Crescat
Sententia

Firstly, I note with pleasure that we both seem to be in agreement that low stakes poker games, in which this author indulges far too infrequently, are A-ok. But what of Leitzel's fears in that he "keep(s) seeing tragedy brewing, both in terms of the running up of enormous debts, and in some nasty legal consequences."

No question, nasty legal consequences are a bad thing. Of course, college kids do a large number of things that are quite illegal-- drinking illegally, buying liquor for those who will drink illegally, not reporting certain kinds of income on their tax form, not filing taxes at all, and consuming and dealing myriad other substances and services whose markets are prohibited by law. I have no idea how strong the enforcement and penalties related to gambling laws are, so I don't know how serious of a risk most of these people are running. Yet to some extent, the point about nasty legal consequences begs the first part of the question-- is there something at issue in high-stakes gambling among the legally-competent-but-young that should motivate us to regulation at all?

I don't know. Good libertarian that I am, my own inclination is to let adults make the consensual deals they like and let the chips fall where they may (so to speak). All the same, I understand that most people don't feel this way, and are very worried about the possibility that those who are relatively new to their legal freedom will use it in ways that they will later regret.

But on that point, I'd like to remind the curmudgeons that we do let 18-year-olds (and sometimes those much younger) make a host of decisions, like whether to marry and who to marry and whether to have a prenuptial agreement (decisions on which huge quantities of money and happiness can hang) and whether to worship a God or Gods, and which one(s) to worship and how (on which one's immortal soul can hang). Many parents or student-loan-services let 18-year-olds decide whether to spend $10,000 or $100,000 on their education. More controversially, perhaps, we let 18-year-olds own credit cards (often a dozen) with rather large lines of credit. And many people permit all of this not because they believe that young people will make all of the right decisions, but because they think that those decisions, even (especially?) those with high stakes and high costs, rightly belong to the young people who wish to make them.

To be sure, I am in agreement with Professor Leitzel that those who gamble a lot of money in college might well be making mistakes, and running up debts that they will regret later. But I am wholly unconvinced that the nature or the scale of the mistakes involved in gambling are any different from the many other mistakes that we leave open to 18-year-olds. [Should there be an intermediate period of adulthood, so children are not sprung out into the world with all of their rights and responsibilities and no practice at one moment? Quite possibly so, although my own notion is that such an intermediate period should probably fall sometime between ages 12 and 16 or 14 and 18.]

Stone: 'You eat well,' says Mary to John. 'You cook well,' says John to Mary. We know that when Mary says, 'You eat well', she does not mean that John eats skilfully. Just as we know that when John says, 'You cook well', he does not mean Mary cooks abundantly. . . No problems there. But I ask you to imagine a competition when what is being judged is table manners. (Insert French interpreter's box -- interior.)
Interpreter: ... bonne tenue a table ... Stone: John enters this competition and afterwards Mary says, 'Well, you certainly ate well!' Now Mary seems to be saying that John ate skilfully-- with refinement. And again, I ask you to imagine a competition where the amount of food eaten is taken into account along with refinement of table manners. Now Mary says to John, 'Well, you didn't eat very well, but at least you ate well.'
Interpreter: Alors, vous n' avez pas bien mange ... mais ... (All Interpreters baffled by this.)

In view of our decision that the Constitution prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools, it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.

Subject to specific constitutional limitations, the legislature, not the judiciary, is the main guardian of the public needs to be served by social legislation enacted in the exercise of the police power . . .

1: What prompted you to start blogging?

A buddy of mine threw a dinner party to which he also invited Hugh Hewitt. I told Hugh that I had been reading Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy for over a year and had been debating starting a blog of my own. I was worried, however, that I'd just be another Johnny-come-lately, Hugh told me that was stupid – blogging was the future and there was still room for new voices, especially if I could find a different angle from the Reynolds and Volokhs of the blogosphere. As we talked about it, we came up with a market niche focused on stuff they didn’t cover: business, religion, and wine. To the extent I tackled politics, moreover, I would do so from a less libertarian/more social conservative perspective than most folks in the blogosphere. (See, e.g, my recent row with Volokh Conspirator Randy Barnett over judicial activism.)

