Second Amendment Excerpt

"The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.
"Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, re-established by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta! And Lexington, Concord, Camden, River Raisin, Sandusky, and the laurel-crowned field of New Orleans, plead eloquently for this interpretation! And the acquisition of Texas may be considered the full fruits of this great constitutional right." Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (Ga. 1846).

Favorite Legal Terms - res judicata

res judicata - An affirmative defense barring the same parties from litigating a second lawsuit on the same claim, or any other claim arising from the same transaction or series of transactions and that could have been -- but was not -- raised in the first suit.
-Black's Law Dictionary (8th Ed. 2004)

Note 1: similar to double jeopardy (not from the game), but on the civil side

Favorite Legal Terms - Escheat

escheat - Reversion of property to the state upon the death of an owner who has neither a will nor any legal heirs.
-Black's Law Dictionary (8th Ed. 2004)

Wikipedia and National Descent

I love Wikipedia. If I want to read about someone or something generally, it is the first place I go. However, one think about Wikipedia is ridiculous, especially when dealing with famous people from the United States: their national descent. They don't just say: American or Irish-American, or whatever.


Here are some samples:

Liev Schreiber - "His father is of Austrian, Irish, Swiss and Scottish descent..."

Clint Eastwood - "Eastwood has English, Scottish, Dutch, and Irish ancestry."

Alec Baldwin - "Baldwin was raised in a Catholic family of Irish, English and French descent."

Robert De Niro - "De Niro's father was of Italian and Irish descent, and his mother was of German, French, and Dutch descent."



I can't really articulate why this is ridiculous to me. It's just that of all the meaningless information provided about celebrities, this seems the most meaningless.

Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Fourth Amendment

The issue in this case is, ultimately, “how tightly the Fourth Amendment permits people to be driven back into the recesses of their lives by the risk of surveillance.” The Court today approves warrantless helicopter surveillance from an altitude of 400 feet...I find considerable cause for concern in the fact that a plurality of four Justices would remove virtually all constitutional barriers to police surveillance from the vantage point of helicopters. The Fourth Amendment demands that we temper our efforts to apprehend criminals with a concern for the impact on our fundamental liberties of the methods we use. I hope it will be a matter of concern to my colleagues that the police surveillance methods they would sanction were among those described 40 years ago in George Orwell's dread vision of life in the 1980's:

“The black-mustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. Big Brother Is Watching You, the caption said.... In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows.” Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Who can read this passage without a shudder, and without the instinctive reaction that it depicts life in some country other than ours? I respectfully dissent.

This excerpt is from Justice William Brennan's dissent in Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989). Riley held that police hovering over a person's backyard and peering through the roof of a building was not a "search" under the Fourth Amendment and thus not entitled to Fourth Amendment protection.

I had to read this case for Criminal Procedure (and I just came across it again while studying for my final). I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four during the same period I read the case. This case, as well as Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984), disturbs me...and I rarely agree with Brennan, especially his dissents.

Rain + Texas Drivers = Bad

I have lived in Texas almost a year now, and I enjoy it here. I can say a lot of positive things about Texans. However, one thing is undeniable: TEXANS CANNOT DRIVE IN THE RAIN! I don't understand the problem. When it rains, you just slow down a little and be careful. But something in that formula doesn't work for Texans. This fact was one of the first things I learned after moving here. What's funny is that my native-Texan law school buddies agree. But no one can explain it. If someone out there can, please let me now?

Last summer, before school started, Jessica and I were on our way back from Arkansas. It started raining about the time we got to Dallas. It rained the whole way from Dallas to Waco (just under 100 miles). During that stretch, we passed four wrecks. I normally leave for school before the morning traffic. Many of my classmates do not. Multiple times during the school year it was raining when I drove to school. Many of those times people would come in talking about some wreck on the interstate.

Today, Jessica and I drove up to Ennis, which is about an hour southeast of Dallas. It has been raining off and on for about a day or so. This morning it was drizzling. Then, there was a 2-3 minute steady rain as we got outside of town....and guess what? Someone had a wreck and the whole northbound side of I-35 was blocked. Luckily, in about 30 minutes we made it to an exit half a mile down the interstate and were able to find a detour in the GPS.

On a happy note, we did make it to Ennis to meet up with family, and we enjoyed the Bluebonnet Trails Festival.

Criminal Law and Metaphysics

Here is an excerpt from some of my reading for my first day of Criminal Law:

The idea of free will in relation to conduct is not, in the legal system, a statement of fact, but rather a value preference having very little to do with the metaphysics of determinism and free will. The fallacy that legal values describe physical reality is a very common one.... But we need to dispose of it here, because it is such a major impediment to rational thought about the criminal law. Very simply, the law treats man's conduct as autonomous and willed, not because it is, but because it is desirable to proceed as if it were.

The Limits of the Criminal Sanction by Herbert Packer

This is an interesting statement on the crossroads between philosophy and the practice of law. I reject libertarian free will. I think most people who actually think about it do (although I suppose there are those who don't and can defend it). Theologically and philosophically I float somewhere between compatibilism and hard determinism. I anticipated having some trouble with criminal law given my views; however, Mr. Packer provides a great explanation for how the law deals with any problems.