http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ "The brand of pseudo-intellectual pageantry practiced by the hitherto unnamed coterie of jackasses, otherwise known as Crescat Sententia, is a load of unconscionably boring and particularly malodorous [excrement]." -Assprat Pretentia "It's good." -Richard Posner en-us wbaude@crescatsententia.org 2007-05-30T23:23:05-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/30/ (1): I graduated from law school. (2): This blog received its 1,000,000th unique visitor. (3): I posted my last post on Crescat. Namely, this one. Thank you, all. I don't know what my life would have been like without this blog. Bye. 7084@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Meta (about blogs) 2007-05-30T23:23:05-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/26/ After finishing the last law school exam of my life yesterday, I sent my parents and my brother each a note saying "done!" My mom wrote back, "great!" My brother wrote back, "With . . . law school?" My dad wrote back, "What's next?" 7083@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Meta (about blogs) 2007-05-26T15:31:10-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/23/ The series finale of Veronica Mars last night was more or less perfect. [Discussion ensues.] 7082@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Television 2007-05-23T08:19:39-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/19/ As a college math major who-- I like to hope-- has found his true calling in law school, I was a little alarmed by this Slate article on Wolfowitz's downfall: Wolfowitz's doom was all but fated. Several factors shaped this fate, but not least was the fact that his major in college was math. I've known a few mathematicians who have gone into policy analysis, and they share not merely an intolerance of bureaucracy but a disdain toward all political processes. In math, methodologies and answers are right or wrong, and those who choose the wrong ones are properly ignored or savagely dismissed. Mathematicians who enter the political realm tend to retain this attitude. Now, dare I say that the methodology of "I've known a few mathematicians who . . . " is probably not a particularly rigorous way to establish that mathematicians who attempt to make decisions about the real world are "fated" for "doom." But maybe that's my intolerant, mathematical background speaking. 7081@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Maths 2007-05-19T12:18:55-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/18/ The Gilmore Girls is gone. Veronica Mars is going. It willl soon be time for me to end my boycott of The Wire, which I wasn't watching out of loyalty to Veronica Mars and the belief that the world could only support so many really smart cult T.V. shows. 7080@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Television 2007-05-18T07:44:08-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/14/ 14 years ago, my family got a dog named Fred-- a rather exuberant puppy with an affection for people and for pizza. A little unsure about whether we had the wherewithal to actually train him (we didn't) or were quite ready for his effect on our lives (we weren't) we set a tentative hearing date of a year. If he wasn't working out, he'd be dispatched to live a happy life on a farm in Kansas or Arkansas someplace with friends and space. As the date of review approached, we realized he really needed an extra year. A negative answer was basically unacceptable, but a positive answer was not guaranteed if we actually confronted the question. Every year the same thing happened, and every year his "one-year review" was extended to give him extra time to earn his tenure. Today, at the end of a life as good as a dog can live, Fred died. My girlfriend asked me if my family was planning to get another dog. I pointed out that we hadn't really decided to keep the first one. "But you loved him!" she pointed out. "That was precisely the problem," I said. 7079@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Indiana 2007-05-14T11:55:16-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/13/ The First Congress required the Attorney General to be "a meet person, learned in the law." I hope to prove to the satisfaction of the Illinois Board of Bar Examiners that I am the same, or at least the latter. To that end, I must learn the law of Illinois, and of "Multistate." I will, however, be spending the summer in San Francisco, outside the jurisdiction of the ubiquitous BARBRI, and my interest in the overpriced BARBRI iPod is tepid. Does any Crescat reader have any experience with the "Micromash" bar study program, possibly supplemented with a battery of used BARBRI of Illinois books? Extra points for impartial advice if you are not an employee of either corporation. 7078@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Meta (about blogs) 2007-05-13T22:20:00-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/09/ There's a quite a bit of wisdom in the New York Times dining section today, although I hope it will not sound like bragging if I say these are two things I've known for quite some time (both discovered my second year of college): Cheap french supermarket mustard is fantastic and irrepleaceable. A dextrously-used pot lid can replace a colander (if you are brave about steam). 7077@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Food 2007-05-09T10:23:04-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/09/ Today is my last day of class of law school-- indeed, my last day of class ever. The strangeness of this is rather hard to convey, especially since I had really realized this until today. 7076@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Meta (about blogs) 2007-05-09T07:46:06-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/03/ From Albert Alschuler's Law Without Values: No area of federal constitutional law more clearly requires judges to address issues of political theory than that of jurisdiction over the person. The principal question in this area is: When, under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, may one state require a resident of another state to defend a civil lawsuit in its courts? The Supreme Court has considered what 'contacts' between the nonresident defendant and the 'forum state' are sufficient-- driving on the state's highways, shipping goods from outside the state for sale inside it, or perhaps being handed a summons by a process server while far above the state on an airliner headed toward Cleveland. For Justice Holmes, the issue personal jurisdiction was simple: 'The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power. . . .' If a nonresident were present in a state so that the state could seize her and bring her into court, the state would have jurisdiction over her. Without this physical power the state would lack jurisdiction. The question of personal jurisdiction was not a question of justice. It was a question of brute force. Especially in the context of the American federal system, Holmes's view of personal jurisdiction was quirky. Like his views of state action, sovereign immunity, and the right-privilege distinction, this position has few adherents today. Under the federal Constitution, the decisions of a state court with jurisdiction are entitled to full faith and credit in the courts of other states. Both in theory and in practice, Supreme Court rulings on jurisdiction determine a state's power rather than the other way around. ... Before Holmes's service on the Supreme Court, the law of personal jurisdiction in England and America had focused on normative questions, not simply on issues of power. The book purports to be "a darker portrait" and "critique" of Holmes, but I must say that all of the criticisms I have seen of Justice Holmes, that his views on personal jurisdiction were excessively territorialist rate as one of the the least compelling. 