When the blog started, I focused mainly on business and law. With encouragement from Hugh and other friends I've made through blogging, however, my blog has become increasingly eclectic. I still don’t do much navel-gazing, mostly because my personal life would make pretty boring reading, but I'm inclined now to write about just about anything that catches my interest.
All of which is why I'm one of the folks listed on the Hewitt-inspired blog site.

2: What attracted you to corporate law, and why do you teach rather than practice?

In law school, I was assigned to Professor Michael Dooley as a research assistant. I spent two years helping him with the research for a casebook he was writing on corporate law. I was fascinated by the often quite intricate legal issues posed in corporate law, but especially by their susceptibility to economic analysis.

The tools of economics have always struck me as being particularly well-suited to the problem of analyzing and evaluating legal doctrine. Traditional forms of legal scholarship were mostly backward-looking. One reasoned from old precedents to decide a present case, seemingly without much concern (at least explicitly) for the effect today’s decision would have a future behavior. Yet, law is necessarily forward looking. To be sure, a major function of our legal system is to resolve present disputes, but law’s principal function is to regulate future behavior. The law & economics movement succeeded because it recognized that judges cannot administer justice solely retrospectively. They must also consider what rules their decisions will create to guide the behavior of other actors in the future. Law & economics gives judges a systematic mechanism for predicting how rules will affect behavior. And, as noted, corporate law struck me as being an area particularly amenable to both the normative and positive aspects of economic analysis. So it made a good fit for my interests.

I went into teaching for three reasons. First, the freedom to pursue problems that interested me rather than problems that somebody was willing to pay me to investigate. Second, the freedom to control my schedule. When I was in practice, I looked around and saw that even partners had relatively little control over their own time. I like being my own boss and teaching seemed like an environment in which I would have much more control over my schedule. Third, I am something of a ham and the idea of having a captive audience before whom I could hold forth for an hour or two at a time was immensely appealing.

3: Is there a bias on the part of textbook and law review editors against Corporations and in favor of "sexier" stuff like Constitutional Law? If so, what do you think accounts for it?

More so among law review editors than book publishers. Part of the problem may be bias on the part of law review editors, who perceive con law or the latest grand theory of Law & [Fill in the Blank] as bring “sexier” than business law. Part of the problem, however, also comes from the faculty end. Lots of business law faculty tend to stop publishing after they get tenure, perhaps in large part because we tend to get a lot more consulting opportunities than somebody who spends a career writing about what Icelandic blood feud sagas tell us about alternative dispute resolution. As a result, a lot of corporate law scholarship tends to be biased towards juvenilia.

4: How do you feel about the free speech rights of corporations? Should the rules for corporate speech be different from those for individuals?

It’s an interesting question at a number of levels, but let me come at it from the direction of the theory of the firm.

When you ask “what rights does a corporation have,” you are reifying the corporation – you are treating the firm as an entity separate from its various constituents. The prevailing law and economics account of the corporation, by way of contrast, views the firm not as an entity, but as an aggregate of various inputs acting together to produce goods or services. Employees provide labor. Creditors provide debt capital. Shareholders initially provide equity capital and subsequently bear the risk of losses and monitor the performance of management. Management monitors the performance of employees and coordinates the activities of all the firm's inputs. The firm is simply a legal fiction representing the complex set of contractual relationships between these inputs. In other words, the firm is not a thing, but rather a nexus or web of explicit and implicit contracts establishing rights and obligations among the various inputs making up the firm.

From this perspective, the correct question to ask is whether this set of stakeholders acting collectively through the board of directors and top managers should be able to exercise the same rights they could exercise individually. So phrased, it seems to me, the problem reduces to one of agency costs – the directors and top managers may use their control of the corporation to cause it to exercise rights in ways of which less powerful constituencies would disapprove. Depriving the corporation of the right to speak thus really is a way of limiting the perceived divergence of interest between top management and other stakeholders. Because the agency cost problem in fact is subject to a wide array of constraints (fiduciary duties to shareholders, markets for management services, and so on), I’m inclined to think that prohibiting corporate speech cannot be justified on this ground.

5: Why do so many corporations incorporate in Delaware? Should we be worried about this?

