Benny, 2L

Today has been the first 100%, honest-to-goodness, no doubt about it beautiful day that we've had all year (unless you're one of those people that likes the snow/sleet/slush/cold). Spring is definitely around the corner, which feels nice. Despite being a native New Englander, I always forget how nice it feels to experience the first true day of spring. My wife and I managed to spend the first few hours of the day out with some friends, and now I'm back at it, planning on spending the rest of this beautiful Saturday wrapping up the first draft of the summary judgment memo.

I'm excited to report that on the co-op front, I secured a position for this summer with the Greater Boston Legal Services Consumer Protection Unit. Started a couple of years ago to provide legal services on a wide array of consumer issues, the unit's current focus is the foreclosure crisis, including litigation, policy advocacy, and education/outreach. I'm really looking forward to working there this summer for a couple of reasons. First, I've always had a strong interest in consumer issues, and except for a short internship after my freshman year of college, I haven't had a chance to work on these issues. Second, I feel as if anti-foreclosure work -- education, policy, and litigation -- is at the core of what we need to be doing to stabilize our economy so we can get things moving in the right direction. There is so much need in communities throughout Boston for these types of services, and I'm looking forward to having a busy summer.

On a side note, we had a guest speaker in our Criminal Justice class this past week. Billy Moore was on Georgia's death row for over 17 years, and was released over a decade ago. From the moment he was arrested, Moore admitted his guilt, and was released by the parole board because of supportive testimony from the victim's family, with whom he built a strong relationship during his years on death row. Regardless of one's personal views on the death penalty, the experience helped put a human face on a lot of the material we have studied this year. Moore speaks at NUSL every year because Professor Givelber served on his legal team. Moore has since chronicled his experience in I Shall Not Die: Seventy-two Hours on Death Watch

As I've probably said before, the first year of law school feels like a marathon, with several important mile markers along the way. This past Friday we all passed another marker when we turned in what was essentially the final draft of our LSSC Social Justice project. After some minor tweaks and edits, we are going to submit it to our client. Every Law Office is putting together presentations for our respective clients, and our Presentation Subcommittee is working hard to put together our presentation for a week from this Friday. With our LSSC projects soon behind us, 1Ls are starting to anticipate moving into exam mode (although thankfully few of us, including myself, are there yet!)

Last week I had the opportunity to meet a few finalists for the Public Interest Law Scholarship. It brought back some not-so-distant memories of my interview last year, and reminded me how far I've come in the span of a year.

On the home front, my wife and I just had a (temporary) roommate move in for a few weeks. My wife's good friend from college just got a job in Boston working at the State House, so she'll be staying with us as she looks for a permanent place. At this point, I'm (sadly) home so little that I'm not totally sure I would even notice a third person living in our condo. After we picked our friend up at the airport we went out for some delicious Salvadorian food in East Boston, and then had some ice cream in Cambridge. Throughout the evening, I kept on interjecting the conversation with fact patterns from cases that I've read this year. It's an unfortunate habit that I've developed in social situations, but hopefully it occasionally makes for interesting conversation.

This past week has really made my head spin academically in terms of how major judicial decisions get made. Before law school, I at least had the thought that our judicial branch was a neutral arbiter of the complex, often controversial cases that we hear about in the news every day. Judges, we think, at least theoretically, are supposed to act from a neutral position, ignoring their personal beliefs and the politics of the day to settle a dispute based on principle.

In both Criminal Justice and Constitutional Law this week, the influence of the judges personal values on decisions become abundantly clear (at least to me). In Constitutional Law, we read some of the landmark abortion cases, including Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood. In both cases, it became clear to me that both the majority and dissenting opinions were relying as much on personal beliefs (perhaps couched in, or influenced by, constitutional and legal principles) as they were relying on the principles themselves. The same goes for Criminal Justice, where for the last couple of weeks we have been studying the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. Although constitutional analysis obviously dominated the majority and dissenting opinions, the justices' core values and beliefs were the driving force behind these opinions. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. Rather, the role that personal values play really hit home this week.

This weekend I have two fantasy baseball drafts (yes, I'm a slight fantasy baseball geek, but not that much of a fantasy baseball geek because I've never been good enough). The guys I'm in the league with are from all over the East Coast (friends, friends of friends, etc.), and we are meeting on Cape Cod this Sunday for the "big" event. Hopefully the weather will hold up.