Category Archives: Graduate Education

Last Exam for now

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

After reviewing a couple of hours, which was a break from packing – I downloaded and took my last exam. This is a timed open book exam. Not that having an open book is of any help at all. I had extensive notes, but there simply isn’t time to find, cut and paste as apposed to simply answering the question/s.

It seems like all law school exams are essays – which may explain the definite faculty preference for computer over blue book. With an open book/on-line exam, there isn’t much choice, it is going to be computer.

Of course, it also helps if you remember to either convert your document into Word (ick) or PDF it.

Pages is my standard. The above is mentioned because I forgot to convert the exam so had to immediately send a copy in the right format. The upload software doesn’t let you upload again/replace whatever you send.

I would rather scribble in a blue book….

I should be studying

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

At least that is what I am telling myself. So far I have reviewed five pages of outlines, several misc. documents, read through my notes, played computer games and skimmed some junk genre fiction.

So much for good intentions.

And there was also the Cal’s Women’s Basketball game this afternoon (they pulled off a win, but their % from the floor left a bit to be desired. Had the opponent been one of the PAC-12, it would not have turned out so well). But the Straw Hat Band was there, tho not in numbers. I gifted out the first batch of pins made from Miriam’s design

thought about studying some more, but had dinner instead and going to sleep relatively early.

First Exam

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Law schools make a huge production out of exams. Seriously huge. I don’t remember anything, including National Boards or Specialty Exams that were this much of a production. Of course, those were also in the paper/pencil days and did not include essays.

Law schools LOVE essays.

Option one – Download Exam4 software on your computer and type your essay. This has good and bad points. On the good side, there is ease in grading for the professor as there are no issues with handwriting. For students, there is a built in spellchecker and the ability to cut and paste. The last is significant it terms of reorganizing a several page answer. On the downside – there is the significant issue of installing someone else’s software on my computer and I really think a higher expectation on the part of the faculty member as far as organization and extent of answer. There is also the “baffle them with bs” that many of us tend toward when. we run out of something useful to say. It is oh, so easy to do this with a word processor. You also have to be extremely familiar with the software in order to have it function properly.

Option two – hand write in blue books. The downsides are obvious: you have to be organized, coherent, and have decent handwriting. On the plus side, if you do it properly, you can write less. You also don’t have to deal with a software program that wants to do strange things while you are writing. No worries about losing one’s answers or not having it upload properly

It might not make sense to you, but I will always pick blue book (handwritten) over a computer generated exam. My handwriting is not that bad and I want concentrate on the content of what I am writing and not on the form of the exam (making it look pretty on the paper). The blue book rules are one side and every other line. I can work within those parameters. And yes, I have been dealing with computers since 1968. That doesn’t mean that I have to use them – they are a tool – and so is a pen.

This particular professor set a word limit for the essay. The total exam is 3 hours – there are going to be 20 multiple choice questions and then an essay for the last two hours. Word limit is 3000, and page limit for blue book is 27 (assuming about 110/words/page). This particular version of WordPress provides a word count for each post as well as autosave and update on a regular basis. To this point I am at ~ 440 words. Slighly more than 10% of what would be allowed for a 2 hour essay. Frankly, that is a lot of words in a relatively short time. More than I would want to generate. More that I honestly could generate.

(update, my blue book answer certainly didn’t use 27 pages. At 12 usable pages per blue book, I finished before the end of the second. It would have helped if I had used a simpler outline and remembered to place all the points in the correct order so I wouldn’t have had to back track/fill in. Next time….)

Con Law II

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

The first of my final exams for the semester is this Wednesday. I haven’t even bothered to look and see if it is morning or afternoon. It doesn’t matter at this point and by then I think all the material is going to leak back out of my brain, run out my ears and puddle on my pillow. If I get any sleep. The specific class is Constitutional Law II – which mostly focuses on the Constitutional Amendments. Since I have never taken Con Law I, Torts, Property, I am at a bit of a disadvantage whenever a discussion starts with “as you remember from…..