No, you should not be worried about this at all. Why not? For an extended argument, see my article The Creeping Federalization of Corporate Law. For a shorter version, check out my blog posts Delaware's Dominance and/or Vanderbilt Conference: Comments on Bebchuk and Cohen Firms’ Decisions Where to Incorporate.

6: You’ve previously suggested that there’s probably a bias against hiring conservatives or libertarians in academia. Do you have any suggestions for libertarians or conservatives entering law school about ways they might minimize that bias against themselves later while still remaining intellectually honest?

When this question is posed, I am always reminded of what Christ told the apostles when he sent them out: “"Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” (Matthew 10:16.)

Don’t be dishonest, but don’t be unnecessarily controversial. Take care to cultivate contacts and, especially mentors on the left. Pick subject matter areas where conservatives tend to be more acceptable (the business end of the curriculum is especially safe).

7: Why do you oppose the Socratic Method, and how do you prefer to teach your law school classes?

I waffle between a very weak form of Socratic and lecture (tending towards the latter), making extensive use of PowerPoint.

As a business law professor, I exclusively teach second and third year students. Even if the Socratic method is a useful way of teaching people how to think like lawyers, a point I am not prepared to concede, by the time the students get to me they’ve either learned to do so or they never will. So it’s a waste of time and effort on both my and their parts.

In addition, my focus is on transaction planning. We read a case but then present a problem in which economic actors must adapt their behavior to the legal landscape created by the case. This is not a process that lends itself to the Socratic method as it usually used in law schools. For one thing, transaction planning requires that the student understand the underlying economic and financial issues. Suppose, for example, that figuring out how to respond to a given legal rule requires one to understand the Capital Asset Pricing Model. How one is supposed to teach CAPM via the Socratic method is something of a mystery to me.

I’d commend to you, by the way, Brian Leiter’s post in which he argues that the Socratic method is the scandal of legal education.

8: Woody Allen famously opined that the only cultural advantage to Los Angeles was the ability to make a right turn on red. What other advantages would you say that LA has over an East Coast metropolis like Boston or New York?

Weather. Weather. Weather.

Better access to rare California wines.

Driving very fast on very twisty canyon roads.

Traffic school.

It’s a lot safer to be a pedestrian here, oddly enough given how little time we spend being pedestrians.

Shopping at the same Bristol Farms as Lawrence Fishburne means that I may eventually work up the courage to tell him just how gawd-awful Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions were.

Greater diversity geographically. (You really can spend the morning on the beach and the afternoon on snow-covered mountains.)

One hour to Vegas by air.

Valentino’s wine list.

California judges are much more liberal about letting law professors act as expert witnesses.

Did I mention the weather?

9: You seem to drink California wines almost exclusively. Is this because you believe there is a benefit to drinking locally, or for some other reason?

With the possible exception of TCA contamination, the most common fault I find in wine is the cooked flavor it develops when the bottle has been stored under excessive heat conditions. Living in California, I buy a lot of my wines directly from the winery and have it shipped overnight or second day. As a result, there’s very little risk of heat damage.

Having said that, however, I believe one does tend to develop a regionally-attuned palate. Like most other American wine drinkers I know, I favor wines that are intensely fruity and oaky, with rich and complex flavors, but with smooth tannins that make the wine accessible early without extended aging. Which is a great description of California wines (albeit also Australian and many Italian wines), but which leaves many French wines out.

I should note, however, that I am a big fan of claret – i.e., red Bordeaux. Indeed, when I think about the greatest wines I’ve ever tasted, a very substantial number of clarets are on the list. That list would include, for example, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1981, Chateau Cheval Blanc 1983, and several Chateau Gruaud-Larose vintages (1982, 1983, 1986, and 1990 spring to mind). On the other hand, a number of California cabernets would make that list too. Those that come to mind include Ridge Montebello 1990, Silver Oak (Napa) 1991 and Silver Oak (Alexander Valley) 1994, Robert Mondavi Reserve 1990, and Heitz Martha’s Vineyard 1984. The one wine I am most eager to track down, moreover, is a California cabernet; namely, the 1958 Beaulieu Vineyard Private Reserve, since 1958 is my birth year and that year’s BV is supposedly one of the greatest wines ever made in California. I’ve bid on it at several auctions, but never prevailed.

