End of 2L Update, Part II

My Constitutional Law II exam begins in 32 minutes. It's a take-home (or download-at-home). In lieu of panic or furious last-minute studying, I'm going to blog. This is either a reflection of supreme confidence in my ability to write something coherent in the next six hours or a reflection of my zen-like acceptance of my fate ("....if you do not understand, things are as they are").


This is a picture of my book, with all sorts of little flags. These are supposed to help me, but I have no idea whether they will. I just think they kind of look pretty and they make me feel better.

I'm listening to the Talking Heads at full blast.

"And you may ask yourself, how did I get I get here....?"

That, my friends, is a story that will take longer than the next 27 minutes...

Good luck.

Self-depricating Humour

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check ofr a pulse?

A: No.

Q: Did you check for blood pressure?

A: No.

Q: Did you check for breathing?

A: No.

Q: So, then is it possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

A: No.

Q: How can you be so sure, doctor?

A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?

A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

That's from some compilation of actual transcripts from cases in the US somewhere. I want to know what that case was about.

Helpful Direction for Law Students Examining Constitutional Questions

From Ward v. Canada (AG) et al. [2002] 1 SCR 569 at para. 17:

"The first task in the pith and substance analysis is to determine the pith and substance...of the law."

Heavens! If it weren't for that insightful direction, I never would have guessed that a pith and substance analysis would involve a determination of the pith and substance of a law.

For Anyone Who Wants to Automate Jurisprudence

"In any event, it ought to be clear that a judge interpreting a federal constitution is no mere automaton--that, on the contrary, he has critical choices to make at different stages of the process."*

That Robots class is following me everywhere I go.

We're surrounded! Head for the hills!


*WR Lederman, "The Balanced interpretation of the federal distribution of legislative powers in Canada" in JE Magnet, Constitutional Law of Canada, vol. 1, 9th ed. (Edmonton: Juriliber, 2007) at 279.

End of 2L Update, Part I

Okay, did I even comment last week about the end of 2L course work? TF&C, what's that quote from T.S. Eliot? "This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper" is the way it goes, I think. So went 2L.

After a couple days back at the ranch to see the fam and deal with AHC business stuff (web designers, ads, gentleman's agreements), I returned to O.T. on Saturday for my last full week here. Exam on Friday, move out on Saturday, head back home and crack out a couple of papers.

This year has officially been kind of a mess, and I've had to undergo a bit of an attitude adjustment, summarized here, in order to survive my somewhat logistically ridiculous life choices. In spite of the craziness, I've actually done some work this year that I'm really proud of (a trend which will hopefully continue until April 30). The stuff that was disappointing to me was less about personal failure than about system failure. It's not easy travelling two days a week, trying to meet everyone's needs and give both family and school their due. Top off with selling a house in a crazy market, moving the family, getting the kiddies into a new school AND language, starting a new business...you get the idea.

Exam rituals? I have cleaned my room today. So far not too much junk food, and no pop (soda water, though). It's early going though. Music on shuffle: several Beatles albums, Tragically Hip, Broken Social Scene, Led Zepplin, Bob Marley, Franz Ferdinand. Don't ask me why.

And, today is our wedding anniversary. Lucky number seven. Six years ago on our anniversary, both AHC and I decided to go back to school, me for media and he for culinary management.

Could we have imagined then any of this now?

Please Hold, Someone Will Not Be With You Shortly

On Friday, I hitched a ride back to T.O. with FCLF (French Common Law Friend). We had a rendezvous at the Thrifty on Laurier. I was a few minutes early, so I wandered in and sat down in the waiting area. Now, I wasn't being particularly noisy or anything, but I wasn't in stealth mode either. I sat there close to 10 minutes without seeing even one employee.

FCLF showed up at the appointed meeting time, and we started talking so it is likely that someone heard us (or should have). He waits a minute or so and then wanders over to an open door that apparently leads to the office space.

"Hello? Hello?"

No one comes out. There's no bell, there's no sign indicated someone will be back in five minutes. How do we attract attention? FCLF calls them on his cell phone.

"Hi, I'm standing out front and there's no one here and I have a reservation."

Okay, so then whomever he was speaking to actually put him on hold! We could actually hear the person in the back. I don't know why he was put on hold when he or she could have just said someone would be out in a couple of minutes. But he decided to stay on hold just so we could see how long it took. And it lasted at least three minutes before the utter ridiculousness of it caused FCLF to hang up. At which point someone did actually come out to the front to say that someone else would be with him....when they could find the guy.

THEN, after the relevant guy shows up (another couple of minutes) and starts the reservation, the phone rings and he picks it up without a word to FCLF and proceeds to have a fairly long conversation (in normal time, not so long maybe, but in customer service time when you're ignoring another customer who is right in front of you and whose transaction you've just interrupted, a very long time). This is one of my HUGE customer service pet peeves. And if you have to talk on the phone in the middle of my transaction, you better say "excuse me" before you pick up that phone and then you better apologize when you hang up.

The only good part of that whole encounter was that we got a free upgrade because there were no compact cars available.

Reason, Finally

I am so pleased to see this article in The Toronto Star today, on a new report on homework from the Toronto District School Board. Some of the recommendations include:

• no homework for kindergarten kids
  
• no homework over holidays
• up to grade 2, having homework consist mostly of game playing, discussions or cooking with family
• grade 7 & 8 students should have no more than 1 hour per night of homework combined across all subjects and high school students no more than 2 hours

I'm so happy to see some wisdom on this issue. Our new school has been pretty good on the homework front, but when TG started grade one in Toronto, you may recall some of my trepidation about the expectations laid out by her teacher. This extended to homework, which we invariably only completed fully about half of the time (we had a lot on our plates, and better things to do with our family time). Each week we got a little pink sheet detailing each day's homework (this is mostly fine, the report recommends assigning homework in blocks so parents can plan, but it didn't need to be assigned down to the day) with the ominous reminder at the bottom "Homework will be graded."

TG got a C in homework. Seriously. I just shook my head at that because she couldn't do that work on her own, she needed our help to read the instructions and sometimes more. When the work didn't get done it was very clearly our fault, not hers. The report also says that non-completion shouldn't affect a student's overall grades.

Some of our friends in Toronto are still lamenting the amount of work their kids are getting. I don't blame them. Before we left, TG's teacher told us she was concerned about her switching to full French (from immersion), and was worried she couldn't handle it. This teacher was nice, but I think had entirely unreal expectations of the kids. We got TG's first report card from her new school and she got a bunch of A's and B's. No C's. And no grade for homework.