I mentioned years ago (War College – 1997-1999 concurrent with command in Würzburg and the frolic and detour to Bosnia with TFME) that there is a lot of reading, only if you do it. I haven’t read as much of the assigned Con Law reading as I probably should have. Frankly, I don’t get it and wading through it left me more confused than if I asked fellow classmates and took good notes during class. Notes taken on paper with pen, thank you very much, not typed where the words hit your ears and are transferred to your fingers without processing. If you play any musical instrument, you know exactly what I mean. You need to see the notes and have your fingers do what they are supposed to do – there is no time for thought.

The actual text book for this course, in hard copy is somewhere around 1400 pages, plus a couple hundred page supplement with the most recent new Supreme Court Cases.  I have made the occasional notes in the textbook – electronic version that you can carry without back ache are great – the ability to annotate is even better. The supplement is paperback. For some reason, the organization is better and I can distinguish between the authors commentary and what was ACTUALLY found or held in the case. Not so much in the main text. There is an awful lot of “if you could say it in 100 words, a few thousand would be soooo much better.” I am thinking some of that might be left over from when any judge was a practicing attorney. Lawyers bill, right? By time increments in the US is the current practice. If you write more, it takes longer and you can charge more….

Back to studying. The first class was third week or so in August. Since all the lectures are recorded, I can review the lectures (1.5 speed) while checking my notes and filling in whatever handouts the professor might have furnished. (I will hold off on the “OUTLINE” rant, that would just be overload). Having reviewed a fair amount as we went along – I am on the “month a day plan.” I’ve been through August and just finishing up Sept. Tomorrow I will get through Oct and then that just leaves me Nov.

After all, who wouldn’t want to devote extensive hours to determinations of level of scrutiny, equal protection, due process? Oh, and let us not forget – the incorporation doctrine which definitely has to include the III Amendment. None of us want troops billeted in our houses.

Oh wait! I was one…..

A full house

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

It was fun, an almost full house between having family members in town, some friends from the public health class and a number of my fellow students from UCHastings (the Exchange and LLM programs).

Needless to say, there was more than enough food, a lot of laughter and a number of them taking me up on the hot tub invitation.

Missing stops

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Sometimes riding BART can put you to sleep; other times it is hard to breath. Today was a usual ride, meaning that we were all packed in like sardines. Like most of the rest of the travelers – the choice is to stare off into nothing or read. Well, except for those who play games on their phones, but they don’t count.

So there I was, reading. Embarcadero, Montgomery. Two stops where most of the people exit BART and head off to wherever they will be entombed for the day. But not today, for some reason the car in which I was riding stayed packed so I drifted back to my book. The next time I looked up we were at …. 16th and Mission? Whoops – I was a stop too far and barely made it on to the platform before the door snapped shut behind me.

At least getting back was easy, unlike many of the subway locations in NYC or Metro in DC – just walk across the platform and grab the next inbound train. Ride one stop and I was back to Civic Center where I should have exited the other train in the first place.  It was good that I had left early since those extra minutes could have resulted arriving late for class, not one of those things that any of us appreciate. I mean, really. Wander in after the class has started? Not a great choice, but the only one when they take attendance.

I will be sincerely glad when all the trains in the system have been replaced with cars that have electric signs at the ends and clear announcements in the cars. After all, it can’t possibly be MY fault that I missed my stop, now can it?

Oral Arguments

Holly Doyne Posted on by 3

are one of those particularly American Legal thing. At the Appellate Level you have apposing council and and a panel of judges. Unlike your standard courtroom trial, those judges can, and do, ask questions. They also interrupt and try to score of you, your opponent and the other judges.

It is words for knives veiled in politeness at less than 10 paces. Someone dies loses every time. Reminds me of a song heard long ago, sung at Darkover by Clam Chowder when Shana was young. It was all about two lawyers apposing each other. When all was said and done, they shook hands as friends.

It some worlds, it would be impossible to treat your opponent as a friend. The legal mind appears not to experience cognitive dissonance: this representation is a job; everyone is entitled to good representation; I can do this. But why, someone like me asks? Don’t you have a compass? Can you just put aside what you believe in order to earn top prize money? Or worse, don’t you believe in anything? Are you for sale?

