no need to actually read any of this. In fact, read whatever you like best. There may not be as much time for pleasure reading in law school.

Check.

- Find a good place to live and settle in before classes start.

Working on it, and apartment hunting in both Chicago and New Haven, the latter being signicantly harder to do from Hyde Park. If you know of nice/inexpensive studio apartments relatively close to the Yale Law School, do let me know.

- Don't Panic!

Hmm . . .

Professor Green introduced this supposed dilemma for utilitarians in class today: You are a commited Utilitarian. You and a buddy are hiking through the Arctic circle. Your buddy has a terrible and sadistic son, as well as a large fortune. Recognizing the terrible-ness and sadistic-ness of his son, he has written the son out of his will and instead assigned the money to starving orphans. Your buddy has been badly hurt from the hike, and as your buddy lays dying in the Arctic circle with you, he asks you to promise to tell everybody that he changed his will, and that he would like to un-disown his son after all. You agree, your buddy dies, you return to civilization to report his death. Do you keep your promise?

The first objection that shoots up, of course, is "why did you agree to that stupid promise?" But a truly committed utilitarian would have no problem with reassuring a dying friend with false promises-- after all, it increases the friend's total utility without harming anybody. Now then, shouldn't this same committed Utilitarian clearly break the promise, since the son will only use this money to cause pain and embarrassment and suffering if he gets it, and since the starving orphans are clearly a worthy cause?

Of course, depending on the estate laws in the relevant jurisdiction, our utilitarian might well be able to have his cake and eat it too. If an unwritten, unrecorded will amendment cannot stand in court, then our utilitarian keeps his promise to tell, but still doesn't deprive the poor orphans. Indeed, some have argued that the infamous Rule Against Perpetuities serves a similarly function-- reassuring the dying that their wishes will be followed while simultaneously giving the living the maximum freedom from the dead hand. For more on this read Jeffrey Stake's intriguing article (on Lexis/etc., but not otherwise online), Darwin, Donations, and the Illusion of Dead Hand Control; 64 Tul. L. Rev. 705.

Of course, it might be suggested that such solutions based on deception are unstable, but I think that's only a serious risk if such an idea becomes widespread. So long as it doesn't catch on, the system is safe. Call it the reverse-tinkerbell effect.

"Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics" just came in the mail this past Monday evening. I haven't really gotten a chance to give it a serious read just yet, but ran across a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem I felt was particularly nice -- (nice enough, in fact, to post on the web). Sorry for the recent bout of poetry posts on my part, but I've been thesising as of late, and I'm almost positive the general (mainly legal) public would probably not care too much about methods of elucidating lateral root development using quantitative approaches...although, now that I think about it, I don't really seem to write much at all that the general (mainly legal) public would probably care too much about.

That said, the poem follows:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades*, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

*Do note -- the "a" of "all" and "trades" should have acute accents over them. I couldn't figure out how to get those into hypertext...that, and I just found out the formatting doesn't really work -- at least not in my hands. Best probably to read it here.