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MattBurkeFirstEssay 18 - 29 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | 2. In which the role of the law and law studentry in the law student's past is unearthed | |
<
< | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the future law student a piece of candy. The student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the future law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the dissonance common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion” and “friend”? | >
> | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the law student, then only a future law student, a piece of candy. The student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the future law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the dissonance common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion” and “friend”? | | | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a case, Brown v. Board, which he later read for “ConLaw.” After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask them a question whose answer was already known. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | | | 3. In which the path of the law is found to lead past law studentry | |
<
< | First, just after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a cemetery for some who died in _Dread Scott_’s “consequences for the Nation,” he remarked to a friend: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | >
> | First, just after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a cemetery for some who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” he remarked to a friend: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | | | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud. But his words aren't buried. I know—I had to memorize them when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 17 - 21 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | Second, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | |
<
< | | >
> | | | | | |
<
< | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey: | >
> | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey: | | |
Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The mother who conceives is taken with child. The fetal child is the actor that takes. We rule that the ability to take, that is, to have a discernible effect in the world impossible but-for the presence of the actor, constitutes life.
| | | 2. In which the role of the law and law studentry in the law student's past is unearthed | |
<
< | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | >
> | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the future law student a piece of candy. The student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the future law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the dissonance common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion” and “friend”? | | | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a case, Brown v. Board, which he later read for “ConLaw.” After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask them a question whose answer was already known. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | | | 3. In which the path of the law is found to lead past law studentry | |
<
< | First, just after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a cemetery for some who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” he remarked to a friend: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | >
> | First, just after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a cemetery for some who died in _Dread Scott_’s “consequences for the Nation,” he remarked to a friend: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | | | | |
<
< | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud, but I memorized his words when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | >
> | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud. But his words aren't buried. I know—I had to memorize them when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | | | | |
<
< | Second, when I visited my old friend, after his joke about justice, he confessed to a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought to my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem and its solution, intuiting a solution, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | >
> | Second, when I visited my old friend, he confessed to me, after his joke about justice, a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought to my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem and its solution, intuiting a solution, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | | | Third, I imagine the pile of words, words about the law and words not, words that help, words that harm, words that scour and those that don't—words I'll write before I meet my mud. I hope some of them are worthwhile. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 16 - 21 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | 3. In which the path of the law is found to lead past law studentry | |
<
< | First, when I visited my old friend, he confessed to a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought about my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem with a known solution, intuiting one, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | >
> | First, just after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a cemetery for some who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” he remarked to a friend: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | | | | |
<
< | Second, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dred Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | >
> | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud, but I memorized his words when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | | | | |
<
< | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud, but I memorized and recited his words when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | >
> | Second, when I visited my old friend, after his joke about justice, he confessed to a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought to my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem and its solution, intuiting a solution, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | | | | |
<
< | Third, I imagine the pile of words, words about the law and not about the law, words that help some, words that harm others, words that scour and those that don't—words I'll write before I meet my mud. I hope at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are worthwhile. | >
> | Third, I imagine the pile of words, words about the law and words not, words that help, words that harm, words that scour and those that don't—words I'll write before I meet my mud. I hope some of them are worthwhile. | | |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 15 - 21 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | 3. In which the path of the law is found to lead past law studentry | |
<
< | First, when I visited my old friend, he confessed to a legal problem—one with which he'd lived for some time. I thought about my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem with a known solution, intuiting one, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | >
> | First, when I visited my old friend, he confessed to a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought about my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem with a known solution, intuiting one, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | | | Second, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dred Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 14 - 21 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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<
< | On the law and the practice of law studentry | >
> | Of the law and the practice of law studentry | | | -- By MattBurke - 02 Mar 2015 | |
<
< | 1. In which the law and law-studentry are discussed | >
> | 1. In which the law and law studentry are discussed | | | First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson. | | | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey:
| |
<
< | Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The mother who conceives is taken with child. The fetal child is the actor that takes. We rule that the ability to take, that is, to have a discernable effect in the world impossible but-for the presence of the actor, constitutes life. | >
> | Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The mother who conceives is taken with child. The fetal child is the actor that takes. We rule that the ability to take, that is, to have a discernible effect in the world impossible but-for the presence of the actor, constitutes life. | | |
Life is not synonymous with citizenship. The word “citizen” means a person of the United States. The question before us is, whether the class of lives described by petitioners are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not. On the contrary, they are a class of potential citizens subordinate to those beings who have entered into the polity of the United States. Although lives, therefore, they are a class of lives worthy of protection only as potential citizens.
| | | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | |
<
< | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board, which he later read for “ConLaw.” After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask a question whose answer was already known. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | >
> | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a case, Brown v. Board, which he later read for “ConLaw.” After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask them a question whose answer was already known. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | | | | |
<
< | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. Those, he thinks, are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | >
> | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s own high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. Those, he thinks, are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, now an incarcerated man. | | | | |
<
< | 3. | >
> | 3. In which the path of the law is found to lead past law studentry | | | | |
>
> | First, when I visited my old friend, he confessed to a legal problem—one with which he'd lived for some time. I thought about my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem with a known solution, intuiting one, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | | | | |
>
> | Second, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dred Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | | | | |
>
> | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud, but I memorized and recited his words when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | | | | |
>
> | Third, I imagine the pile of words, words about the law and not about the law, words that help some, words that harm others, words that scour and those that don't—words I'll write before I meet my mud. I hope at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are worthwhile. | | | | |
<
< |
In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry
Thinking about thinking about the law and law-studentry is useful in this way: he who understands me easily recognizes these thoughts as senseless, when he has read through them, on them, over them.
First, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour.
He was right. But not
every tool is a plow, and not everything we work with is a rail
needing to be split. He knew that too. He was turning mud into
marble, which requires what he brought to the task.
Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud.
But he is also Father
Abraham, the statue in our most beautiful and humane temple of
democracy. He does not lie only in the mud of Illinois, but sits
also on a chair of wisdom, ennobled by Daniel Chester French as he
ennobled the men buried in the mud at Gettysburg, in mud turned
marble by the endlessness of time, with elegance and power, as he
deserves.
Second, the law student imagines the pile of words, words about life, death, the law, and law-studentry, he’ll write before he meets his mud. He hopes at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are any good.
Third rate analysis of the analysis of first rate minds. That describes, thinks the law student, the practice, if not of law, then of law-studentry.
Except that not all the minds analyzed are first-rate?
I think you are intentionally wrong in saying this is a bad first draft. (Sorry, you will not get quite that much boost for improvement.)
You are right that the economy could be improved, mostly by shortening your imagined judicialism: you're right again that the conventional judicial style of the present has no respect for economy, but you cannot afford to imagine the error at your own expense. A. Lincoln possessed economy, as he possessed many other skills as a writer, in perfection. Nothing ever is harmed by imitating his effort to use only the necessary words.
Conceptually, your only weakness here is a need to explain the jokes, and also the serious parts. If you can present them without feeling the need to comment on them, they will scour. Well begun.
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 13 - 19 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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< | Writing about thinking about thinking about life, death, the law, and law-studentry | >
> | On the law and the practice of law studentry | | | -- By MattBurke - 02 Mar 2015 | | | “Yes,” says the law student. “The law can be in that regard very much like Goya.” | |
<
< | 2. | >
> | 2. In which the role of the law and law studentry in the law student's past is unearthed | | | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | | | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. Those, he thinks, are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | |
<
< | 3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry | >
> | 3.
In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry | | | Thinking about thinking about the law and law-studentry is useful in this way: he who understands me easily recognizes these thoughts as senseless, when he has read through them, on them, over them. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 12 - 17 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | 2. | |
<
< | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man offers the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | >
> | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man gives the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | | | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board, which he later read for “ConLaw.” After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask a question whose answer was already known. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 11 - 16 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man offers the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | |
<
< | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a Supreme Court case that he would later read for “ConLaw,” Brown v. Board. After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask a question in reference to another thing they already knew. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | >
> | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board, which he later read for “ConLaw.” After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask a question whose answer was already known. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | | | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. Those, he thinks, are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 10 - 15 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | 1. In which the law and law-studentry are discussed | |
<
< | | | | First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson.