Medicine is so different from this. Many of us struggle with the idea of making a living off the bad things that happen to others. I think it is why there has been the tendency to take salaried positions over the last couple of decades; to not have to worry about who is paying what. To be able to battle on the side of one’s patient rather than with them to get costs covered.

Gee, got off track didn’t I?

Anyway, I was stuck today in the Moot Court Room, 4th floor of 198 McAlilster.  One of my classmates and I had drawn apposing sides of a made up issue about free speech, loud students and printed t-shirts. Sela has had sick children at home, I have had absolutely no interest in writing out an oral argument. As it turns out, each of us did most of our decision making and prep in the hours right before our noon appearance.

And we both did fine. Sometimes there is over preparation. And sometimes you just get lucky.

Registration

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

I don’t know where my mind was this morning. Or rather, I think I left it steeped in the cup of coffee forgotten on my dresser. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that I needed to be at UCHastings by 0900.

Which in and of itself is strange since I didn’t have a class prior to 1040, or maybe it is 1050? Anyway hard to tell since the constant bopping forward by 10 minutes in the class schedule always leaves me confused. Not exactly my favorite thing as you might guess. Spend enough years where at least the rules are clear and the clock has 24 hours in a day and you lose some of your tolerance for petty stuff.

Walking in the door of the classroom building I saw one of my classmates seated on a chair next to the security desk.
Hi!
Hi! I got in return. It is 0900 and I am registering.

Oh, yes. The reason I am here early. Registration opens on-line at 0900. The 3JDs, LLMs, MSLs have first crack. And If I don’t register today, I have to wait till much, much later. Heading up to the third floor, I pulled my computer out of my backpack. And to think I almost didn’t want to bother with the weight today.

Three minutes later and I was registered for all my sections. There will be an issue later, as one of the classes I want to take overlaps with a class that I am required to take. The overlap is one hour every other week, but apparently these folks are anal about such things. In any case, I am registered and can now go find more coffee.

School Crossing Guards

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Somehow, as a child of suburbs and small towns I had failed to connect the idea of children, schools and cities.

I know that it should be obvious to everyone that there are schools (elementary and secondary) inside cities. Hello? Cities, people, children = schools. Then let me describe the area around UCHastings. The Law School sits in the middle of the Tenderloin, an area much more likely known for street people, drug dealing and homelessness than for families with small children. Rather than recite most of the facts, the Wiki article at the link is worth reading. Bottom line? The area around Hastings has a plethora of homeless persons, police, and drug dealing. It is not an area I would wander around in after dark.

The local BART stop  is Civic Center. The area is also home to a few theaters, museums, and a number of court houses.

Reading the historical information that a portion of the area was at one time referred to as Little Saigon, I don’t know why I didn’t connect that bit of information along with the city not allowing a lot of gentrification in the area implies both poverty and families.

On my way back from Peet’s on Monday (Corner of Turk and Van Ness) I walked past a building that was obviously a school. Given the mosaics, I could safely assume elementary school. Next corner I hit another major clue. School Crossing Guards complete with Stop Signs working with the traffic lights, walk signals and pedestrians. It was then that the thought of schools in the area finally sunk into my head. Like the average non-inner city dweller, I don’t really think about the upper stories of most of the buildings I am walking past. Certainly, I guess I was oblivious to the fact that, since there are any where from three to numerous stories, someone must be occupying the floors above street level. Like perhaps people live there?

The crossing guards had cell phones in one hand, their red Stop Sign in the other along with a smile for just about everyone. Smiling back, they form an excellent cross-section of the people who live in the area. San Francisco is about as population diverse as any community in the US. It is a city which ranges from the inner bay to the Pacific Breakers with hills. It is a city with tech leaking out the seams, a busy financial district, and tourists. It is also home to more than 400,000. Of course there are schools….

Artificial Universes

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

It was liket a light bulb went off over my head.  You know the one – blinding flash of the obvious – where, in retrospect you have no idea why you missed the main point of whatever. It was an innocent remark of George’s that triggered my understanding.

Let me give you some background so that you can understand the context.

