Category Archives: Graduate Education

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…..

A not quite full day

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

Day 2 of the orientation didn’t include me till early afternoon. It meant that I didn’t have to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn or battle huge crowds on BART. On the other hand, most of the morning didn’t feel like it was really mine to do with what I will since I had an afternoon hanging over my head.

So there I was, hanging around Hastings waiting for our library tour which was followed by a trip to the main lecture building for a discussion of expectations, Bar exams, and all the differences between the study of law in the US and other countries.

Since I am in a Master’s program and not a “law”student, a lot of it really doesn’t apply to me. Yes, I am tak8ng some of the same courses but am not being graded on the same curve. In any case, my attitude now is the same as when I was a med student and when I did my MPH. I am in this for knowledge, not for grades. As long as I get credit for a class, grades do not matter to me. pass is the same as an Excellent as far as I am concerned.

Going from class, I headed straight over to the ballpark. The Dodgers are about the toughest team we have faced in a while and our starting pitcher never really had it. End result, we lost 4:2. Headed home before the 9th, cold, tired and the writing was on the scoreboard.

Orientation

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

Ok, so there I was contemplating grey hair in this room full of bright young things eager to start their LLM at UCHastings School of Law. Twenty-one of them as a matter of fact with a ration of 17 women to 4 guys. I think the number of countries involved is about fourteen which includes, but is not limited to Norway, Brazil, Ivory Coast France, Germany, Japan, China, Poland, Russia, India, Israel (?Mexico, Iran, Italy?). They seem to range in age from 22 to 27 years old. George didn’t understand why I was surprised at the youth involved. I hadn’t been thinking about someone going directly from law school to a Master’s Program in the US. Rather, I had been thinking about it like an MBA – first get a few years of practice, then do a specialty that will get you ahead of your peers. It probably does make sense from the point of view of being young, mobile, and likely in the best command of the English Language. Not saying that legalese is English by any means but you get the idea. Several have been in the US for months to several years; this is a way to further their education, potentially find a job/green card and increase their chances of passing a Bar Exam (California and New York both allow graduates of foreign law schools to sit the exam. After about a five month process of proving both educational credentials and morals (seriously – morals. lawyers?).

Since I am the only one of me, it seemed stupid to require that my advisor create a special orientation just for me and so I elected to join all these bright and shiny young faces at their orientation. At least for those subjects which I am interested in. Skipping the Visa discussions, career counseling, and several other things on the list. Today is the first day of the two weeks which is expected to turn us from random but intelligent strangers into some kind of group with a modicum of understanding of the US Legal System.

Today we heard from some of the Dean’s Staff, the Library/IT, the Health Service, the Diversity Services, the Security Staff and a panel discussion from five former LLM students. And they fed us, I forgot to mention breakfast, snacks and lunch. I don’t expect this amount of largess to continue.

But my most fun of the day – other than bailing off BART at Embarcadero and hiking down Market Street to 200 McAllister was meeting the IT crew. The young man who helped me with getting a student ID was a young 56 and his supervisor looked to have a good ten years on him. Punch cards were us, along with card sorters. Friendly folks with a sense of humor. Much appreciated. Perhaps it is because they are located with the library staff on the 4th floor rather than buried in the basement somewhere?

Anyway, I finished up, chatted with a few people and headed home on BART. I don’t need to arrive till 1230 tomorrow…