Second, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | | | Life is not synonymous with citizenship. The word “citizen” means a person of the United States. The question before us is, whether the class of lives described by petitioners are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not. On the contrary, they are a class of potential citizens subordinate to those beings who have entered into the polity of the United States. Although lives, therefore, they are a class of lives worthy of protection only as potential citizens.
| |
<
< | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who, regarding the student’s newfound studentry, asks him: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol for some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains—a Spaniard who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so deftly that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | >
> | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who, regarding the student’s newfound studentry, asks: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol to some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains—a Spaniard artist who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so deftly that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | | | “Yes,” says the law student. “The law can be in that regard very much like Goya.” | |
<
< | 2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death | >
> | 2. | | | | |
<
< | | >
> | First, old memories visit the law student. With his mother at her office, he’s bored. A man offers to shake his hand. They shake. After, the man offers the law student a piece of candy. The law student’s mother explains: “He’s a partner.” This is the law student’s earliest memory of that word. When the law student hears the word again—this time in its general usage—he experiences the disorientation common to learning children: “Partner” means “man with authority and a distant affect.” How can it also mean “companion”? | | | | |
<
< | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | >
> | Second, before the law student began practicing law studentry, he was a teacher. He taught high school history. His curriculum contained a lesson about a Supreme Court case that he would later read for “ConLaw,” Brown v. Board. After explaining to his students things they already knew, he would ask a question in reference to another thing they already knew. He would ask: “Why, at this school, are the only white people teachers?” | | | | |
>
> | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. Those, he thinks, are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | | | 3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 9 - 15 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | Second, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | |
<
< | | >
> | | | | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey:
| | | Life is not synonymous with citizenship. The word “citizen” means a person of the United States. The question before us is, whether the class of lives described by petitioners are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not. On the contrary, they are a class of potential citizens subordinate to those beings who have entered into the polity of the United States. Although lives, therefore, they are a class of lives worthy of protection only as potential citizens.
| |
<
< | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who asks him, regarding the student’s newfound studentry: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol for some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains: A Spaniard who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so skillfully that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | >
> | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who, regarding the student’s newfound studentry, asks him: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol for some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains—a Spaniard who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so deftly that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | | | | |
<
< | “Yes,” says the law student. “Law school seems in that regard very much like Goya.” | >
> | “Yes,” says the law student. “The law can be in that regard very much like Goya.” | | |
2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death | |
<
< | This is connected with the fact that no part of our law is also a priori. Everything legal could be illegal. Everything we legislate at all could be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori. | | | | |
<
< | The mother is, from the moment of conception, with a life. Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The notion that one may be taken with something is incompatible with the notion that nothing has taken the one who has been taken. If something takes, that thing must have the ability to take. We rule that the ability to take constitutes life.
Life, even human life, is not synonymous with citizenship. For a citizen is one of the “people of the United States.” The life-in-the-mother, however, is not a person of the United States. It has not entered society. Before viability, it cannot so enter. While the State maintains an interest in potential life, and while the thing conceived within the mother is a life both actual and potential, the potential life in which the State maintains an interest must be cognizable to the State. Since the life-in-the-mother has not entered into society, since it cannot nor does it enjoy the benefits of that society, except as mitigated through the mother, it is not a life that is within society. The life-in-the-mother is not, in any meaningful way, in the United States. Prior to viability, the State does not have an interest in, or in the disposition of, the life-within-the-mother greater than that of the mother.
This is, not surprisingly, where you lost your terseness and skill in editing. Compress this, so that the Gettysburg address can be 30% as long as what you write. Nothing will suffer.
Seconds later, the law student explains his joke: Do the words about the picture obscure the picture of the man, or does the picture of the man illuminate the words about the picture?
Isn't it almost always a bad idea to explain a joke?
The figure-ground aspect of your illustration seems to me
well-enough judged. But why make so much as a preliminary
assumption that the sorrow of Roger Brooke Taney was either for the consequences of Scott v. Sandford or for the coming of the war? Perhaps it would be much easier on the facts to conclude that his sorrows were personal, that his passionate support of slavery was absolutely unabated, and that when war came he saw it not as a consequence of his life's work, but as the villainy of Lincoln. Even so relentlessly anti-personal a biographer as Carl Brent Swisher seems to me to leave us with that as a self-evident conclusion.
Put another way, neither the imaginary opinion nor the real one really explain what “a life” is.
But do you think that this fact, about these two texts, means that no text can really explain what for these purposes a "life" is?
Third, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?”
The answer is no. Most of what law professors say about Wittgenstein is largely the result of not thinking about what he thinks, or reading what he says, or knowing anything. Generally speaking, there's a good reason for that: they haven't tried. I have tried. See Zapf & Moglen, Linguistic Indeterminacy and the Rule of Law: On the Perils of Misunderstanding Wittgenstein, 84 Geo. L. Rev. 485 (1996). Chris Zapf, with whom I tried, was a student in this course when we began trying together.