I using my GI Benefits to collect yet another degree. I thought about some of the PhD programs – but, thinking in German, Dr. Dr. is just stupid. I have an MPH. I decided, in 1999, that I did not want a MS in military science. This left me with looking at the various programs offered in the area. I wanted a program that I would attend. Between 2011-2015 I did enough on-line courses through Coursera and EdEx that, while accumulating a lot of knowledge good for trivia and general enjoyment, I found that I missed the face-to-face interactions with faculty. UCHastings (Law School of which George is an Alumni) offered a Masters in Studies in Law (MSL). The program is designed for those already with advanced degrees in the fields of medicine, technology, business, with a grounding in law. The variety of courses offered is excellent, mostly relevant, and provides a completely different way of looking at one’s field from the legal/regulatory point of view. The two main downsides are cost and day-time only courses which means the program is not really accessible (yes, you can study part time and complete the degree over 4 years) for most working professionals.

Now you have the background. Let us move on to socratic methods of teaching.

No, lets us not. I would rather skip that whole mess. I am a doc, I like lectures; I like reading things that make sense, are exact and are consistent. Short is better and facts which are well known do not need references.

Moving on to law school exams. No, I am not in law school, but my classes are at a law school and my classes are filled with law students. Other than having the shortest and most concise essays of anyone on the first few exams (you could write more….) I ran into little problems understanding what the faculty member wanted out of me for the exam.

Then I hit a practice exam in Constitutional Law II and totally missed the point. I answered the question with real world knowledge. I know what the professor intended, but he used a real world situation, so I answered in kind. Wrong. He wasn’t looking for what was TRUE, he was looking for a logical essay on a couple of constitutional points and some definitions he thought might be of consideration.

The difference between this exam and the others? All of the others had used fake states, towns, cities or situations. I could take them as purely related to the legal principles. In contrast, ask me about deployment of National Guard and my mind goes from theory to reality. Repeat, I am a doc. Talk to me about “any patient” and I will give you an any patient answer. Ask me about a specific patient, and guess what you will get.

George just looked at me. Law school questions are a closed universe. Use only the information contained. It is an isolated universe. Reality “hat nicht zu tun.”

 

 

It could have been worse

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

or, it really isn’t all that bad.

Either way, I am less anxious about a particular assignment than I was last week. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I spent a weekend being totally and completely impossible to live with. My otherwise really great Legal Writing Prof decided that it would be good for us to write an appellate brief. Yep, one of those multiple page highly formatted (complete with a bajillion and one citations) briefs related to a particular fact pattern and politely telling a particular panel of judges that the previous panel got it wrong.

Why on earth would I want to do THAT?

It is not that I mind going down successive rabbit holes after detailed information. Both regular medicine and public health can both be about the details and figuring out, among all the red herrings – what is really going on.

But writing about it in a particularly technical manner? And, no matter what anyone attempts to tell me about “it all should be written in plain English” well, let me just say that is NOT the reality. So I spent all of last weekend either attempting to put that particular sucker together and not so quietly going nuts. The insanity continued well into Tues. There was a deadline of 1530 which I didn’t make, but managed to toss something together which made a late deadline in the early evening. It was written, it was argued. It was not cited. I had the cases but just was sick of the whole thing.

Between then and now, I really had been trying to ignore that particular bit of idiotic draft but today had myself convinced that I really should start on the redo. Then George reads it and tells me that he thinks I got all the main points and I just need to add some citations.

As turns out, he has actually written appellate briefs (I had forgotten about all the housing work he did for Legal Services in the late 70s and how much of it was paperwork followed by arguing before a judge. He is also not a fan of “baffle them with bullshit” so I figure to have the shortest submission.

But then, I am not a lawyer and am seriously resisting being brainwashed into believing that there are two valid sides to every law, argument or discussion. Repeat, I am not a lawyer, I don’t check my morals at the door resulting in mandatory ethics classes in all law schools….

And on to a take home exam….

Not off the end of the earth

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Contrary to public opinion, I have not been ill, injured or fallen off the face of the earth.

Instead I have been alternating periods of being overwhelmed with requirements for school with periods where I am refusing to deal with reality.

