Scholarship is not Philosophy

In Trusts & Estates, we’ve moved on to revocation of wills. Things can get complicated very quickly when someone doesn’t dispose of an old will after making a new one. Hence the following question from my textbook: “Did the revocation of the revoking document . . . revoke the revocation (of the revoked document)?” (Thomas P. Gallanis, Family Property Law, 5th Ed., 226 (2011).)

This topic also yields itself to distractions regarding spelling. As I take notes (by hand – that is, without spell check) I find myself wondering, “Does that word have a ‘c’ or a ‘k’?”

Revocation can take place in many ways. A Virginian’s will, for example, is void if he or she “cuts, tears, burns, obliterates, cancels, or destroys” it. (VA Code § 64.2-410.) I’m guessing that the author of that statute had fun writing it.

In Business Associations we spend a lot of time talking about policy. That prompted the following question from my professor when he was trying to make a point: “Let me rephrase this question: Why are lawyers bloodsucking parasites?”

I’ve spent a lot of time researching this week. Mostly that involves the somewhat mind-numbing activity of skimming law review citations and articles. The first few aren’t too bad, but when I get to the third or fourth hour of browsing similar articles looking for a specific facet of a topic about which dozens of people have written, I start to get a little stir-crazy.

This has led me to the idea that I’m much less of a scholar than a philosopher. By that I mean I don’t care for researching and study just for the sake of research and study, but I do like thinking about and discussing ideas just for the sake of thinking about and discussing ideas.

Database of thousands of law review articles on every imaginable facet of the legal world? No thanks. Panel discussion of the very same topics where people are expressing the same ideas and asking the same questions? Bring it on. Maybe that’s why I generally prefer class time to homework.

Except, of course, when I get to read sentences full of verbal gymnastics like that one from my T&E textbook.

October in Virginia: flowers . . .

. . . and falling leaves.

On Wills

“Where there’s a will there’s relations.”

– Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L. Sayers, A Presumption of Death 285 (2002).

In Trust & Estates, we’ve finished discussing intestacy and moved on to wills. The main thing to keep in mind with a will is making sure it’s done correctly; courts can be exceedingly (and ridiculously) inflexible about meeting the requirements. (Some courts have loosened up a bit, but better safe than sorry.)

One of those requirements is, of course, a signature. This led to potential problems for Theodore W. Dwight, the founder of Columbia Law School. Prof. Dwight neglected to make his will until he was on his deathbed. (This was, according to my professor, despite having taught Trusts and Estates Law. My professor also claims that Prof. Dwight resigned from Columbia in a huff when the school switched from a W&M style curriculum to a Harvard style curriculum.) After finally having his will written, he began to sign it and got as far as “Theodore W. Dwi­–…” and then suddenly died.

Bad timing.

(I don’t know whether the will was ultimately considered valid.)

There are, of course, reasons to declare even a correctly executed will invalid. One example is insane delusion. It’s not simply being delusional that invalidates a will, though; the delusion has to actually affect how you make your will. For example, your will can still be valid if you believe you are Napoleon, but not if you try to leave everything you own to the Empress Josephine.

Another case we read was regarding a woman who got involved in a cult and made a will to leave everything to the cult’s leader. She later changed her mind, but was prevented from changing her will by physical duress (they wouldn’t let her sign it), fraud, and possibly murder. The court (wisely) struck down the will that designated the cult leader as beneficiary of her estate (good job, New York Court of Appeals). That’s one of the more extreme cases we’ve read in T&E.

Meanwhile in the world outside of law school, the avian population at the lake has ballooned. I ran through a large group of geese the other day to an absolute cacophony of honks. I’m not sure if they were mad at me for disrupting their party, warning each other to get out of the way, cheering me on, or protesting being caught between the cars on the street and me on the trail.

Also, the trees are no longer a uniform shade of green. Most of the change is the summer’s solid green fading into a variety of green hues, but there are also smatterings of brown, yellow, orange, and occasionally red. I prefer the range of colors more than the continuous green wall of summer.

And today we had our first day of autumn-like temperatures. Yay for the impending sweater season.

I stopped mid-run by the lake one day. The ducks
immediately and excitedly rushed over. I think they
were expecting food.

Little did the ducks know, I stopped
mainly so I could take a picture of the
heron. I did feel bad, though, so I
walked down the next day to feed the
ducks (and a lot of geese) some Chex.

Jokes and Doodles

Joke of the week (shared by my Business Admin. professor):

A CEO was hiring a new accountant for his firm. He brought the first applicant in and told him he only had one question: “What is two plus two?” The applicant answered, “Four.” The second applicant came in and was asked the same question: “What is two plus two?” The second applicant answered, “Four.”

The third applicant arrived and was asked the same question: “What is two plus two?” The third applicant leaned forward a little and said, “What kind of number did you have in mind?”

(The joke was used to illustrate how we can’t always put implicit trust in people just because of the position they hold.)