And the law student recalls a biography about the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart.
You might also be interested in a novel about this romantic, better than any biography, Bruce Duffy's The World as I Found It.
| >
> | Third, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars, and an incarcerated boy, who, many years ago, was my friend, and who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now an incarcerated man. | | |
3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 8 - 15 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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| | | 1. In which the law and law-studentry are discussed | |
<
< | The law does not belong to the state: rather, it is the limit of the state. Where in the state is the law to be found? | >
> | | | |
First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson. | |
>
> | Second, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | | | | |
<
< |
So first in time might be the statutes, which are the law and not merely evidence. It might be worth ruminating a moment on the peculiarity of our way of learning, which starts most often, as you say, with the footprints rather than the animal that leaves them, which is the state whose apparent invisibility you are observing.
Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars propping books, and a boy, who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now a man. | >
> | | | | | |
>
> | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey:
Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The mother who conceives is taken with child. The fetal child is the actor that takes. We rule that the ability to take, that is, to have a discernable effect in the world impossible but-for the presence of the actor, constitutes life. | | | | |
<
< | Third, the student recalls a black-stone stele, carved in dead letters. The student notes the stele’s phallic shape. | >
> | Life is not synonymous with citizenship. The word “citizen” means a person of the United States. The question before us is, whether the class of lives described by petitioners are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not. On the contrary, they are a class of potential citizens subordinate to those beings who have entered into the polity of the United States. Although lives, therefore, they are a class of lives worthy of protection only as potential citizens.
| | | | |
>
> | Third, the law student visits an old friend, who asks him, regarding the student’s newfound studentry: “Have you learned meaning of justice yet?” They laugh. Next, the friend asks: “Then what have you learned?” The student tells his friend about a sad old judge whose sadness became a symbol for some—a symbol for meanings both that the judge foresaw and those for the judge unforeseeable. He tells his friend about a portrait. The friend interrupts. “Like Goya,” the friend says. The friend explains: A Spaniard who refused to flatter his patrons, painting instead their ugliness, but so painting so skillfully that the aristocracy patronized him all the same. | | | | |
<
< |
Not enough. You almost say something, but whatever it is you need to say it more.
| >
> | “Yes,” says the law student. “Law school seems in that regard very much like Goya.” | | |
2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death | | | This is connected with the fact that no part of our law is also a priori. Everything legal could be illegal. Everything we legislate at all could be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori.
| |
<
< | First, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads:
| | | | |
<
< | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey:
| | | The mother is, from the moment of conception, with a life. Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The notion that one may be taken with something is incompatible with the notion that nothing has taken the one who has been taken. If something takes, that thing must have the ability to take. We rule that the ability to take constitutes life.
Life, even human life, is not synonymous with citizenship. For a citizen is one of the “people of the United States.” The life-in-the-mother, however, is not a person of the United States. It has not entered society. Before viability, it cannot so enter. While the State maintains an interest in potential life, and while the thing conceived within the mother is a life both actual and potential, the potential life in which the State maintains an interest must be cognizable to the State. Since the life-in-the-mother has not entered into society, since it cannot nor does it enjoy the benefits of that society, except as mitigated through the mother, it is not a life that is within society. The life-in-the-mother is not, in any meaningful way, in the United States. Prior to viability, the State does not have an interest in, or in the disposition of, the life-within-the-mother greater than that of the mother. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 7 - 14 Apr 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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< | Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are shot-gun shells, alternating weekends, and silver bars.
If the law is what it does, then it may be more than shotgun shells, including whatever happened to the boy who fired them. But the point is made in the right place.
| >
> | Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are alternating weekends, silver bars propping books, and a boy, who, when last I saw him, wore an orange jumpsuit, now a man. | | |
Third, the student recalls a black-stone stele, carved in dead letters. The student notes the stele’s phallic shape. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 6 - 12 Apr 2015 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | <--_It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted._ --> | | | Writing about thinking about thinking about life, death, the law, and law-studentry | | |
First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson. | |
<
< | | >
> |
So first in time might be the statutes, which are the law and not merely evidence. It might be worth ruminating a moment on the peculiarity of our way of learning, which starts most often, as you say, with the footprints rather than the animal that leaves them, which is the state whose apparent invisibility you are observing.
| | | Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are shot-gun shells, alternating weekends, and silver bars. | |
<
< | | >
> |
If the law is what it does, then it may be more than shotgun shells, including whatever happened to the boy who fired them. But the point is made in the right place.
| | | Third, the student recalls a black-stone stele, carved in dead letters. The student notes the stele’s phallic shape. | |
>
> |
Not enough. You almost say something, but whatever it is you need to say it more.
| | | 2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death
This is connected with the fact that no part of our law is also a priori. Everything legal could be illegal. Everything we legislate at all could be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori. | | |
The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey: | |
<
< | | >
> | | | | The mother is, from the moment of conception, with a life. Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The notion that one may be taken with something is incompatible with the notion that nothing has taken the one who has been taken. If something takes, that thing must have the ability to take. We rule that the ability to take constitutes life.
Life, even human life, is not synonymous with citizenship. For a citizen is one of the “people of the United States.” The life-in-the-mother, however, is not a person of the United States. It has not entered society. Before viability, it cannot so enter. While the State maintains an interest in potential life, and while the thing conceived within the mother is a life both actual and potential, the potential life in which the State maintains an interest must be cognizable to the State. Since the life-in-the-mother has not entered into society, since it cannot nor does it enjoy the benefits of that society, except as mitigated through the mother, it is not a life that is within society. The life-in-the-mother is not, in any meaningful way, in the United States. Prior to viability, the State does not have an interest in, or in the disposition of, the life-within-the-mother greater than that of the mother. | |
<
< | | >
> | | | | | |
<
< |
Seconds later, the law student explains his joke: Do the words about the picture obscure the picture of the man, or does the picture of the man illuminate the words about the picture? Put another way, neither the imaginary opinion nor the real one really explain what “a life” is. | >
> |
This is, not surprisingly, where you lost your terseness and skill in editing. Compress this, so that the Gettysburg address can be 30% as long as what you write. Nothing will suffer.
Seconds later, the law student explains his joke: Do the words about the picture obscure the picture of the man, or does the picture of the man illuminate the words about the picture?
Isn't it almost always a bad idea to explain a joke?
The figure-ground aspect of your illustration seems to me
well-enough judged. But why make so much as a preliminary
assumption that the sorrow of Roger Brooke Taney was either for the consequences of Scott v. Sandford or for the coming of the war? Perhaps it would be much easier on the facts to conclude that his sorrows were personal, that his passionate support of slavery was absolutely unabated, and that when war came he saw it not as a consequence of his life's work, but as the villainy of Lincoln. Even so relentlessly anti-personal a biographer as Carl Brent Swisher seems to me to leave us with that as a self-evident conclusion.
Put another way, neither the imaginary opinion nor the real one really explain what “a life” is.
But do you think that this fact, about these two texts, means that no text can really explain what for these purposes a "life" is?
Third, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?”
The answer is no. Most of what law professors say about Wittgenstein is largely the result of not thinking about what he thinks, or reading what he says, or knowing anything. Generally speaking, there's a good reason for that: they haven't tried. I have tried. See Zapf & Moglen, Linguistic Indeterminacy and the Rule of Law: On the Perils of Misunderstanding Wittgenstein, 84 Geo. L. Rev. 485 (1996). Chris Zapf, with whom I tried, was a student in this course when we began trying together.
And the law student recalls a biography about the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart.
You might also be interested in a novel about this romantic, better than any biography, Bruce Duffy's The World as I Found It.
| | | | |
<
< |
Third, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?” And the law student recalls a biography about the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart. | | |
3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry
Thinking about thinking about the law and law-studentry is useful in this way: he who understands me easily recognizes these thoughts as senseless, when he has read through them, on them, over them. | |
<
< |
First, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud. | >
> | First, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour.
He was right. But not
every tool is a plow, and not everything we work with is a rail
needing to be split. He knew that too. He was turning mud into
marble, which requires what he brought to the task.
Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud.
But he is also Father
Abraham, the statue in our most beautiful and humane temple of
democracy. He does not lie only in the mud of Illinois, but sits
also on a chair of wisdom, ennobled by Daniel Chester French as he
ennobled the men buried in the mud at Gettysburg, in mud turned
marble by the endlessness of time, with elegance and power, as he
deserves.
| | | | |
<
< | | | | Second, the law student imagines the pile of words, words about life, death, the law, and law-studentry, he’ll write before he meets his mud. He hopes at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are any good. | |
<
< | | | | Third rate analysis of the analysis of first rate minds. That describes, thinks the law student, the practice, if not of law, then of law-studentry. | |
>
> |
Except that not all the minds analyzed are first-rate?
