Ira, 3L

Back at work this morning, after a blissful four-day weekend. Naturally, as a federal employee, I had Monday, Rev. King's observed birthday off. The government was also kind enough to give us Tuesday, the inaugural day. I am convinced that giving us off Tuesday was more a strategic, security concern than anything else (to keep us out of our office buildings and away from the windows, which are near or on Pennsylvania Avenue--the parade route). Nonetheless, I enjoyed the day off.

Especially as I was able to sit in my pajamas, stay in out of the blistery cold, drink coffee, and talk on the phone to loved ones for hours. Being away from home, on co-op, and with the holidays and travel, I had not heard a lovely voice in a while.

The Inauguration on Tuesday was fantastic. Bitterly cold and packed with millions of people, but overall fantastic. The air was electrified with hope and happiness, and was overwhelmingly inspiring. I am proud to say that I was there, for myself and for my family and friends who could not make it to DC, on the National Mall, a witness to many, many firsts and to history.

Now, I return to the Department of Justice, trying to zip through work piled on my desk before I leave at week's end for Mississippi to help inspect a facility. I'll be gone on-site all next week, but should still be in a fine area of urban wireless to send updates. We shall see.

Stay warm everyone, and if you love the snow (as I do) and are in snowy areas...please enjoy. Make snow angels and snow demons. If you're a fan of Calvin & Hobbes, make snow goons.

Posted by Ira at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just realized that it is January. Let me back up.

I'm quite well aware what month it is: I have to enter the date on forms almost every day. But January is the month that early decision applicants hear back from Northeastern. I still remember the day I heard, January 19th. A day that is inextricably linked to now. It is very much because of that acceptance letter (and my subsequent acceptance of said acceptance letter's offer -- oh contracts) that I sit here now at the US Department of Justice, doing a full-time internship in DC, and will be present for Obama's inauguration. If I had gone to another law school, one of my other top choices, I would have not moved to Boston and would be on the traditional law school track where I only get internships in the summer.

But I accepted and I did move to Boston! And while the road has not always been flat and smooth (first year, for example, has hills that roll like white caps through your life), it has been wonderful. School, work, the nearing and looming potential and threat of finding post-graduate employment, and, overwhelmingly, life--all have been great. Basically, it is a lot like hugging a porcupine.

The DOJ is sending me to Mississippi in a couple weeks to tour a facility there and help investigate its compliance (or non-compliance) with a court-order and federal law. Not too many interns get sent on assignment by their co-op employers, and even less get sent there for a week and put up in a decent hotel with (almost) all expenses paid. Thankfully, the Special Litigation Section at the Civil Rights Division is different.

Outside of work I am hurriedly completing an article for "The ILSA Quarterly," a publication of the International Law Students Association. I am a student editor for the "Quarterly" and am putting together two Q & As with attorneys working in international law. I spent about an hour and a half on the phone on Tuesday night with a judge on the US Court of International Trade. Last week I interviewed an attorney with the United Nation's Office of Legal Affairs.

Great, great stuff.

Related to school (which doesn't seem that far off, really. I head back to Boston and am done with my internship in a little over a month or so and start classes on March 2nd), we will soon register for classes. I hope to take Federal Courts (a class, basically, about the reach of the long arm of the federal judiciary and their purview -- real or imagined -- to hear cases and tell the states what to do), the Criminal Advocacy Clinic (where we're given intense training and assigned actual cases), and Advanced Criminal Procedure: Investigation (which, it seems, examines the law and constitutionality behind investigations into crimes and how that affects a case).

Also, we got our evaluations for last quarter's classes yesterday. Overall I was extremely pleased with my evaluations. I really tried hard and dove into the finals this past quarter--admittedly, a lot more than I did my first year--and it shows. One evaluation, however, while not bad, is so convoluted I am not entirely sure how I did on the final exam. This is one stark drawback of the evaluation system, especially an evolving evaluation system: some Professors choose not to respect the standard evaluative format (or aren't being informed by the administration) and wax on for a page or so about the law (i.e., nothing that comes close to evaluating your actual performance). Thus, at the end of it all, you have an evaluation that no employer is realistically going to read. Even if it does state some positive and affirming things, those words are still hidden in a labyrinth of words.

Hope all are well. Stay warm.

More to come...

Posted by Ira at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Holden Caulfield.

Holden, the narrator and anti-hero of J.D. Salinger's seminal novel The Catcher in the Rye was the first topic on my meeting's agenda yesterday. An attorney and I met to discuss a facility in Mississippi we are going to visit at the end of this month. I was just assigned to the case and asked to tour the facility as part of its inspection for compliance with a long-standing court order, and very much needed to be brought up to speed. The supervising attorney and I started off, naturally, with small talk about one another's holiday breaks. She read The Catcher in the Rye over her break and, according to her own words, was now in a general malaise having quite the existential experience.

I could empathize: I am reading Look Homeward, Angel which is filled with its own existential questions as it charts the protagonist's life from his birth at the turn of the 20th Century. We talked briefly about how both books actually portray America's own existential crises in the time period during which both books are set, and then that sent off my thoughts in three different directions.

First, as ever-changing and growing humans and animals experimenting and defining our own consciousness, aren't we always have a bit of an existential experience?

Two, our talk of knowing one's self (or one's ability to actually do so) at the same time one is trying to figure out a direction as time evermore passes is incredibly poignant as we near Inauguration Day and America will swear in a new Administration--one very much promising change.

Three, Here, at the Dep't of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, aren't we in the business of forcing identity crises and systemic meta-analyses of a state agency's purpose when we investigate their practice and policy of treating institutionalized persons? By threatening federal lawsuits, injunctive relief on high from the Civil Rights Division of the United States government's legal arm, are we not forcing these institutions, facilities, agencies, and States to look at themselves and ask, "what are we doing? Is this how we want to treat these individuals?"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky reportedly said, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

Similarly, Winston Churchill is quoted as claiming that "you measure the degree of civilisation of a society by how it treats its weakest members."

I'm not positive that the answer to my above question (my third direction of thought from the Holden Caulfield conversation, if you're keeping track), is yes. But it does spur food-for-thought. A buffet for thinking. As the DOJ we are forcing States and their agencies to look at how they're operating with regards to standards and constitutional liberties recognized and set down either by the Framers, the US Supreme Court, Congress, or, in some views, the Almighty deity. Food-for definite-thought.

Posted by Ira at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)