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Two weeks into the semester and its more or less business as usual. Still getting back into the hang of lugging these big case books around and reading the fine print and footnotes in legalese. I have a hunch that these courses are more along my interest set, which should make it go more smoothly, but then again it is law school afterall.
Reading up in criminal law brings back some things I picked up from previous work and course study, of course actually learning all of this material and concepts again this time in the legal context is a lot more complicated. I really think sometimes they find the most difficult way to teach something and then go forward with it. I’m also getting the standard acronyms down again, BARD, CCE, POE, 3P burdens, P/D, etc. For some reason questions of due process and the social implications of crime and punishment are more interesting to read about, even going through the sometimes dry legal analysis of elements isn’t too bad.
I’m still getting a feel for Con law, I can’t help but compare to Downs back in Madison, he had a somewhat different take on Marbury v. Madison and Bush v. Gore. Of course with any instructor comes his academic interests and focuses. We ended up talking a lot about first amendment rights to free speech and university politics. I wonder what ever happened to that segregated fee controversy whether it ever got resolved.
I’d like to say that having a law prof explain it in terms of civil procedure and original jurisdiction gives it a new angle, makes you wonder how things would’ve turned out if some of the powers at the time had played their cards differently. I think the historical element of Con Law is what I’m drawn to at this point. It forces you to look around at some of the cases that are being decided right now in the courts on constitutional rights and issues. It is worth mentioning that maybe the elitist and special status of the court that has been adopted since Marbury has discouraged Americans from keeping as involved with constitutional issues as they had if the court maintained a more populist existance in interpreting law.
Not to say that things weren’t elitist already back then. At least it seemed like the population, fresh off of a revolutionary war and post-conlict chaos were much more invested in their rights as citizens.