Thursday, September 10, 2009

Back to School

Apparently I still have some readers out there, so here we go, for one more year. I just finished the last class of my third week, and I can now say with some authority that the third year of law school is by far the best. The old cliché, once again is: the first year they scare you to death, the second year they work you to death, and the third year they bore you to death. But you can't get too bored if you take great classes or solid professors, and somehow I've managed to pull that off. This semester I'm branching out from my usual comfort zone of criminal law. My classes include Business Associations, a popular topic on the Bar exam, and three others dealing with highly relevant topics: Health Law & Policy (tonight we did a comparative analysis of the health care plans in Congress); Media, Technology & the Courts; and an Election Law class studying Bush v. Gore and other Supreme Court gems. I'm also doing a fantastic externship (I think that means "internship for credit," in law school jargon) with a federal public defender's office.

I returned from my summer in California—not to mention a 4,600-mile road trip—happy, relaxed, and refreshed. I learned an incredible amount this summer, but unfortunately I can't blog about it. For anyone who's interested, let me know, and I'll send the essay I wrote to fulfill my summer funding requirement.

It seems impossible that my fellow 3Ls and I have ascended to the last tier of law school, just two sets of exams away from graduation. An energetic group of 1Ls has filled the W&M Law Library, brandishing their highlighters and looking to us for advice. We start the year with a new, terrific dean, Dave Douglas, whom many in my class had (and loved) as a Con Law professor during first year. Most of us 3Ls are looking for jobs, or in the case of the firm crowd, waiting to hear about offers. Many of us, including me, applied for judicial clerkships over the summer. Clerkships typically last a year, and if you get an offer from a judge, you're basically obligated to take it. After two-plus years of spending time with my classmates, I find it fascinating to see who goes where. People will scatter all over the country and the world. Many will work at firms, some in the federal government, others at prosecutor's and public defender's offices. A few people won't even take the Bar, and may go back for more graduate degrees. One of my classmates learned to brew beer over the summer while living at his parents' house. More power to him. (I'm still waiting to taste the beer.)

This year should afford me more time to write. Before I close this entry, I do want to mention a particularly important case that the Supreme Court heard in a special session yesterday, and which we've discussed in my Media class. It's called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Briefly, in 2007, a conservative group funded at least partially by corporations wanted to show a 90-minute documentary criticizing Hillary Clinton (to put it lightly). The FEC ruled that because the group was funded by corporations, and because the documentary mounted an attack on a political candidate, broadcasting the documentary would violate a 2002 federal campaign finance law — the McCain-Feingold Act. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that Act back in 2003, though in recent years it has stripped a few provisions away from McCain-Feingold. But this time, the Supreme Court wants to decide whether restricting the broadcast violated the free speech rights of Citizens United, and the corporations that fund it. The case pits the interests of free speech advocates, from the Swift Boaters to the ACLU, against campaign finance advocates, from Bill Moyers to John McCain.

Normally I'm a big free-speech guy, but I do not believe that corporations should have the same First Amendment rights as individuals. Although McCain-Feingold is a flawed law, I agree that we should be able to regulate how much money corporations can pour into political campaigns. Unfortunately, we likely have a Supreme Court with five members who believe that corporations do have the same free-speech rights as you and me. A decision in the case will probably come later this fall.

It's great to be back in the Burg.

No comments: