That's No Moon

one worldwide plaza
Originally uploaded by nj dodge

From the discussion of Cravath's $900 million lease at Above the Law:

I've heard people call A&P's DC office on 12th St. the "Death Star" because of the huge rounded glass atrium inside that somewhat resembles the center of the Death Star where Vader uttered his immortal words about Luke being his spawn before doing a hatchet job on his hand. It doesn't hurt that one of the partners who has an office off the atrium literally has a life-sized Darth Vader standing in the corner of his office.

Also, they supposedly filmed some scene from the forgettable Jodie Foster movie "Contact" in there.

Posted by: Anonymous | June 27, 2007 11:05 AM

...

Vader doesn't cut off Luke's hand in the Death Star, he cuts it off in Cloud City. You tool.

Posted by: Anonymous | June 27, 2007 11:14 AM

We sure are getting a lot of use out of that I am a huge nerd tag today, aren't we?

A Rarified Intersection

wishful
Originally uploaded by Smartthrob

Via Julian Sanchez, a whole series of Magic™ style cards featuring philosophers and political figures.

The Cato Institute is a good one, as is Darfur.

Yoko Ono Interviews Perez Hilton

Ken saw me watching Blogingheads.tv and only looked over my shoulder for a minute before declaring, "Any site that uses the word "diavlog" on the front page is dead to me."

But how could he pass up on the latest episode, featuring Ann Althouse and David Lat discussing blogging, bonuses, and AutoAdmit? It's so topical!

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

I was going to write a post about Morse v. Frederick, but then I saw that Eugene Volokh already said it.

But I still want to see a bunch of high schoolers make a "Legalize Marijuana for Private Consumption and Enjoy it Responsibly in Your Own Home" banner.

CM is right; this WSJ story is ridiculous: are law students emotional wrecks? Not about the emotional wrecks part, which I suppose is true enough, but the inference that that this is due to the environment of law school as opposed to the particular characteristics of law students.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but most law students I know (myself included!) would not survive med school, let alone find satisfaction there. Law school may not be easy, but compared to med school, it's a frigging cakewalk. Law students whine more because (1) we are way less tough on average and (2) many of us really don't want to be here.

Maybe some of my vestigial techie chauvinism is going to shine through here, but (1) should be pretty obvious. Most law students were humanities majors in college, and never learned what hard work really is. Law school is a shock to their delicate systems. Meanwhile, the pre-meds were crazy for ages. Actual medical school is still a step up in work, but they've been working hard for years, and they're ready for it.

(2) may not be such common knowledge, but it certainly should be to blog readers. A lot of people kind of drift into law school because they aren't sure what to do with themselves and they're kinda smart and do well on the LSAT. These people don't really want to practice law, and the strong focus on actually learning legal doctrine in law school, while it shouldn't really have been surprising, makes them understandably unhappy. Nobody has any illusions about how an MD is a "versatile degree" that "opens all kinds of doors," so practically everybody at med school actually wants to be a doctor. They've probably wanted it for a really long time, because you'd kind of have to in order to put up with all that pre-med craziness alluded to above. Now it may be so awful (you don't see me doing it!) that along the way some of them decide they don't want to be doctors after all, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that's still a smaller percentage than the number who never wanted to be lawyers when they got here.

I could go on too, about why we should expect med school to be objectively harder than law, but I have to go to work.

Dealmaking

I went to Los Angeles this weekend to visit Ken and meet up with some other law school chums. We met up with a friend of his doing public interest work, and traded war stories while pre-partying aggressively at a film festival cocktail hour. Plans were made to meet more friends at a club nearby. However, we arrived to discover a problem. Ken's friend, the philanthropic slouch, was still wearing the traditional SoCal uniform below the waist: cargo shorts and a worn pair of Rainbows. The bouncers, black-clad and big as Oldsmobiles, didn't mind the sandals, but would not abide a short. We'd caught a ride over and our driver was already inside, eager to showcase his jumpy dancing style. We wheedled ineffectually and considered aloud whether we should take our custom elsewhere. They refused to budge on the pants, and suggested we try a Pick N' Save up the block.

