recent tracks:

I am very slow

and equally busy, it seems. I have begun making connections to some more outside folks regarding the affordable housing shenanigans, and it seems I will be making a phonecall next week once I set something up with the very kind and helpful seeming gentleman in Minnesota. A communication is due to our partner in the law firm on Monday, so it will have to exclude any such information, sadly. I also have a potential paper thesis due on Monday for Law Review. Luckily my classes are all pretty much phenomenal so the readings have been mostly fun and interesting and the classes themselves no great strain to attend. First impressions by subject:

Constitutional Law: the only material in the course by which I was at all afraid of being bored--those provisions of the Constitution establishing the branches and setting forth their respective powers--has turned out much more interesting than expected, and the professor does an excellent job of drawing out the most relevant points to the current governmental situation, where branch-to-branch power-jockeying seems to be on a major upswing. Anyway, this bodes quite well for the remainder of the year.

International Law: this is my academic oasis; Constitutional Law involves more theory and abstraction than any of last year's classes, but International Law has been a true joy for its exploration of legal theory. We have not ventured far into the realm of what International Law is actually established at this point, focusing instead on how International Law works and doesn't, and its continual and dynamic development. Monday we get into more practical business, dealing with codification to some extent, but the theory will continue and part of our regular assignments is to read the international section of the newspaper and take note of our own changing perspectives--good stuff!

Evidence: seems to be run very similarly to Criminal Law, which I enjoyed quite a bit. The focus of the classroom time is on argument: when called upon to comment on a situation, a student is expected to present a logical argument in support of each point, and the argument is then subject to be torn apart by the professor (who, however, also quite happily points out really strong arguments and refrains from fostering pointless self-doubt in those people who make such arguments). The material itself seems very intuitive.

Federal Income Taxation: the class I was most afraid of has turned out to be quite a nice experience so far. The book is explicitly written for folks like me: those who expect not to like tax but have not sold themselves 100% on the subject. There has been more focus on policy than in most classes from last year, and I am learning both some very interesting political questions regarding tax practices and important terminology which I never understood before. This makes the material quite rich, and the question of "what is income?" not so, for lack of more eloquent terminology, blah.

My two seminar courses have yet to begin; one picks up two weeks from tomorrow, the other not until October, I believe.

Not much going on on the home front. Probably going to take a Boston jaunt tomorrow, maybe see the aquarium, hang out with Mr. T, that sort of thing. Also you ought perhaps to be thankful that the level of reading I am currently sustaining has restricted my writing, because there are many topics winding their way through the news at the moment that are likely deserving of comment, but probably others more apt at producing those comments as well, so I will leave to your imagination my take on current affairs.