And no, this has nothing to do with bipolar disease – which I have been completely spared from experiencing – but rather a method of self preservation that falls short of digging a hole and pulling that hole in after me.

This is not quite the same as when I experienced the fun and games of War College. That was a lot of reading, only if one did it. Back in the day prior to uploading of papers and specificity on which software, style, font and formatting – it was enough to get the papers postmarked (you remember postmarks – right? Taking something personally to the post office and asking them to stamp it so that it was proof that the particular item had entered the system prior to the deadline….) to say that you had completed the assignment.

Not so in today’s world where the ability to specify just about everything has engendered an overwhelming need on the part of certain organizations/people to do just that. For example – school is wedded to death (or complete blow up of the Internet – writ large – to the use of Microsoft Word. And specified margins, and indents and type fonts and spacing and …. you get the idea.

Now, I can see when dealing with the teen crowd which might want to include pink ponies, space ships or robots-fonts that beings specific might be a simple necessity so that the reader of said papers doesn’t go complete and totally around the bend in 15 minutes or less. I would think that law students (and the associated persons in graduate school) would be beyond that kind of creativity and wish for a more professional look to their papers.

Wait a minute! I am speaking about lawyers – the single most dedicated group to conformity in the world. Write alike, think alike, dress alike, act alike and leave humanity at the door in the name of practicing law. It is also the solo profession that has seriously increased their requirements for ethics training in the last several years and requires pro- bono work as condition of maintaining a license to practice law.

All of this is an aside to explain exactly why I haven’t been exactly streaming drivel and other content in your direction for the last several weeks.

I am alive. I am healthy. But, thoroughly sick of attempting to create (!) professional sounding writings on something which I care nothing about. I have decided that being irritated is part and parcel  of not being a lawyer and will help me maintain a bit of individuality over the next few months.

Words are weapons

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

While chasing down interesting details in WestLaw has proven both educational and entertaining, I don’t feel like I am getting much of anywhere on drafting a memo after more hours than I would care to acknowledge. The format is clear; and the detail provided on citations was more than adequate.

My frustration can be take down to two major issues – either of which or both might be related to the fact that I am not a lawyer. In both cases, I am still the one with “challenges.” The first is that I just don’t think like a lawyer. I understand in essence the concept of citing reasons and cases – but I think part of my resistance stems from the fact that I just don’t get/agree with the whole issue of settling disputes by law suit. To me it is the act of less than rational human beings, somewhat a kin to solving disputes with handguns. Substitute words as weapons and we are close. Having lived in non-English speaking areas for years, I became accustomed to code based legal systems. Then, of course, UCMJ is completely code based. The application of code/regulation involves choice on the part of the BCD authority, but common law has absolutely nothing to do with the military.

All of this means that I have little clue on the content of what I should be placing in a memo that is due 1530 today. I might be able to do references, but the rest of it….

Organizational Skills

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

A good friend who went on to get a PhD after she finished her military career made a remark that I found quite interesting. In her opinion, being organized for school was not all that difficult since being in the military and accomplishing anything requires a fair amount of self generated structure and discipline. It was her opinion that one continued in professional, organized mode and everything was not as much of a crisis as it would be for a younger person who only had experience being in academics.

At least for some people. Others I think depended on the military itself to provide structure complete with schedules, goals, objectives and organizational structure. The same might be said for being a student at various levels with professors and instructors who can manage to present a syllabus at the beginning of the course, have planned lessons, assigned readings and presentations. If it is all laid out for you, then the onus falls upon the student to plan appropriately.

I really don’t mean to whine, but lawyers simply don’t think the way the rest of us do. Since that is the case, and most certainly no one is going to change the entire US legal system of teaching just to make my life more sunny, I am going to have to get over it. Get over being irritated at every sentence needing a citation. What is wrong with footnotes, I ask you? What is wrong with clear English (or German, Norwegian or whatever particular language you are drafting said document in…)?