We latched on to the suggestion immediately. We could buy pants right then - it was just crazy enough to work. But a quick troop up the street revealed that Pick N' Save was not crazy enough to be open past ten on a Friday night. We dashed over to the dollar store just in time to watch through the window as employees locked its accordion bars. We were crushed to learn that even CVS was closed, although nobody had a good idea about exactly what kind of pants we would have hoped to find inside. We trudged back in defeat, cursing the owners who put their swanky fancy-pants on a such a desolate street, completely deserted except for a 24-hour warehouse of a laundromat.

Inspiration struck. I strode purposefully through the entrance to address the assembled launderers. "Excuse me everyone! Does anyone have a pair of size thirty-six pants they would be willing to sell for twenty dollars?" The more objectively audacious your request, the more your affect must insist it is normal. I imagined myself as the host of a hidden-camera program, riding around the city with my crew in a panel van, making outrageous demands of strangers for some shameless program on E! "Size thirty-six? Anybody?"

"I will sell you pants," piped up a man unloading khakis from a dryer, "but for more than twenty bucks." I pointed at him like an auctioneer receiving a bid.

"How much more? Thirty?"

"Forty."

"Too much!" I cried, and wheeled away. A ruffled-looking hipster had a pair of loose thirty-fours. They fit! he refused to take a dollar over the originally offered twenty.

"And they're good pants?" Ken took charge of quality control. "You don't have crabs or anything?"

"If he had crabs, I wouldn't be dating him," joked the seller's girlfriend, pinching his butt.

"Excellent!" The deal was struck. Our problem proudly solved, we marched back next door. Charmed no doubt by our moxie, the bouncers waived our cover. Inside, we toasted our success.

"I can't believe we just bought pants off someone in a laundromat!"

"I know. I feel like such a dealmaker."

Our formerly beshorted companion, however, was the most pleased of all. "These pants fit really great! I would have paid more than twenty bucks for them. Like, in a store and everything!"

Midnight Oil

The good news is, the office is deserted at 11:00.

The bad news is, I'm still there.

The good news is, it's so I can finish my stuff and leave early tomorrow to go visit Ken.

Also, I won our impromptu Summer Associate Late-Nite Darts Tournament with a well-placed shot to the triple twenty.

Following The Black Line

Pool Lanes
Originally uploaded by Carol Mitchell

I went swimming today, my first real pool workout in months. Some jerk wrote "8 x 50 kick" on the set board. Tomorrow, I may not be able to walk. Also, I am slow. That is sad.

But soon, I will be fast again.

Talkin Bout My Generation

So I'm at dinner, sitting next to Master Trial Lawyer, who was my boss for the last three weeks. MTL is the kind of person whose performances in the courtroom are discussed around the firm with quiet reverence. "Oh, if MTL is crossing you, you're dead."

"So Trevor," my examination begins, "you're part of this Generation Y, right?"

Instinctively, I take evasive action. "They're not really sure what to call us yet. They're trying out a bunch of names. I don't like 'Gen Y', because it doesn't mean anything other than 'after Gen X.' Derivative." Never accept their definitions. "I've heard 'facebook generation' or 'generation whatever.'" Speak by attribution, avoid using your own words. "Actually, in college, there was a cover story in Time about 'Generation 9/11' and what we were all supposed to be like. I cut it out and put in on the wall to remind myself that that is who they think you are." Having dodged, change the subject. Give them something juicy to chase. "That alone doesn't define us. I mean, it's definitely a 'where were you when Kennedy was shot thing' but I don't think it defines anyone's thinking."

The twin golden apples of 9/11 and Kennedy send the conversation veering off course for a while, but all too soon MTL brings it back home. "Let's get back to my question. Notice how that last answer was entirely unresponsive." I'm back on the hook.