Public International Law this week was interesting. We had a guest speaker from Nigeria who is earning her doctorate in law in South Africa. Her study concerns internally displaced persons (people who would be refugees if they weren’t still in their own country). She talked about the unique challenges faced in helping IDPs. Because they are in their own country, they are still within the jurisdiction of their own governments; but if the situation isn’t addressed, it can spill over and cause international difficulties.

PIL also reminded me why I like geography. We discussed the creation of states and the criteria required for a state to exist. In conjunction with that, we talked about the dissolution of Yugoslavia into the various currently existing states and a little bit about Palestine and Kosovo. My geography brain found it fascinating. I love learning about the way spatial relationships (and now international laws) affect people.

There’s an extra benefit to PIL: it’s the kind of class I can doodle in. This week I tried drawing Africa. I’m not going to win any art prizes, but I enjoy doing it.

Conference, Choir, and a Cockroach

“My friends, I’m here to tell you the lawyers won!”

That was the statement of Democratic Party chairman Ron Brown to a meeting of the American Bar Association (see A Nation Under Lawyers, Glendon, Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 3). It was also the first sentence I read in preparation for the Citizen Lawyer Seminar I attended this week.

During the seminar, we spent a couple of hours each day discussing the hows and whys of being a citizen lawyer. The idea of a citizen lawyer started with Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe; their purpose in setting up a law school at W&M was to train leaders for the new country. Given the pervasiveness of law in American society (much more so than in other cultures,  especially non-western ones), it is important to have lawyers who can use their skills and knowledge to make a positive difference in the world through leadership and public service.

Most of the seminar sessions were in the evening, which meant I was driving home in the dark. I had forgotten how dark in can get in Virginia at night under the trees on a street with no streetlights. While I was driving down South Henry Street on Monday night, my side mirror caught my eye because it was completely black. It’s a pleasant phenomenon, but a little surreal.

As interesting as the Citizen Lawyer Seminar was, it was no match for this week’s Stake Conference. Saturday night I had the pleasure of driving the four local sister missionaries to the Stake Center. Then I sat on a bench with a dozen or so sister missionaries and thoroughly enjoyed the meeting. It feels good to be surrounded by sister missionaries.

When it was over, we had a little side show: a cockroach was forcibly escorted out of the church by one of the Elders.

I spent the Sunday morning session on the stand so I could sing in the Stake choir. The choir had a short existence. We had one quick and effective morning practice, sang the prelude music, and sang our special musical number: Behold a Royal Army, arr. by David A. Zabriskie (it can be found at http://www.ldsmusicsource.com/music/1188/SeeHear.html).

I found it interesting to compare the citizen lawyer seminar with Stake Conference. My professor had hopes of giving us a life-changing (or at least profession-affirming) experience during the seminar. It was good and interesting, but I often felt somewhat like an observer. It was as though my classmates were moving forward, ready to tackle the complexity of the ever-expanding American legal system while I was on the sidelines – interested, but not really sure how or whether I was involved.

Stake Conference, on the other hand, had the depth and power that really makes a difference. There is no substitute for truth, revelation, and inspired leaders.

I don’t know how my career will turn out, but I hope I can ever be found doing the work of the Lord.

The leaves, they are a-changin'.

Per Slurpees

In Trusts & Estates this week, we’ve been talking about intestate succession, that is, what happens to your property if you die without a will. This has involved a bunch of examples such as “If D dies intestate and is survived by B, C, X, Y, and Z but is predeceased by A…” It also involves looking at family charts and using a handy thing called a consanguinity table (a visual representation of how extended family members are related to a specific person).

And it requires a lot of mental division of inheritance shares, which can be tricky to keep track of. When one of us gets the proportions mixed up, it is often (as my professor phrases it) “a math problem, not a legal problem.”

One of the inheritance systems we’ve learned uses “parentelas.” The first parentela is the decedent and his/her spouse and children; the second is the decedent’s parents and their children; the third is the decedent’s grandparents and their children; etc. So if there are no living members in the first parentela, you look in the second. If there are no living members there, you look in the third. My professor suggested we think of it as the “tarantula” system, which has been an effective image for getting it stuck in my brain.

We also learned about “per stirpes,” which rhymes with Slurpees but is much less exciting (and not worth explaining.)

When all else fails, there’s the usual fall-back: if there are no living relatives, the property goes to the state. The official word is “escheats”; I don’t know whether its similarity to the word cheating is a coincidence. Virginia, however, is dedicated to the idea that the Commonwealth should not step in and take private property. Virginia will apparently keep going down your family line to infinity looking for relatives to give your possessions to.

In any case, intestate succession is all potentially very complicated and messy. Moral of Trusts & Estates: make a will.

* * * * *

Professor quotation of the week (during Business Associations): “You’ll see this happen all the time if you go into corporate law, which I hope you DO because if you don’t defend faceless multi-national corporations, who will?”

A Nice Start

I think it’s a good sign when the first class of the semester is Institute.

My earliest law class this semester starts at 2:00 pm. That was not by choice; I typically prefer getting class or work over with early in the day. But the classes I wanted to take were only offered in the afternoon. That means Institute, which takes place on Mondays during lunch time, is my first class of the week. No complaints here about starting the semester with gospel instead of law.

