4.2.06
Busy weekend spent researching and writing for my appeals brief, the culmination of the first year’s legal research and writing course. There is mountain of opinions and material out there on both the topic and methods of writing, I’m gaining more and more respect for this profession yet at the same time I keep thinking there has to be a more efficient and equitable way of developing a process of remedies and recourse. The million dollar question of course, one that I’m not prepared to tackle yet.
The courts are a battleground, building on past rulings, higher court holdings, amicus briefs, legal restatements, law journals, and the inevitable government regulation or ruling that shifts the weights of the law in one direction or the other. Somewhere through all of this the actual facts and merits of the individual case are addressed, at least in theory, a judge makes a decision and then everyone goes home happy - some people very happy, the others licking their wounds to fight another day.
The adversarial structure of the American court system - fitting to the American psyche and source of identity, written into the US Constitution, every citizen is entitled to his/her day in court.
Sakura are in full bloom in the tidal basin, I’m missing out this weekend’s bloom to get some things done. hopefully they’ll still be out over the next two weeks so I can check them out on the weekend. Temperatures have been getting a lot warmer lately, strangely the weather on the East Coast has been pretty nice compared to back at home.
Otherwise, I have more observations about religion, intolerance, outright bigotry and ignorance, all with no real resolution in sight. I think the analogy of a train/car wreck is fitting, the self-rightous have a tendancy to go through life recklessly tearing up anything in their path, and are honestly surprised when a cop comes along and tells them they are liable for the damages.
I read up another article about the next 16 days to be crucial in deciding the direction that we all are headed.