7075@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Quotes 2007-05-03T18:12:27-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/03/ A few weeks ago, I posted about the idea that people might get comfortable voting for Hillary because they assumed Bill would effectively be running things. My impression is that some commenters thought I (or the people who suggested the idea, I couldn't quite tell) was being sexist. (I don't think I was, by the way - it is not my fault Hillary Clinton happens to be married to one of the most powerful people on the planet, and I don't think the explanations of what Bill Clinton is meant to do during her presidency other than loom are particularly convincing). Having said that, at least I didn't say what one of the (favorable!) television commentators incongruously said after watching Segolene Royale, the socialist candidate for French President (a woman) go relentlessly on the offensive in a draining, two hour debate: "I felt she was a seductress, using her feminine wiles on the nation". Thankfully, one of the women on the panel proclaimed herself "stupified" at that pronouncement, observing that there was very little about Royale's angry, barely contained performance that anyone would confusion with seduction. But talk about a faux pas! * the other point here is that I would never suggest that Segolene Royale would be overshadowed by her partner, the socialist party leader Francois Hollande (as one might expect, were I actually a sexist). The Royale/Hollande relationship is what I think the H. Clinton supporters would like her potential presidency to be like, but Hollande is no Bill, and socialist party secretary is not "former President of the United States". 7074@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Miscellaneous 2007-05-03T12:09:15-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/03/ Bernard Harcourt, University of Chicago Law Professor and all-roung criminology maven, is guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy. As it happens, the second volume of the Carceral Notebooks is now online, also featuring Harcourt (as well as former Crescat Guest Blogger and longtime Mentor of Crescat Jim Leitzel). 7073@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Criminal Law 2007-05-03T07:30:08-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/05/03/ Over at Concurring Opinions, Steve Vladeck debates the merits of using current events as fact patterns for law school exams. While he admits that there is substantial merit to doing so, he notes two downsides-- that real life can often be less clear-cut than a massaged and manufactured situation, and that students might have thought about and prepared discussions of real-life events before the exam starts. Both of these objections strike me as non-starters. There's nothing wrong, especially on a law school exam, with a question whose answer could go either way. This may be influenced by my bias in the Con. Law class I've T.A.ed, because we ask students not only to discuss existing doctrine but to critique or discard it (which makes clear-cut answers even harder to come by). I had thought this was rather the norm for many law school exams, where the goal is to spot and work through issues, even if one doesn't necessarily come out with the same andwer as the Professor would. Even more, having answers that students might have prepared before hand does not strike me as an unqualifiedly bad thing. The trick is to make sure that one is open-minded enough about the possible topics for an exam that a student who wishes to do this has to prepare more than just one or two questions. This means not just picking the thing that's at the top of the headlines. But if everything from U.S. Attorneys dismissals to Medellin v. Texas is to some extent fair fame for the question, then a student who wants to prepare will have to prepare answers to most of the major legal issues going on. And that, as Akhil Amar has put it, is not cheating-- it is learning. Now, to mirror Steve's point, I do think there are downsides to using current events as the basis for exam-writing, but I don't think either of these two downsides are very big downsides at all. 7072@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Academia 2007-05-03T07:22:06-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/04/30/ Pinkberry , a relatively new frozen yogurt chain, is the newest darling of that class of people obsessed with things that come from Los Angeles. Having been to their upper east side outpost here in New York (I was buying a used tuxedo from Gentleman's Resale) what puzzles me is that I can't identify what's upscale about it, or good, or distinctive, or in any way different than the old, not much lamented, "I can't believe it's Yogurt", chain. Yes, you can get fruit on your soft serve yogurt, that's true. And there are fashionable looking people lined out the door. But the product is just standard-issue, comfortingly tangy, frozen yogurt. At a blinding $4.04 for a small container. I finished off my yogurt and looked longingly at the Mcdonald's nearby, where they would have given a cone of equally average soft serve for a dollar. I could have bought a box of blueberries from the street vendor and tipped them on top if I had the inclination, and ate them without having waited for twenty minutes in a line of people enthusing about the supposed anti-oxidants in the green tea flavor. When that's the reaction your food gets, my guess is that Pinkberry won't much survive its temporary, trendy, froth. 7071@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ Food 2007-04-30T11:40:49-05:00 http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/archives/2007/04/29/ So we’ll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul outwears the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we’ll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon. Gordon Lord Byron 7070@http://WWW.crescatsententia.net/ 2007-04-29T23:52:09-05:00