Comments on: Things I’ve learned in law school, part 1 of…well, a lot http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/ Ramblings on law school in New York, free software, and the spaces in between. Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:51:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Luis Villa’s Blog » Banning Laptops in Classrooms- a Student View http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-4382 Luis Villa’s Blog » Banning Laptops in Classrooms- a Student View Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:27:18 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-4382 [...] [Cross-posted from First Movers; comments off here but on over there.] In the Contracts and Civ Pro classes I just finished yesterday, laptops were banned and ’strongly discouraged’, respectively. At the beginning of the semester, I described this as understandable but ‘regressive and damaging’, so I thought it was fair to revisit this, especially since Prof. Dorf blogged his own thoughts on the experience in our Civ Pro class. Some thoughts in response to his post and my own at the beginning of the semester: [...] [...] [Cross-posted from First Movers; comments off here but on over there.] In the Contracts and Civ Pro classes I just finished yesterday, laptops were banned and ’strongly discouraged’, respectively. At the beginning of the semester, I described this as understandable but ‘regressive and damaging’, so I thought it was fair to revisit this, especially since Prof. Dorf blogged his own thoughts on the experience in our Civ Pro class. Some thoughts in response to his post and my own at the beginning of the semester: [...]

]]> By: Matej Cepl http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2307 Matej Cepl Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:06:49 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2307 BTW, google for "mcdonald's spilled coffee million damage" -- you will get hundreds of pages explaining the real background of the case. For example http://www.usalaw.com/a-gen-McDonald's-spilled-coffee.html Matej BTW, google for “mcdonald’s spilled coffee million damage” — you will get hundreds of pages explaining the real background of the case. For example http://www.usalaw.com/a-gen-McDonald’s-spilled-coffee.html

Matej

]]> By: Matej Cepl http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2306 Matej Cepl Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:52:55 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2306 Hi, I am actually going in just opposite direction -- from lawyer I would love to be a professional geek (aka system/network admin). Concerning the woman with McDonald's coffee, I would suggest everybody this book http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Tort-Law-Thomas-Koenig/dp/0814747582/ borrow it somewhere in the Library, it is well written and interesting. You would learn that for example McDonalds' for years ignored industry standards (there is apparently pretty sharp distinction between temperature of coffee which when spilled is just unpleasant and when it is actually dangerous for your health), that there were hundreds of other cases, where McDonalds' settled out of the court, with NDA attached, and that actually the lady has third-degree burns all over her lower parts (because of the first item in my list). Of course, these things are not told you by Jay Leno, who is sometimes recklessly ignoring anything which doesn't make his story funny (I know, it is his job, but on the other hand, there should be some professional responsibility, IMHO). And so no. Crows are not what they seem to be! Matěj Hi,

I am actually going in just opposite direction — from lawyer I would love to be a professional geek (aka system/network admin). Concerning the woman with McDonald’s coffee, I would suggest everybody this book http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Tort-Law-Thomas-Koenig/dp/0814747582/
borrow it somewhere in the Library, it is well written and interesting.

You would learn that for example McDonalds’ for years ignored industry standards (there is apparently pretty sharp distinction between temperature of coffee which when spilled is just unpleasant and when it is actually dangerous for your health), that there were hundreds of other cases, where McDonalds’ settled out of the court, with NDA attached, and that actually the lady has third-degree burns all over her lower parts (because of the first item in my list). Of course, these things are not told you by Jay Leno, who is sometimes recklessly ignoring anything which doesn’t make his story funny (I know, it is his job, but on the other hand, there should be some professional responsibility, IMHO). And so no. Crows are not what they seem to be!

Matěj

]]> By: for every action -- andy wingo http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2155 for every action -- andy wingo Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:07:44 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2155 [...] Luis records his law school perceptions, which I find very interesting. (Since I first wrote this he’s written a bit more; exercise for the reader.) The fellow has a lot of human perspective. [...] [...] Luis records his law school perceptions, which I find very interesting. (Since I first wrote this he’s written a bit more; exercise for the reader.) The fellow has a lot of human perspective. [...]