Perhaps the key to my frustration is not that I can not be organized nor is it that life happens while I have deadlines. Nothing about that has changed in the last 50 years. I think my frustration comes from the disconnect between what this course of study is requiring and my basic skill set. I didn’t spend most of my military career with a set organized schedule and clinics full of patients. Rather, my best jobs were those where I was the trouble shooter – sent in to fix a problem, an organization, find a solution or investigate an incident. Those are not regularly scheduled programing. Maintenance was not me. Something that is clearly working and organized is totally and completely boring.

So here I am, fighting I think against rules and regulations for exactly no point except that they exist. Deadlines exist. I have to write these papers, briefs and summaries. Lawyers are anal. I am not. When you are a fixer – no one ever expects the 100% perfect solution. What is needed is a major correction from the current course and someone else will spend weeks, months or years fine tuning whatever it is until they break it and the cycle starts over.

Meanwhile, I get to summarize cases, write a couple of memos and deal with the basics of life which include food, laundry, transportation and taking out the garbage since George is still in Switzerland and Euclid Pick-up is early on Mondays.

Three Classes

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

on Tuesdays I have three classes – one in the morning and two in the afternoon. While it might be lovely to sleep in, there is the small problem of getting to school for an 0940 class. Getting there involves the bus to Downtown Berkeley; adding a good 25 minutes to my travels and costs me $1.00. The 65 Bus goes down the hill on a regular basis as long as I pay attention to the timing. My alternative is drive to North Berkeley which will cost me $3.00 in parking but takes 10 minutes. Since I have the money, right now NB seems to me the better alternative. As it turns out, there seems to be parking till shortly after 0800 and the BART that goes through the station around that time actually has more room than the earlier ones. Plus, getting on a stop earlier increases my chances of finding a place to sit rather than having to stand for the entire journey.

The same with waiting for a downtown train as apposed to taking anything that comes through with a chance at MacArthur onto what is guaranteed to be a sardine can packed full with irritated students, commuters and the occasional highly fragrant homeless person sleeping in one of the car’s end seats.

My morning class is Constitutional Law II. Mostly about Due Process, I am not having all that much problem following the materials which should probably scare me but isn’t at the present. There are three of us outliers – two LLMs and me – who haven’t taken Con Law I. Since, as I mentioned before, the last time I looked at any of this was either in War College or somewhere around Eight Grade Civics it may be a bit of a challenge.

Probably not as much as my afternoon “Legal Research and Writing” class which I am going to just look at and treat as “copy editing by legal standards 101” and just attempt to motor on through. It is becoming increasingly obvious that I don’t think like a lawyer – they actually are not at all logical. At least I am not alone in the class in intensely disliking placing citations in the text rather than in footnotes. It might make it easier from a formatting perspective, but it really sucks as far as readability goes. As might be obvious, most countries’ lawyers use footnotes, not included citations.

The final class, which is actually sandwiched between the above two is Health Law I which apparently has to do with Providers and the regulations pertaining to same. The material is not all that difficult to follow, but the logic of case choices and sequence is escaping me at the present.

Ah, well. I will survive this. Probably, surely? I think most definitely.

Federalist #51

Holly Doyne Posted on by 3

Since I failed to do it before –

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

(italics are mint)

Is the famous quote from Madison in the Federalist #51 published on Friday, February 8, 1788 and credited to either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. The complete text can be found in the Congress.gov website.

I am not sure whether to claim I spent the last week thinking too little, or thinking too much. One of the challenges of representational government is that it must represent all of the people. Not just those with the issue of the moment, or those with the most money. I am certain that my grandmother, coming to the US in the early 20th Century around the age of 10 wasn’t as worried about the US government as she was being safe from the pogroms, having enough to eat and perhaps being able to get some education. For her and most of that generation, money was safety, food, clothing and a future for their children. They had faced starvation, death, weapons and sea voyages in steerage. They had no place to which they could return even if they had wanted.

I have seen the effects of hate let loose: in Bosnia where neighbors when after those who had lived next door for decades; in Iraq where blowing up houses, schools, hospitals, convoys became common place without regard for those just trying to survive and protect their families; in Afghanistan where destroying history was paramount and teaching the young allowed only if doctrinal and if those taught are males.