10: Most Chardonnays produced in California these days tend to be oakey, buttery, or both. Do you consider this a positive development? And as a more general rule, do you prefer your wines to be "intellectual" or "blockbusters"?

See my answer to # 9. In general, I find terms like “intellectual” or “finesse” are most often used by fans of French wines to justify spending exorbitant sums on wines that are high in acid and/or tannin but low in fruit.

11: What advice would you give to young wine lovers on small budgets? And what if said wine lovers are very fond of port?

Chile and Australia are producing boatloads (literally) of high quality inexpensive red wine. I find Chilean whites less successful, but am very fond of many Aussie whites. If I’m going to spend say $8 on a bottle of wine, it will rarely be a Californian. Instead, it’s almost always going to be Aussie or Chilean.

Port is a problem for the wine drinker on a tight budget. Domestic “ports” are pale imitations of the real thing, at best, and I find them undrinkable. Vintage character ports (such as Cockburn’s special reserve) are probably your best bet, but even they run $16+ a bottle.

12: Now that several months have elapsed in which to evaluate the results, what is your assessment of the recall process in California? Has Schwarzenegger been an improvement over Davis so far?
The recall process was great theater. I loved every minute of it.

As for Schwarzenegger, I think he’s done pretty well. On a personal note, he’s just announced a long-term funding arrangement for the UC system under which there will be funding beginning in 2005-06 to resume the growth of faculty and staff salaries. After 4 years without a raise, that was very welcome news.
My main complaint is that Schwarzenegger muffed the budget deal. Arnold never again will be stronger than he was before the compromise that led to Props 57 and 58. Yet, when push came to shove, he cut a lousy deal.

Schwarzenegger’s failure to take his best shot at getting budget reform with real teeth will undermine his ability to obtain real reforms down the road in other areas. Having said that, however, I’d still like to see him take up the agenda I suggested here. Getting through a version of Colorado’s TABOR plan would be an especially primo legacy for the governor. So too would be finally getting rid of the nativists in the California GOP.

13: You've suggested that you're willing to support a republican candidate for president despite his great deficiencies. How bad would a Republican have to get(or how good would a Democrat have to get) before you switched your vote (or abstained)? Would you have voted for Richard Nixon?

You know the expression "yellow dog Democrat"? I don’t know what the Republican equivalent is. but it would describe my politics. I'm unabashedly partisan. No matter how mad Bush makes me, I'd still rather have him picking the next Supreme Court justice than any Democrat I can think of. No matter how mad I get at the GOP in Congress over stuff like the budget, I'd still rather have Orin Hatch presiding over the Judiciary Committee than Pat Leahy and so on. Throw in the other two issues I care most about – taxes and defense – and it becomes very hard for me to imagine voting for Democrats at pretty much any level.

The Nixon question requires more context. Am I voting based on what was known in 68 or 72? Or am I voting on the basis of what we know now? What are my alternatives?

Nixon was a very bad apple, to be sure, but we do have to thank him for one thing: Nixon’s tragically flawed Presidency begat Jimmy Carter’s gloriously flawed Presidency, which begat Ronald Reagan, who won the Cold War and made the GOP believe that it could become a majority party.

14: What made you decide to add BlogAds to your site, and do you worry that some readers will find this less aesthetically appealing and stop reading?

Between BlogAds and my Amazon Associates program, I make enough for the blog to break even most of the time and some months even pull in a small (very small) profit. I’m an unabashed capitalist and I figure most of my readers know that. Hopefully, the content will keep them coming back.

15: You’re also a member of the group-blog, Mirror of Justice, which is "dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory." What are the principles of Catholic legal theory, and how developed is this area already?

The point of the blog is that there really aren’t well-developed notions of what a uniquely Catholic legal theory might look like. My hope is that the blog will provide a central clearing house for thinking about what such a theory might entail.