I think you are intentionally wrong in saying this is a bad first draft. (Sorry, you will not get quite that much boost for improvement.)
You are right that the economy could be improved, mostly by shortening your imagined judicialism: you're right again that the conventional judicial style of the present has no respect for economy, but you cannot afford to imagine the error at your own expense. A. Lincoln possessed economy, as he possessed many other skills as a writer, in perfection. Nothing ever is harmed by imitating his effort to use only the necessary words. | | | | |
>
> | Conceptually, your only weakness here is a need to explain the jokes, and also the serious parts. If you can present them without feeling the need to comment on them, they will scour. Well begun. | | | | |
<
< | | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 5 - 08 Mar 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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< | Seconds after writing the preceding section, the student decides to explain his joke: Do the words about the picture obscure the picture of the man, or does the picture of the man illuminate the words about the picture? Put another way, neither the imaginary opinion nor the real one really explain what “a life” is. | >
> | Seconds later, the law student explains his joke: Do the words about the picture obscure the picture of the man, or does the picture of the man illuminate the words about the picture? Put another way, neither the imaginary opinion nor the real one really explain what “a life” is. | | |
Third, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?” And the law student recalls a biography about the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 4 - 06 Mar 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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<--_It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted._ --> | | | First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson.
| |
<
< | Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. Where are the words? Only shot-gun pellets, alternating weekends, and silver bars. | >
> | Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. They are shot-gun shells, alternating weekends, and silver bars. | | |
Third, the student recalls a black-stone stele, carved in dead letters. The student notes the stele’s phallic shape. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 3 - 04 Mar 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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<--_It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted._ --> | | | The law does not belong to the state: rather, it is the limit of the state. Where in the state is the law to be found?
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<
< | First, in the casebooks, that is—first-in-time the law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson. | >
> | First, in the casebooks, that is first-in-time: The law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson. | | |
Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. Where are the words? Only shot-gun pellets, alternating weekends, and silver bars. | | | Third, the student recalls a black-stone stele, carved in dead letters. The student notes the stele’s phallic shape.
2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death | |
<
< | This is connected with the fact that no part of our law is also a priori. Everything legal could be illegal. Everything we litigate at all could be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori. | | | | |
<
< |
First, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?” And the law student recalls a biography of the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart.
Seconds pass, the law student watches the page fill, but not with ink, and it’s not a page either, not really, it’s just pixels and crystals and electricity. The student realizes he doesn’t understand how. That is, the law student doesn’t understand how the crystals, the electricity, and the pixels work in tandem to produce “a page” that was “blank,” but which lately “fills.” Thank God, he thinks. He also thinks: “O I say now these are the soul!” | >
> | This is connected with the fact that no part of our law is also a priori. Everything legal could be illegal. Everything we legislate at all could be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori. | | | | |
<
< | Third, the law student, in a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | >
> | First, the law student, for a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads: | | | | | | Life, even human life, is not synonymous with citizenship. For a citizen is one of the “people of the United States.” The life-in-the-mother, however, is not a person of the United States. It has not entered society. Before viability, it cannot so enter. While the State maintains an interest in potential life, and while the thing conceived within the mother is a life both actual and potential, the potential life in which the State maintains an interest must be cognizable to the State. Since the life-in-the-mother has not entered into society, since it cannot nor does it enjoy the benefits of that society, except as mitigated through the mother, it is not a life that is within society. The life-in-the-mother is not, in any meaningful way, in the United States. Prior to viability, the State does not have an interest in, or in the disposition of, the life-within-the-mother greater than that of the mother.
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>
> |
Seconds after writing the preceding section, the student decides to explain his joke: Do the words about the picture obscure the picture of the man, or does the picture of the man illuminate the words about the picture? Put another way, neither the imaginary opinion nor the real one really explain what “a life” is.
Third, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?” And the law student recalls a biography about the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart. | | | 3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry | |
>
> | | | | Thinking about thinking about the law and law-studentry is useful in this way: he who understands me easily recognizes these thoughts as senseless, when he has read through them, on them, over them.