Divisiveness, single issues, fanaticism all take away from freedom. It is easy to say that you “believe in the constitution” when it seems to support what you want but not as clear when those same freedoms have to be allowed to those with whom you don’t agree.

I am hoping we are strong enough as a country to survive the current bigotry, bullying, and white male supremacy and come back to a middle ground where hard work is expected and rewarded, children are fed, medical care is available to those who require it and schools actually teach science.

It shouldn’t be an unobtainable dream.

Eighth Grade Civics

Holly Doyne Posted on by 3

Ok. I can do this and remain sane. I have to remember that I am tossed in with the non-US crew. The group of people who have a much better sense of world history than I, a command of significantly more languages, and knowledge of other legal systems. I can accomplish writing assignments, research, class discussions.

I even remember studying the US Constitution in Mr Kaufman’s Class in fall of 1963. I was in that class when we learned President Kennedy had been assassinated. Where the theoretical discussions of succession of power rapidly became something other than dry words in a textbook.

There is a different feel when the Dean of the Law School comes in to teach an hour on separation of powers. But some of the slides look remarkably similar to what I saw on overheads all those decades ago. The Constitution still stands, but the issues have changed over the years and for those of us [US Citizens] who don’t want to acknowledge change, there really isn’t much choice. If we want to live in 1787, then those proposing such a “return to our Roots/Constitution” need to think long and hard about what that means:

      1. 1) No electronics – no Twitter, no PCs, Macs, cell phones. The writing implements then were quill pens, paper. Deal with it
        2) Give up your transportation. Horse, buggy, wagon are it.
        3) Everyone but white males gives up all rights to include citizenship, property etc. OTOH no one really cares about how you (white male) got to the New Nation
        4) Government is minimal – part time. Everyone (men) have a job. A real job – like farming or running a store,

      1. 5) Right to bear arms means responsibility to do so. All men get to serve their country in the military. Flat feet are no excuse. Plenty just finished serving who might no longer have feet.

 
Or we can accept that the constitution grows with the country. A country built by immigrants and for immigrants. Some whose ancestors came over the land bridge thousands of years ago, some invited to leave their home countries because of their actions and beliefs (think Pilgrims) and some arriving now, seeking a better life for themselves and their children.

All of us who took eighth grade Civics/US Government or US History need to do a bit of a refresher. And then think long and hard and why we have let the Executive Branch of the Government take over. Madison in the Federalist Papers #51 makes some excellent points.

Reading a schedule

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

After all my careful scrutiny and planned, I fouled up my schedule for this fall. Very, very carefully, I made sure that my classes fell on Tues/Thurs/Friday. Well, to tell you the truth, the one class I really want to take is on Tue/Thurs afternoon. There is a Friday morning mandatory class. My choice for the other mandatory class was either Mon or Tues afternoon.

Gee, let me think. Already traveling on Tues, Thurs and Friday. Do I want a add a class that meets on Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday. Now, looking at the requirement of taking one of the standard first year law school classes, I tried to apply the logic of scheduling. The course that fit all the criteria was Contracts on Tues and Thurs Morning. I was a happy bunny. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at UCHastings. Monday & Wednesdays in the afternoon over at UCBerkely School of Public Health potentially helping teach the Intro to Infectious Diseases Course. Set, locked… and too good to be true.

Reading the welcome memo from the Contracts Professor about moving around a few of his lectures – some to Friday morning (remember from the last para where I said something about a regular first year law course?) and some changes in the Wednesday schedule. Wednesday? How in the world did I miss that? With required attendance which was dropped right on top of another mandatory class.

Looking in the course catalog – Tues/Thurs are listed on the main page. It is only when you pull up the extended course listing that I find the note about Wednesday lectures. The time of which is going to overlap with the 1-2 x month conference calls with the California Womens Veterans Leadership Council. Since I am already not able to make the every other Tues 1000 conference call re: educational seminars for after the first of the year I am really loath to skip either class or the council meetings. It is not like I am the only one from the Bay Area on the Council – oh, wait, I AM the only rep from the Bay Area…..