I think our founder, Villanova Dean Mark Sargent, put it quite well in the introductory post, where he explained that Mirror of Justice is “a group blog created by a group of Catholic law professors interested in discovering how our Catholic perspective can inform our understanding of the law. Indeed, we ask whether the great wealth of the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition offers a basis for creating a distinctive Catholic legal theory -- one distinct from both secular and other religious legal theories. Can Catholic moral theology, Catholic Social Thought and the Catholic natural law tradition offer insights that are both critical and constructive, and which can contribute to the dialogue within both the legal academy and the broader polity? In particular, we ask whether the profoundly counter-cultural elements in Catholicism offer a basis for rethinking the nature of law in our society. The phrase "Mirror of Justice" is one of the traditional appellations of Our Lady, and thus a fitting inspiration for this effort.”

16: What sort of place should religion have in American political debate? Many people hold political positions for religious reasons– to what extent should we just argue explicitly about those religious beliefs, and to what extent should believers make an effort to recast their arguments in secular terms?

At the core of the mission statement of Mirror of Justice is our shared belief that “faith-based discourse is entirely legitimate in the academy and in the public square, and that religious values need not be bracketed in academic or public conversation.”

I realize that many legal academics find my interest in faith-based scholarship eccentric, at best. As Thomas Shaffer pointedly observed, modern law schools “have systematically—theologically!—discounted, discouraged and disapproved of the invocation of the religious tradition as important, or even interesting.” Thomas Shaffer, The Tension Between Law in America and the Religious Tradition, in THE WEIGHTIER MATTERS OF THE LAW: ESSAYS ON LAW AND RELIGION 315, 327 (John Witte & Frank Alexander eds., 1988).

As Richard Neuhaus reminded us, however, “the democratic reality, even, if you will, the raw demographic reality, is that most Americans derive their values and visions from the biblical tradition.” The Naked Public Square 139 (2d ed. 1986). How can we talk about law or politics without taking that basic reality into account?

17: The Catholic Church condemns both abortion and capital punishment. But in U.S. politics the traditional alignment is pro-abortion and anti-capital punishment (leftist) or anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment. How does a faithful Catholic evaluate that kind of compromise?

I think a faithful Catholic has a hard time finding a home in either major political party, largely because of this precise set of issues. Personally, I oppose both. For me, however, abortion is the trump card. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II teaches that execution is only appropriate "in cases of absolute necessity, in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvement in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." As to the death penalty, the Church thus continues to recognize a small set of cases in which it is at least theoretically justifiable. (I should note, however, that I was utterly unpersuaded by Justice Scalia’s attempt to defend the morality of the death penalty from the critique to which the Pope subjected it in Evangelium Vitae.)

In contrast, the magisterial teaching on abortion set out in Evangelium Vitae is categorical. After defining abortion as "the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth," the encyclical asserts that "direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder.”

18: On bachelor’s nights, you’re known to smoke a cigar (sometimes in the house). How did you start cigar-smoking and what kind do you smoke?

I had a regular poker game in grad school and started smoking cigars with those guys. (I'm still looking for some LA players for a regular poker game, by the way.)
These days my usual smoke is Dunhill's Peravia brand. It's a fairly big cigar (seven inches with a 50 ring size), but pretty mild. Anyway, with the return of warm weather, it is back to the deck for me and the dog.

19: Do you prefer your BMWs to have automatic or manual transmissions? (And do you worry that it’s too ostentatious for an academic to be seen driving a BMW?)

My current car has the SMG transmission, which strikes me as an ideal compromise. As the full name -- “sequential manual gearbox” -- implies, the SMG is a true manual transmission, not a fake manumatic like BMW’s Steptronic or Audi’s Tiptronic transmission, which means there’s no torque converter to drain off power. Yet, there’s no clutch pedal. In fact, at its most aggressive setting, the SMG actually shifts gears faster than you or I could on our best day. Best of all, however, the SMG also offers a quasi-automatic mode in which the system’s computer brain takes over shifting. So if I’m stuck in traffic, I can leave it in the auto mode and not worry about shifting, but I can also paddle shift to my heart’s content when I’m on the open road.

As for your second question, you have to remember that I live in LA. Out here you don’t have to worry about being ostentatious until you get into Maybach territory.

20: Do you read fiction? If so, what kind of fiction do you read?