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 2 - 03 Mar 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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<--_It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted._ --> | | | | |
<
< | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dredd Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey: | >
> | The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dred Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey: | | |
The mother is, from the moment of conception, with a life. Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The notion that one may be taken with something is incompatible with the notion that nothing has taken the one who has been taken. If something takes, that thing must have the ability to take. We rule that the ability to take constitutes life. | | | Thinking about thinking about the law and law-studentry is useful in this way: he who understands me easily recognizes these thoughts as senseless, when he has read through them, on them, over them.
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< | First, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Indiana mud won’t scour. Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Indiana mud. | >
> | First, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud. | | |
Second, the law student imagines the pile of words, words about life, death, the law, and law-studentry, he’ll write before he meets his mud. He hopes at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are any good. |
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MattBurkeFirstEssay 1 - 02 Mar 2015 - Main.MattBurke
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<--_It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted._ -->
Writing about thinking about thinking about life, death, the law, and law-studentry
-- By MattBurke - 02 Mar 2015
1. In which the law and law-studentry are discussed
The law does not belong to the state: rather, it is the limit of the state. Where in the state is the law to be found?
First, in the casebooks, that is—first-in-time the law student finds the law first-in-time in the casebooks in the bleary hours of the night. Or, since the law student prefers the ritual of falling asleep with his wife to that of reading late into the night, he finds the law first-in-time in casebooks in the bleary hours of the morning. He learns, in a red book about Civil Procedure, that casebooks do not contain law, they contain “evidence of the law.” Swift v. Tyson.
Second, the student recalls a trial, the boy who shot up the student’s high school. The student remembers his parents’ divorce proceedings and his great-grandmother’s will—the two silver bars devised to the student’s mother when the student was four years old. But those are not the law. Where are the words? Only shot-gun pellets, alternating weekends, and silver bars.
Third, the student recalls a black-stone stele, carved in dead letters. The student notes the stele’s phallic shape.
2. In which the law and law-studentry are applied to matters of life and death
This is connected with the fact that no part of our law is also a priori. Everything legal could be illegal. Everything we litigate at all could be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori.
First, the law student’s professor exclaims: “That Wittgensteinian enough for ya?” And the law student recalls a biography of the Austrian in the trenches of the Eastern front, facing death and reading Tolstoy. The law student thinks the Austrian was a romantic at heart.
Seconds pass, the law student watches the page fill, but not with ink, and it’s not a page either, not really, it’s just pixels and crystals and electricity. The student realizes he doesn’t understand how. That is, the law student doesn’t understand how the crystals, the electricity, and the pixels work in tandem to produce “a page” that was “blank,” but which lately “fills.” Thank God, he thinks. He also thinks: “O I say now these are the soul!”
Third, the law student, in a class called “ConLaw,” reads a case about abortion. In a dissent, the law student reads:
The dissenter connects a decision about abortion to a decision about the citizenship of “the unhappy black race.” Since he was a slave, Mr. Dred Scott was not a citizen, and therefore he did not have “the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” Dredd Scott v. Sandford. Inspired by the austere logic, the law student re-imagines Casey:
The mother is, from the moment of conception, with a life. Conceive, from “com-,” intensive prefix, and “capere,” "to take.” The notion that one may be taken with something is incompatible with the notion that nothing has taken the one who has been taken. If something takes, that thing must have the ability to take. We rule that the ability to take constitutes life.
Life, even human life, is not synonymous with citizenship. For a citizen is one of the “people of the United States.” The life-in-the-mother, however, is not a person of the United States. It has not entered society. Before viability, it cannot so enter. While the State maintains an interest in potential life, and while the thing conceived within the mother is a life both actual and potential, the potential life in which the State maintains an interest must be cognizable to the State. Since the life-in-the-mother has not entered into society, since it cannot nor does it enjoy the benefits of that society, except as mitigated through the mother, it is not a life that is within society. The life-in-the-mother is not, in any meaningful way, in the United States. Prior to viability, the State does not have an interest in, or in the disposition of, the life-within-the-mother greater than that of the mother.
3. In which life and death are applied to the law and law-studentry
Thinking about thinking about the law and law-studentry is useful in this way: he who understands me easily recognizes these thoughts as senseless, when he has read through them, on them, over them.
First, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Indiana mud won’t scour. Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Indiana mud.
Second, the law student imagines the pile of words, words about life, death, the law, and law-studentry, he’ll write before he meets his mud. He hopes at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are any good.
Third rate analysis of the analysis of first rate minds. That describes, thinks the law student, the practice, if not of law, then of law-studentry.
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