|By Jove.| We read so many cases in any given law school course. And thanks to the institution ofstare decisis, most of the cases we read usually refer to lots of other cases. I'm sure the good law student looks up those cases too, but the average law student (read: yours truly) takes note but then moves on. [Important to the following relation is that I take notes in my book. I find taking notes while I read on the computer to be difficult to juggle with my intention to stayengagedwith the text. This completely reduces the resale value of my texts to zilch, but increases their value to me (at least up until the final) by several orders of magnitude. The top, bottom and side margins of any read page in my book is covered in all kinds of scribble and arrows and, on occasion, diagrams. And we're back...] Tonight I was reading this (presumably) important case on regulatory takings. I get to a point in the opinion that begins about attracting members of the public to a property and letting them have access to the said property. And I remember that in a case we read a few weeks ago, the name of which I cannot recall, there was another case (the name of which I also cannot recall) mentioned. I then scrawl out this long note down the whole side margin of the page with the help of my nifty swifty neon pink uniball about this case within a case and how it relates to the current case that I am reading, but also how it differs and how the implications of the holding of that case should affect what I will eventually discover to be the disposition of this case and so on and so forth. Much like Mr. Marsh to his crap, I drew back to look at and bask in the glorious girth of the note I'd written. Then I felt a little scribbler's remorse as I realized I'd taken up the whole margin with a note about a case, the name of which I couldn't even remember, that probably wasn't relevant to this case nor all that important to the case that had originally mentioned it. So I hoped to not want to write any notes based on the rest of the reading on that page, irrationally as that may seem to some (read: me), inhaled and resumed my reading. And the rest of the page starting right where I'd stopped reading, miracle of miracles, was all about that case within a case and even went into the same analysis I had done in my marginal note about how that case was distinguishable and what it meant for this case. It was just one of those rare moments of clarity when it's like, "What? Am I getting it? Finally? Really?" And because I am so sure either my children and/or Smithsonian historians will one day pore over my casebooks and I don't want to look like a fool in the future, I added a note to my note indicating that if I'd just continued reading, I would not have needed to write the first note at all.
I went to an Ivy League undergrad.
I go to a top NYC law school.
I date men (well...).
I live in Bed-Stuy.
I don't need more to say,
just more room to say it.
Etc.