Fiction probably makes up about 40% of my pleasure reading. I mostly read science fiction and fantasy. I’m more into the old school style than the post-modern and cyberpunk stuff. JRR Tolkien. Robert Heinlein. George Martin. Jerry Pournelle. Steven Brust. Glen Cook’s early Black Company novels. Larry Niven. Laurell Hamilton’s early Anita Blake novels. David Weber. Harry Turtledove’s Civil War series. Outside science fiction, I rely on Tom Clancy for long airplane flights and Robert Parker for short ones.

I also read a lot of theology, military history, biographies, and wine.

2. Write yourself a note. I've seen this advice before, but I can't remember where. So I'm stealing it. But my conscience can live with it. Write yourself a note all about the high-minded goals you've got going in. "I'm going to use my law degree to work for Greenpeace and make sure evil politicians don't burn down all the forests and dig for oil in all of the nation's public housing projects." Whatever your dreams are, your idealistic reasons for joining some of America's most successful standardized test takers, write them down, put them in an envelope, seal the envelope, and give it to someone you trust. Then, three years from now, you can look back and cry.

3. Stop imagining that law school is so different from everything else you've ever done before. If you're going to law school, you probably didn't completely screw up college. Law school's a lot more like college than, say, a job is. If you survived college, you'll survive law school. Heck, if you enjoyed college, you'll probably even enjoy law school. Yes, you need to read a bunch of stuff every week. No, this will not be the most grueling three years you've ever experienced, it will not require you cut off contact with your family and friends, it will not require you radically change your lifestyle and force yourself into a miserable existence because you don't think you'll pass Torts otherwise. It's school, you know how to do school, just put in the hours you end up needing to out in, which will probably be fewer than you fear, and you'll be fine. This is not some sort of radically different paradigm.

4. Go on your school's website and look at the extracurricular activities. Find some you're interested in. If you're really interested in them, track down someone involved in them and shoot them an e-mail. They'll be happy to know you. Thinking even broader, find out some stuff in the city you'll be in that you might enjoy doing and see if you can lay the groundwork for getting involved in that too. Even if you do nothing and just keep some ideas in the back of your head come fall, it'll keep you from feeling like there's nothing outside of the classroom, your dorm room, and the library. To stay sane you've got to do stuff you find fun and rewarding and fulfilling and satisfying. Classes may be all of those things. But you'll probably need more. Don't be afraid to find more. This is three years of your life. You don't get any extra credit for being miserable.

5. Write a resume. It will feel like it's much, much, much too soon in the fall when people start frantically looking for summer jobs. If you already have a resume -- and maybe even the start of a cover letter -- it'll just be one less thing to have to deal with. Plus everyone's going to ask you forty times a day if you wrote your resume yet, and this way you can say yes. Anecdotal evidence indicates to me that what you do your summer after 1L year does not impact your 2L job search much if at all. So don't worry if you don't get a law firm job and you're stuck working somewhere you'd rather not be. You'll survive. And, if faced with a choice between two jobs that won't have radically different impacts on your future, choose the one you're going to enjoy more even if it's the one you're more uncomfortable telling your classmates you've accepted. They don't have to live your life, you do.

6. Resolve not to lose touch with everyone you know outside of law school. Whether this means pledging to write e-mails, planning visits in advance, setting up a weekly dinner, starting a weblog... just make sure you have some sort of way to avoid getting so wrapped up in law school that you have nothing else. Even if you like law school. Because at some point law school isn't new anymore, and you're going to feel lonely, and want to reconnect. So why lose touch in the first place. The 3 years goes fast, and then what? Don't lose the life and friends and hobbies and passions you have just because you're going to law school. It's not worth it.

7. Buy big fluffy pillows, a comfortable desk chair, a working alarm clock, a bunch of highlighters, and a t-shirt with the name of your school on it. The first four things are to maximize comfort and productivity. The last is so that when you wander off in a law-induced stupor, someone will know where you belong and lead you back.