]]> By: Luis Villa’s Blog » taking on giants and living to tell, and misc. law school thoughts http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2051 Luis Villa’s Blog » taking on giants and living to tell, and misc. law school thoughts Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:20 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2051 [...] We wrestled a lot with the notion of language at stopbadware- how to define badness beyond a porn-like ‘know it when I see it‘. Ed__ said it well in one of the comments to my post about law school- there is no ENGLISH99, and it is all downhill from there. :) [For any non-coders reading this, ‘C99′ is the standard that tells coders exactly what the ‘C’ language means. No ambiguity, no penumbras, no emanations. Those kinds of things drive coders (all engineers, really) out of their minds. To see an example of what coders have done to give english slightly more reliability, see the RFC on language for RFCs, which specifies what words like ‘MUST’, ‘SHOULD’, etc., mean in a technical context.] Tangentially, the slipperiness of language here at law school has made it clear that this will be more fertile ground for the politicized teaching that I keep hearing a lot about but never seriously saw at Duke. Should be interesting, especially as my own political views have gotten more defined and slightly less mainstream (on either side) since I left Duke. [...] [...] We wrestled a lot with the notion of language at stopbadware- how to define badness beyond a porn-like ‘know it when I see it‘. Ed__ said it well in one of the comments to my post about law school- there is no ENGLISH99, and it is all downhill from there. :) [For any non-coders reading this, ‘C99′ is the standard that tells coders exactly what the ‘C’ language means. No ambiguity, no penumbras, no emanations. Those kinds of things drive coders (all engineers, really) out of their minds. To see an example of what coders have done to give english slightly more reliability, see the RFC on language for RFCs, which specifies what words like ‘MUST’, ‘SHOULD’, etc., mean in a technical context.] Tangentially, the slipperiness of language here at law school has made it clear that this will be more fertile ground for the politicized teaching that I keep hearing a lot about but never seriously saw at Duke. Should be interesting, especially as my own political views have gotten more defined and slightly less mainstream (on either side) since I left Duke. [...]

]]> By: Josh http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1992 Josh Sun, 27 Aug 2006 02:33:07 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1992 "hard to read any substantial amount of product liability law cases before realizing that increased litigiousness has done a great deal for our society" : try reading the one about the woman who received 1 million $ after burning her mouth on hot coffee ;-) Sure responsibility for ones actions can be "good", anyhow it's human nature : one does something bad, one gets ones ass kicked. However when it gets to the point that severe punishment is handed out for small acts of violation, or even accidents, I believe it has a notable effect on society - it makes people scared, and scared people aren't the nicest people. Overdoing things in this respect is, I believe, a factor in the alienation we see in many societies today, more than you may think... probably not as much as favouring punishment over rehabilitation though ;) I do realise that you are not advocating this, but I'm just using the occasion to mention a point of view that fewer and fewer would even consider. “hard to read any substantial amount of product liability law cases before realizing that increased litigiousness has done a great deal for our society” : try reading the one about the woman who received 1 million $ after burning her mouth on hot coffee ;-)

Sure responsibility for ones actions can be “good”, anyhow it’s human nature : one does something bad, one gets ones ass kicked. However when it gets to the point that severe punishment is handed out for small acts of violation, or even accidents, I believe it has a notable effect on society - it makes people scared, and scared people aren’t the nicest people. Overdoing things in this respect is, I believe, a factor in the alienation we see in many societies today, more than you may think… probably not as much as favouring punishment over rehabilitation though ;)

I do realise that you are not advocating this, but I’m just using the occasion to mention a point of view that fewer and fewer would even consider.

]]> By: Rob Taylor http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1987 Rob Taylor Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:01:02 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1987 Luis, how about taking notes on something like the 770? Luis, how about taking notes on something like the 770?

]]> By: Jan Moren http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1981 Jan Moren Sat, 26 Aug 2006 02:40:14 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1981 To make clear, I'm no lawyer anywhere, so I don't actually know what I'm talking about. That said, in Sweden judges aren't as important for making law as it seems in the US. And one way to accomplish that is by having every law being in essentially two parts: the actual law as decided by the representatives; and an official addendum or backgrounder explaining what the intention, the desired effect, is with the law. I vaguely remember hearing (though I may well be wrong) that legal problems with a law (all laws are looked over by a group of nominally independent lawyers) are also noted there. These addenda work as guidelines for the judges. They can normally not ignore it when interpreting the law; in effect, they work as an instant precedent (only add water!), and the only time a judge can directly contravene them is if it is "obviously" unconstitutional - a rare occurrence, since the lawyers that looked over the law at the time of making it would most likely have caught anything flagrant already. The exception is of course the highest courts, roughly equivalent to the US supreme court, except there's more than one, for different kinds of cases (we have two parallel court systems as well as a few specialized courts). A typical addendum for a law that, if broken, can give you a punishment from a fine to up to two years in prison might be that a prison term is in reality only to be considered if the crime is at the very upper end of the severity scale or if there are serious other circumstances, for instance. Anyway, that's one way to deal with it - write a motivation and backgrounder that functions as instant precedent at the time of makign the law itself. That avoids overly detailed, incomprehensible law (not that it seems to help...) without having too much actual power over interpretation left to the courts. To make clear, I’m no lawyer anywhere, so I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. That said, in Sweden judges aren’t as important for making law as it seems in the US. And one way to accomplish that is by having every law being in essentially two parts: the actual law as decided by the representatives; and an official addendum or backgrounder explaining what the intention, the desired effect, is with the law. I vaguely remember hearing (though I may well be wrong) that legal problems with a law (all laws are looked over by a group of nominally independent lawyers) are also noted there.