Also, Bro. Nielsen (who teaches Institute) brought sandwich fixings that were left over from another meeting. So I had a really good lunch on Monday, besides a good first class.

My first law class of the semester is Business Associations, which deals with corporations, partnerships, LLCs, and other business relationships. So far it feels a little like Contract Law’s older brother. The casebook doesn’t have comics, but it has yielded a few good lines. One was a judge opining that a store owner’s duty to his customers involves “more than the diligent observance and removal of banana peels from the aisles.” Hoddeson v. Koos Bros. 135 A.2d 702 (App. Div. 1957).

My next class is Trusts & Estates, which my professor began by giving us a warning: “If you thought Criminal Law was bad, this class is a bit of a downer. Almost every case we’ll read involves someone dying.” Of course, in this class the decedent usually dies of natural causes, which is a definite step above the typical Criminal Law case.

My professor also reminded us that you can’t leave your property to a rock (not even a pet rock) and expounded on the “Warren Buffet” principle: leave your children enough inheritance to enable them to do anything they want to, but not enough to enable them to do nothing.

My last class is Public International Law, which refers to the concept of global and inter-state law through treaties, the law of war (which sounds like an oxymoron), the UN, international courts, etc. It is different than Comparative Law, which compares the laws of different countries (for example, Chinese law compared with British law). PIL began with a discussion about whether international law actually qualifies as law (a popular philosophical dispute in law schools), but my professor said we’ll approach it for the rest of the semester from the practical perspective of “yes, it is law; this is how we work with it.”

Later I will also have a seminar and a mini class: The Citizen Lawyer and European Union Law. They will take place during one week and two weeks, respectively, in the middle of the semester.

The other big event of the week was the ward picnic – good food, good activities, good people.

Round 2 of the three-legged races.

Tug-of-war

Lining up for the tricycle race.

The winner of the "Best Decorations" contest getting
a little help from his granddaughter.
(That is Olaf riding on the front.)

Pie eating contest

Accepting the ALS challenge -
except they used a pool instead of a bucket.

Summer's End

I’ve become a surprisingly quick convert to running with a GPS watch. After only a day or two, I was hooked. GPS is much handier than my old estimate-the-distance-based-on-how-long-I’ve-been-running method. And it’s very useful on the winding, not-easy-to-judge-distance-and-direction roads of Williamsburg.

The highlight of the last two weeks was a visit from my mom and sisters. We spent a long weekend sightseeing, eating well, and enjoying each other’s company. Sometimes it felt a little like a housewarming party for me, as if I had just moved in and was just starting school. (That’s probably an unavoidable feeling when your mom is taking a picture of you in front of the big school sign.) Other times it felt like I was on vacation along with everyone else. (It was strange to watch my family drive away to the airport and not go with them.) I think we all enjoyed answering the “Where are you from?” question: “Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Williamsburg (sort of).”

It was a treat to spend some time together and a delightful end to the summer. I’m grateful they all had some time to visit.

After they left, reality came rushing back. I realized the new semester was less than a week away. I had known that, of course, but suddenly I was feeling it. The new 1L class was already roaming the halls of the law school and starting classes, while I hadn’t even looked at my schedule, bought my books, or read my first day assignments. (Not that starting homework was high on my priority list; I managed to put that off until 10 pm on Saturday night...)

I was feeling a lot of stress.

But over the next few days I updated my calendar, reviewed my classes, found (and bought) all my books, and started feeling better.

And overall, I feel so much better than I did a couple of weeks ago when I was trying not to think about school at all. At the beginning of this month, my feelings about the upcoming year were a step above dread. I just did not want to face another year like the last one.

Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling more at peace with starting my 2L year: this year doesn’t feel like the last one. This year I know what’s going on. I understand better which parts of my schoolwork are important. I know my way around. I have a better idea of how to balance school with other parts of life. Most of all, I feel as if I, myself, am different.

So bring it on, 2L year.

Touring W&M Campus

They take their history lessons seriously on this campus.

Monticello is much greener at this time of year than in April.

The gardens at Monticello are big and varied.

And lovely.

My pal, Thomas Jefferson

In the garden of the Governor's Palace.

My sisters and I in the Governor's Palace gardens.

The colonial Capital.

Colonial cooking lessons. This recipe called for
one hour of whisking.

In the public gaol.

Nice place for a meeting, huh?

The George Wythe house.

Cinder Toffee = Yum

Duck and cover!

The Marquis de Lafayette about to rally the colonial militia.

At the Jamestown Fort.

The Yorktown Monument.

Redoubt 9 at the Yorktown Battlefield.

A generously measured "12 inch" pizza.

A bridge over the York River - we got a good look at this
bridge during an evening walk out on the dock.

A turtle we saw on our Sunday walk around the neighborhood.

Great visitors - I love you! 

___________________________________________________

A thank you gift from the Alumni Office where I was
working during the last two months. They told me to
enjoy the treats. I told them that wouldn't be a problem.

A thank you gift for house-sitting while some friends were
in Europe. When my friend learned my grandpa is from Delft,
she brought back some authentic Delft blue porcelain for me.
What a treasure!