8. Ignore anyone who tries to tell you that some sort of week-long law school preparatory class is going to be anything more than a waste of money. That includes ignoring the voices inside your own head that are telling you to go. You won't get a "leg up" and, at worst, you'll be the jackass who keeps raising his hand because he knows the answer and everyone will hate you. If you really want to get a head start, find a 3-page summary on the Internet of all of your classes, and read it. You'll be more prepared than you need to be, but it won't turn you into "one of those people."

9. As soon as you find out what casebooks you're going to be using, go on half.com or Amazon used and buy them there. They're much cheaper. Also, befriend some law students and they'll give you their old study guides. Not worth buying new. Not worth buying at all, really (the study guides I mean -- your casebooks, unfortunately, really are worth buying, and reading, and even occasionally highlighting), but if you can get them for free, why not.

10. Have fun. This is probably not your last summer of freedom, and it may not even be a summer of freedom at all, but it's still important to take advantage. Law school may dull your personality, quash your creativity, and silence your passions. So this may be the last time you're really you, and not some defanged, exhausted, and soul-less version of yourself. So you should do the things you're afraid you won't ever do once you're in law school. Write a novel. Take a pottery class. Make the world's longest paper clip chain. However your spirit moves you. Good luck. And godspeed.

I don't mean to extend the metaphor far beyond its practical use, of course, but there's something that feels right (or good) about finding blackberries as you're walking to class next to the frat row, or something that's very good about seeing forgotten thyme (unintended, but very welcome, pun right there) growing by a metal fence in some deserted parking lot. There's just something that makes you feel like you know a whole lot more than you really do, and can do many more things than you really can. I'm being obtuse, of course, but that's really how I feel.

Take for instance my orange mint. I'm a bit loathe to say where it actually is, but suffice it to say that having acquired the appropriate green tea recently, it's been keeping me very good company for the past couple of nights...or even the arabidopsis I found outside Kent or the way home...the result of accidents that happen to even the most cleanliest of plant biologists.
Come spring, you can (if you're wary) usually figure out who's working with tobacco in the lab, or which houses/dorms are major marijuana centers. If nothing else, adding wild chive to a salad can improve taste magnificently.

I guess this all seems a bit nerdy/goofy, but to a certain extent, what I'm saying is very real -- particularly to immigrant populaitons, I think. I can't begin to explain how excited my parents are when they see what they think is a banyan tree or banana tree in various arboreta, or various flowers in the grocery store -- or how my mom was moved almost to the point of tears upon eating fresh peaches from the trees in our backyard last year -- an experience she hadn't had since my sister and I were born.

It's a good experience, and one that comes for free -- how many stores are able to regulate whether rosemary grows wild, or sage, or mint? I guess it's hard to explain, but, if it hasn't happened at least once already, it probably will at some point -- that there is nothing more welcome than finding an old taste and smell while walking alone on a cool spring evening, staring at the ground.

Erratum:

Writes a reader in response to the original post--

"Engineers have ways to estimate rates of heat transfer. It's an exaggeration to say we can never tell when something will happen."

Hopefully this post clears up some obvious blunders I've made. -- Sudeep

Okay, I'm not completely serious. But the show--which chronicles the life of a single mother and her teenage daughter in a small New England town--really does have its libertarian moments.

Consider: how many other WB-style dramas deal seriously with the abuse of eminent domain? From episode 3.03:

TAYLOR: You’re missing the big picture here, townsfolk. Now, this wonderful business belongs in Stars Hollow – whether Luke rents the space willingly or not.
LUKE: How would I not rent it willingly?
TAYLOR: I’m talking about eminent domain, my friend. Check the town’s bylaws. If a three-fourths majority finds it necessary to use the space for a specific function, the landowner must concede.
LUKE: That’s for taking over houses to turn into hospitals during a national emergency like the Civil War. If you wanna turn this place into a Civil War hospital, be my guest!
TAYLOR: Some would attest that the succor that my soda shop is going to offer is on the same level as the comfort that a hospital could provide.

It's not just that, of course. There's a constant theme of governmental meddling and the dark side of the communitarian dream, marred only slightly by the fact that the actual protagonists seem blissfully unconcerned by the big picture. Useless stop lights, corrupt building codes, the dangers of agenda-control--it's all there.

Plus, it's really heartwarming. And faster dialogue than your average show!