March 05, 2007
up next
Having just finished law school and taken the bar, I'm presently in the magically annoying period between taking the bar and finding out whether I have to retake the bar, a determination that can be made sometime in early May, I'm told. I think I did ok, but we'll see. It feels amazingly good to have nothing at all to do, relatively speaking, for the first time in about 4 years. Since Wednesday I've taken in two movies (Iwo Jima and Lives of Others; both good but the latter incredible), two Ranger games (both ending in shootouts, only one ending positively).
Aside from that fun, a buffet of unfinished business is staring at me: an apartment that I somehow came to own (from renting) during the past year presently boasts one inhabitable room of the three; a year plus of unfiled paperwork needs a mandate or order; precariously stacked books threaten to timber. I need furniture. I need food. And so on.
A host of websites broke while I was too busy to rescue them, some built over 5 years ago. I also need a job, or jobs of the law-talking guy variety. I have some promising leads, and a soon-to-be published article (by the NYS Bar Assoc) I wrote on eBay and trademark law will hopefully help that come about. That and some phone calls.
In two weeks, I'm going to travel to Florida to visit my family, which consists of 3 additional nephews who only hear about me in fables involving the Big City and Tall Buildings. Immediately upon my return, I'm on jury duty--federal (Southern District) jury duty no less. I'm actually excited because federal cases are usually quite interesting. Also interesting is the fact that I may wind up serving in the same court as a Southern District judge with whom I had lunch last week (at a symposium on science and 'Truth').
I also plan to rewrite something I did last semester as an independent study about the transformation of "neutrality" in Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding the religion clauses; specifically how the word has been seamlessly and opportunistically converted from the touchstone of the separation principle to a justification for destroying the separation principle. I plan to rewrite much of the article from a linguistic standpoint, based on my observation that many of the dishonest arguments from history relied upon by the religious right are part and parcel of the gradual change in political discourse, from actual discourse to effective talking points. Under this mechanism, the issue will always devolve to how the issue can be effectively framed, truth be damned. And with the headway made by the religious right via its White House enablers, many of those falsities threaten to cement into effective truths.
Take, for instance, the "First Freedom Project" initiated by Attorney General Gonzales and the Dept of Justice. One might think that religious freedom in America was in severe jeopardy from the language employed on the DOJ's site, but that simply isn't the case. What this task force aims to achieve has little to do with freedom and everything to with exemptions and privileges. And at the risk of invoking Godwin, I can't help but be reminded of Hitler in the 1930s, opportunistically and baselessly framing a "problem" to the majority in terms that inevitably led it to believe that it was being persecuted by an out-of-power minority. Gonzales's attempt to usurp the court's role isn't much different from the presently dormant Congressional bid to disallow attorney's fees in establishment clause cases, which also relied on a notion of privilege as inalienable freedom. And our Constitution sits one precarious Justice away from becoming a meaningless to stop any of this.
I also want to research the Hein case that threatens to kill off Flast (which gave taxpayer standing status in establishment clause cases), so one of these days I'll dig into that and try to say something that everyone else hasn't already said.
What else? Oh yeah, send out resumes and start interviewing.
posted by scott pilutik at March 5, 2007 12:25 PM