UCLA Law Review
I recently received the honor of being invited to join the staff of UCLA Law Review. In order to join, I had to participate in a write-on competition for transfer students. I am very pleased with the UCLA Law Review board for going to such lengths to accommodate transfer students. I know that many members of the board had to do a lot of extra work, just to extend membership to three transfer students. I am both excited and humbled to have received this honor.
My commitment to Law Review has two components this year: I must check cites, and I must write my own comment (essay/article), which requires me to do a three-credit independent study under the guidance of a professor. Currently, I am most concerned with finding a good topic and adviser. I am almost two months behind the non-transfer students in these two areas.
I am taking this opportunity to do research in the areas of international human rights and environmental law. I have been conducting preliminary research in climate change, water issues, and the environmental jurisprudence of regional human rights systems. I have (happily) discovered that the area of human rights and the environment has been covered more thoroughly by commentators than I had expected. As a result, I am having a difficult time finding a legitimate, timely, and innovative topic.
If you have any suggestions that you would like to share for research in the areas of international human rights and the environment, please post them here.
Free Language Courses
I have always wanted to study a foreign language (one that is still spoken, for a change). Of course, an extended immersion experience in a foreign country is the best and probably most efficient way of learning a new language. I, however, neither have the time nor the means to travel to distant lands to fulfill my dreams of becoming a polyglot.
My wife and I discussed the matter and decided that we would study Spanish together this summer. We figured that if we were diligent we could speak Spanish with one another in the home — a mini-immersion experience. I began scanning the web for the best language learning program for us. There are an incredible number of programs out there and many online reviews highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each (as well as a number of fraudulent reviews, obviously pushing a particular program). I narrowed my choices down to Rosetta Stone, Learning Spanish Like Crazy, Pimsleur Spanish, Barron’s Mastering Spanish, and FSI Programmatic Spanish. (more…)
2L | Accomplishment of Consequence?
I have finally finished my first year of law school. The time has passed quickly. I can only hope that the next two years will do the same.
Completing the first year of law school has been the most difficult and challenging thing I have ever done. At the end of the semester, one of my professors sent our class off with the words, “Be proud of yourselves; you have accomplished something of great consequence.” (more…)
Powers, Legal Tradition, and Moral Formation
This post contains some rudimentary thoughts on the American legal system, its inner ethos, and the potential for moral formation to occur within that system. In the future I would like to develop these themes into a journal article. Here, I put these themes into writing for the first time. I will continue to articulate each part of my thesis in more detail in future posts.
The basic structure of my thesis is three-part, and it is something like what follows. (more…)
MLK: Creative Extremist
To commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day I read over King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and the statement by eight white Alabama clergymen that prompted the letter. Many of King’s statements are striking in their context and apropos for today. I thought I would share a few paragraphs from the letter.
The white clergymen essentially accused King and his nonviolent direct action of being extreme. King responded thus. (more…)
Where’s the Justice in that?
Law and justice go hand in hand — one would think. In the one semester of law school that I sat through the word ‘justice’ was uttered numerous times. Nonetheless, in most instances utterance was not accompanied by substance. Neither professor nor student made a single attempt to articulate the fact that substantive concepts of justice differ significantly in content and expression. I argue that a fundamental undertanding of this fact is essential for the study (and practice!) of law. (more…)
Culture Shock! Back from Law-land
I’ve just completed my first semester of law school at University of California Hastings College of the Law. The past month of studying for finals has been the most grueling of my life: fifteen hours a day of studying, four-hour essay exams, and stiff competition between classmates… (more…)