These addenda work as guidelines for the judges. They can normally not ignore it when interpreting the law; in effect, they work as an instant precedent (only add water!), and the only time a judge can directly contravene them is if it is “obviously” unconstitutional - a rare occurrence, since the lawyers that looked over the law at the time of making it would most likely have caught anything flagrant already. The exception is of course the highest courts, roughly equivalent to the US supreme court, except there’s more than one, for different kinds of cases (we have two parallel court systems as well as a few specialized courts). A typical addendum for a law that, if broken, can give you a punishment from a fine to up to two years in prison might be that a prison term is in reality only to be considered if the crime is at the very upper end of the severity scale or if there are serious other circumstances, for instance.

Anyway, that’s one way to deal with it - write a motivation and backgrounder that functions as instant precedent at the time of makign the law itself. That avoids overly detailed, incomprehensible law (not that it seems to help…) without having too much actual power over interpretation left to the courts.

]]> By: aent http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1980 aent Sat, 26 Aug 2006 02:23:42 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1980 What my school has been doing is installing cameras in the back of the classrooms and putting a monitor in the front, so the teachers can watch what students are doing on their laptops. If you're playing games or on myspace or something, they will yell at you. They also usually don't allow you to sit in the back rows as you can't really see them on the cameras, which is kind of annoying as thats where the power outlets tend to be the most available. What my school has been doing is installing cameras in the back of the classrooms and putting a monitor in the front, so the teachers can watch what students are doing on their laptops. If you’re playing games or on myspace or something, they will yell at you. They also usually don’t allow you to sit in the back rows as you can’t really see them on the cameras, which is kind of annoying as thats where the power outlets tend to be the most available.

]]> By: ed__ http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1978 ed__ Sat, 26 Aug 2006 01:19:58 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1978 Clarence Thomas?! c'mon. I think i understand the attraction to strict constructionalism. It seems very reasonable and satisfies a desire for reasonable ground rules. But the analogy of code and interpretation is more than strained: Human language isn't context free, it isn't unambiguous, there is no spec (this dictionary only has partial ENGLISH99 compliance). There is no target architecture (well it changes, and no one knows when it does). How would you QA law? Enforce it among a restricted group until you're happy with the outcome? This just points to the fact that judges might have to deal with questions of legislative intent instead of merely assuming that whatever the legislature's intent, the words of the law completely contain it. What if the legislature expected the law to be applied with -fLiving-Constitution, or -fstrict, etc. Programming is fraught with pitfalls due to the fragile nature of code and interfaces, the difficulty of specifying actions with language, and the complexity of anticipating every eventuality. Anyone who has programmed, even unintentionally, has been bitten by something they didn't think about, or a little gotcha they didn't recognize. That doesn't seem like the model one would want to impose on Justice (there are enough gotchas already). i could go on, but i've already hit my quota for talking out my ass. I do agree with the over-litigiousness idea: people complain about too much market or workplace safety regulation or whatever, but i think a lot of it is because they weren't around to experience how things were before those regulations were around to protect people...in the bad old days. Or maybe they just really want to be able to exploit people again, like in the good old days. oops, re quota. Clarence Thomas?! c’mon. I think i understand the attraction to
strict constructionalism. It seems very reasonable and satisfies a
desire for reasonable ground rules. But the analogy of code and
interpretation is more than strained: Human language isn’t context
free, it isn’t unambiguous, there is no spec (this dictionary only has
partial ENGLISH99 compliance). There is no target architecture (well
it changes, and no one knows when it does).

How would you QA law? Enforce it among a restricted group until
you’re happy with the outcome? This just points to the fact that
judges might have to deal with questions of legislative intent instead
of merely assuming that whatever the legislature’s intent, the words
of the law completely contain it. What if the legislature expected
the law to be applied with -fLiving-Constitution, or -fstrict, etc.

Programming is fraught with pitfalls due to the fragile nature of
code and interfaces, the difficulty of specifying actions with
language, and the complexity of anticipating every eventuality.
Anyone who has programmed, even unintentionally, has been bitten by
something they didn’t think about, or a little gotcha they didn’t
recognize. That doesn’t seem like the model one would want to impose
on Justice (there are enough gotchas already).

i could go on, but i’ve already hit my quota for talking out my ass.

I do agree with the over-litigiousness idea: people complain about too
much market or workplace safety regulation or whatever, but i think a
lot of it is because they weren’t around to experience how things were
before those regulations were around to protect people…in the bad
old days. Or maybe they just really want to be able to exploit people
again, like in the good old days.

oops, re quota.

]]>