Oral Arguments

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.

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About Holly

fiber person - knitter, spinner, weaver who spent 33 years being a military officer to fund the above. And home. And family. Sewing and quilting projects are also in the stash. After living again in Heidelberg after retiring (finally) from the U.S. Army May 2011, we moved to the US ~ Dec 2015. Something about being over 65 and access to health care. It also might have had to do with finding a buyer for our house. Allegedly this will provide me a home base in the same country as our four adult children, all of whom I adore, so that I can drive them totally insane. Considerations of time to knit down the stash…(right, and if you believe that…) and spin and .... There is now actually enough time to do a bit of consulting, editing. Even more amazing - we have only one household again. As long as everyone understands that I still, 40 years into our marriage, don't do kitchens or bathrooms. For that matter, not being a golden retriever, I don't do slippers or newspapers either. I don’t miss either the military or full-time clinical practice. Limiting my public health/travel med/consulting and lecturing to “when I feel like it” has let me happily spend my pension cruising, stash enhancing (oops), arguing with the DH about where we are going to travel next and book buying. Life is good!
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3 Responses to Oral Arguments

  1. DariusLah says:

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  2. Cat says:

    I think you have been hacked – comments above.
    We don’t do that sort of thing in law school here. We only had to do one session in moots and the opposing sides are supposed to work with you at the time (unlike in the real world). Of course there is an “advanced moots” subject if people want to take it and the Jessup Moot (a summer long subject in which yours truly was involved)but no way would the judges interfere. (It is very rare for them to intervene in actual cases here.)

    • Holly Doyne says:

      For whatever reason, my spam filter hasn’t been screening out that dude, so I have been eliminating him manually.

      For this particular “game” we had traded briefs. My opposite said I used too many big words (huh? Seriously? I don’t know big words). Hers sounded too much like a lawyer so I quit reading….

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