Anyway, you see my dilemma. Added to by the fact that I already have the freaking text book (rented, not bought) and the course I just might have to drop is 4 credits. The available alternative is 3 credits (time slot on Tue/Thurs). It seems that everyone wants to teach in the afternoon which is when I already have other classes…. I don’t particularly want to drop below 12 credits since that affects housing allowance…

In any case, this is probably, as I would say to someone else… a first world problem.

IRAC

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

And yes, that is a C, not a Q. And it is not a APPLE joke that starts with iRack and iRan…

Remember I started discussion formatted analysis while I was pulling out my hair at the though of the less than “brief” Briefs in law? Along with my comparison to the standard medical SOAP note.

[taking a deep break – I can probably do this]

So there we are in class today – morning and afternoon sessions devoted to the analysis of a variety of cases (and now I am thinking this should be Cases – just to make sure that it isn’t any old case of something that wandered in off the street wanting to play but soothing something (autocorrect- ARGH!) which has been specifically and carefully selected after decades (?or at least a couple of hours) of teaching experience with recalcitrant students. Plus the lovely challenge of a rota of three – one a senior type of my era who received her degree from Berkeley more than a few years ago, one who seems to think pulling references to Star Wars™ will avoid lack of clarity or cultural references and the third who has been on faculty for the last year having spent a significant number of previous years working for the UN mostly in Africa.

Plus the student body (17/4) and me.

The classroom is one of those with tiers of seats at desks (note, the desks are fixed, the seats are physically part of the desks but do rotate out enough that if you are skinny you shouldn’t have too much trouble inserting yourself into the structure). The positive about the rising tiers from a student point is that there are power points at every seat that actually work. From a faculty point -there is simply no place to hide.

Where am I going with all of this? Why to analyze something for Monday – relating to “assault and robbery!” In preparation of this – we played with “burglary” in class. To whit: the format
I = Issue
R = Rule (legal that applies)
A = Analysis (I keep wanting to put in Assessment for obvious reasons)
C = Conclusion (no plan required)

So in the case of Larry Lightfingers who was caught apparently trying to hook a fur coat with a ten foot pole through a house’s open window around 1900 –
I = is this burglary?
R = Burglary as defined in MadeUpCity Code – breaking and entering a residential dwelling of another person after dark with the intention to commit a felony therein.
A = (here one gets to play with breaking/not breaking due to the open window, Entering/not – entering due to use of the pole rather than his physical body. Residence/non-residence – houses can also be commercial properties, after dark – ? Hello? depends on time of year….
felony – well, since the fur coat likely exceeds $400/value this one is not as difficult.
C = guy should be charged with being a dumb ass.

And now you see why I was not cut out to be a lawyer……and why I am avoiding the assault and battery analysis due Monday…

Briefs?

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

Ok, I have no clue where the name “Brief” came from in regards to legal jargon, but I can confirm that there is absolutely nothing brief about any of it.

Rather, let us take the opinion (please note the use of the royal “we” as courts have a tendency to speak in the plural. Understandable if an opinion is being written by one individual on behalf of several, but not at all clear to me in other circumstances.

Obviously, I am used to some other standard formats:

1) SOAP notes for medicine where one puts the information in the format of Subjective (the complaint), Objective (the physical findings which include vital signs, lab, X-ray, physical exam), Assesment (what you think is going on, diagnosis) and Plan (where we go from here).

2) BLUF – which is military speak for Bottom Line Up Front. No one expects any of the military higher ups to read more than a paragraph so the conclusions are clearly stated in a one paragraph executive summary followed by a short discussion of how the recommended decision was reached. An actual verbal presentation would more closely follow the MDM format (Military Decision Making) where Courses of Action would be fully outlined and presented.

And here I am, learning yet another standardized way of looking at things. The specific thing under discussion seems to be appellate court and above decisions. The format currently provided by [one each] faculty member has 11 points that one goes down. I can’t remember five items most days much less play with 11 fill in the blank things.

I suspect this will be narrowed down to the IRAC format which I have heard mentioned by several lecturers to this point. This four part analysis/ summary uses “Issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion” as a method for case analysis. Four parts I can deal with and it is suspiciously like my friendly SOAP note. This ought to be interesting…..

Ok – I am done complaining for the day…..