Cornered, I try to beg off. "Well, I don't want to proclaim myself as some kind of voice of our generation. That's Zach Braff's job. And I certainly don't want to be Zach Braff." Scattered chuckles. Good audience. But MTL is having none of it. I am going to be Zach Braff, whether I like it or not. Junior Associate jokes that dinosaur partners like to grouse that all young people are so 'mercenary' these days. This is not a sentiment I leap to endorse.

I splutter and flounder for a bit, until someone throws me a lifeline by telling a Stephen Colbert story. Knowing a good hook when I see it, I segue into an exegesis of my cohort's storied cynicism. "Now this may not be all that new. My parents didn't trust anyone over thirty, we just don't trust anyone at all."

Ironically, they are suspicious. Not trust anyone? "I think it's more that we don't believe in long-term promises." If anything, incredulity increases. "I mean, half of us are children of divorce. There's no such thing as job security any more. No one I know expects to actually get social security when we retire. Certainly nobody trusts the government to look out for them." I'm feeling the flow, so I forget to rattle off the familiar failures: Iraq, Katrina, 9/11. None of us can remember a president who wasn't a famous liar. "And of course you can't trust corporations either." Pension raiders too become victims of momentum. "Wherever you see big important institutions making long-term social, informal promises, we see those promises being broken. So we don't trust them any more. In law school we learn about the historical transition from relationships based on status to relationships based on contract. Maybe this is just the next step. Maybe in that sense, we are more mercenary."

MTL is satisfied, and leans back with a playful smirk. A solid answer. I'm out of the woods.

Until Junior Associate surprises me with a flank attack. "You don't believe in long-term promises? What about marriage?" he asks, casting a meaningful glance at his wife, seated next to me. Finding myself in a hole, I resume digging.

Against it Before He Was For It

Robert Bork is pursuing a $1M slip-and-fall case (plus punitive damages!) against the Yale Club of New York City. Which is a bit striking because in 2002 he published an article in our own JLPP arguing that tort reform was more important than originalism:

State tort law today is different in kind from the state tort law known to the generation of the Framers. The present tort system poses dangers to interstate commerce not unlike those faced under the Articles of Confederation. Even if Congress would not, in 1789, have had the power to displace state tort law, the nature of the problem has changed so dramatically as to bring the problem within the scope of the power granted to Congress. Accordingly, proposals, such as placing limits or caps on punitive damages, or eliminating joint or strict liability, which may once have been clearly understood as beyond Congress's power, may now be constitutionally appropriate.

This sort of thing is why I find it extremely hard to take any kind of professed "judicial philosophy" very seriously. They always seem to line up suspiciously conveniently with the judicial philosopher's policy preferences. This is, at worst, an especially clear case.

ACSBlog has the scoop.

LOLyers

Eh Nonymous takes LOL macros into dangerous new territory.

I follow:



Make your own with ROFLbot.

Previously: Statute Cat.

Nullification!

Woman acquitted of mailing dog poop to her congressperson by a jury of her peers, who considered it protected political speech.

The seventh amendment kicks ass.

Knocked Up

When Kevin Smith goes to sleep at night, he dreams of making movies like Judd Apatow.

Inherent in the System

"I wish we got Showtime. It has that show - not Rome, but something like it."
"The Edwardian one?"
"The Tudors! It's suppoed to be very lusty. All sex and violence."
"That's what monarchy's all about, isn't it?"
"I hadn't thought bout that. But that's exactly what it's all about."

"Are They Talking Crazytalk?"

Megan gives a remarkably good lay explanation of the abitrary and capricious standard. I've always been a bigger fan of "Clearly erroneous!" myself, but one takes what one can get.

Killer Instinct

Associate: "Are you going to make it to Halo night next week?"

Trevor: "Oh, yeah. I was just talking to Associate Mentor and he said he has to go home and practice. Ha!"

Associate: (totally serious) "He does. He's terrible"

Google Street View

Have you seen this? Zoomable panoramas of select cities from any point on their streets! My bus stop from last summer.