Spring 2004: Week 2

So far I'm hanging in there. Barely. Monday I left the house for work at 6:15 and after work, class, and law review research I got back home at 12:30 the next morning.

Wills and Trusts. A closed-book final exam. The instructor is all over the Texas Probate, Property and Family codes, and keeps bringing up things outside our reading. Right now we're all about intestate succession.

Federal Jurisdiction. This class is taught by a guy who looks like he could be Jimmy Kimmel's brother. He's a hotshot who clerked for William Rehnquist. At one point he made an example of bias and used the attitude of some Americans towards the French. Roland and I exchanged glances. "Vive le France!" I murmured, and "Vive le France!" he answered right back.

Pre-trial Litigation. We were told our assignment would be a mock sexual harassment claim where the client was propositioned and "touched sexually" by her supervisor. When his boss didn't do anything about it, she quit. Sounds open-and-shut, right? Wednesday we got to interview her about the experience, so I asked her:
Q "When he propositioned you, what exactly happened?"
A "He invited me to lunch."
Q "And?"
A "That's all."
Q "Um, okay... you say he touched you sexually. What exactly happened?"
A "He brushed by me in the hall shoulder-to-shoulder and once he put his hand on my shoulder."
Q "Your shoulder?"
A "Yes."
Q "Anywhere else?"
A "No."
Q "Did you tell him touching your shoulder made you uncomfortable?"
A "No."
Q "You know, in society people sometimes touch each other on the shoulder, or slap someone on the back. That's not sexual."
A "I was raised to believe that men shouldn't be touching women unless you're married."
Q "Were you by any chance home-schooled?"

Oil & Gas. Yesterday we learned about the scheme whereby you describe property for a deed, sometimes using a unit of measure called a vara, that comes from Spain, but we're not sure how long a vara is supposed to be, exactly. Nice. Alternatively we can use more well-known units like rods or chains.

Part of our reading for class this week talked about the history of the Spindletop oil gusher in Beaumont, Texas created the first oil boomtown in 1901. That was a fun read, since my family has been in that area since George Burrell got his land grant from Spain way back when.

Law Review. One of the writers we have to do a check on cites John Stewart Mill's essay "On Liberty," of which our library has perhaps 8 copies. None of those editions are by the editor cited by the author, so I had to do an inter-library loan request to get that exact copy. That doesn't make sense to me. It's like verifying a quote from Hamlet when you have Bevington's edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare on your desk, but you have to go get the Penguin Classics edition so you can see that the soliloquy is indeed on page 37.