And We're Back

It's been more than a month since my last law-related post, for which I apologize. Most people reading this probably already know that this is largely due to the birth of my daughter, Eleanor, at the beginning of the month, followed immediately by a traumatic midterm experience, and thence, of course, by normal day-to-day parenting, studying, and general stressing out.

I know: Excuses, excuses. Suck it up, Chris.

So now, after six weeks of silence, where to begin? There was that midterm, mentioned above, which was a travesty I've already wallowed in far too long and too deeply. Let's just say, I was not prepared, and I imploded spectacularly, and spent the next few weeks completely reorienting myself to the whole law school process. The good news is, the test doesn't actually count against me, and the better news is, it served very well to show me just how inadequate my studying up to that point had been, and I'm now feeling much better about things. (At the same time, I acknowledge that the whole law school experience so far has been characterized by a constant swinging between feelings of total comprehension and utter incompetence, which has left me hesitant to count on any good feelings lasting more than a week. But we will see.)

To quickly bring everyone up to speed:

In Civil Procedure, we have moved past the (very lengthy and convoluted) question of personal jurisdiction, and through something called subject matter jurisdiction, which is, thankfully, a little bit simpler than the personal kind. It's basically just about what kinds of cases federal courts are allowed to hear. (State courts have general jurisdiction, so they can hear almost anything.) The two main categories under the subject matter heading are (1) diversity jurisdiction and (2) federal question jurisdiction.

(1) Federal courts may hear a case when the parties are "diverse," meaning none of the plaintiffs are domiciled in the same state as any of the defendants. There are a few complications involving businesses and "aliens," but that's the gist of it. Oh, and the "amount in controversy" in the case has to exceed $75,000.

(2) They may also hear cases which involve (or even better, "arise out of") a "federal question," e.g., a civil rights violation or First Amendment issue. Again, and of course, there are complications, mostly involving how you may or may not tack on state law issues to your federal claims, which then bleeds into the topic of "supplemental" jurisdiction.

After all that, we discussed under what circumstances a case may be "removed" from state court to federal court, and then proceeded to the topic of "venue" (determining which courts within a given judicial system would be "the most sensible and convenient" in which to litigate), and now, to "pleading" (how to write the original "complaint," how to answer it, that sort of thing). One interesting thing about our progress (at least to me) is that we are moving steadily along a spectrum from very Constitutional issues (personal jurisdiction) to those much more governed by statute and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This doesn't really makes things more or less complicated, but definitely requires a different approach in terms of studying and processing the information.

As for Torts, we're still talking about negligence, but whereas we had previously only looked at the rather involved issue of who owes what kind of duty of care to whom (duty and breach, the first two elements of a negligence claim), we have now moved into the realm of causation (the third element), which is much more up my alley. Causation encompasses both "actual" cause and "proximate" cause. Actual cause is usually pretty straightforward: did your negligent act bring about my injury? Or put another away: But for your negligent act, would my injury have occurred? If you negligently ran a red light, but my injured head results from my coincidentally tripping over the curb at the same time, there's no causation. On the other hand, if you hit me and break my leg, and the ambulance taking me to the hospital gets in an accident and I break my arm, and at the hospital instead of putting my arm and leg in a cast they accidentally amputate them, and two years later I am unable to escape from a fire because of my missing limbs and I die, there is, at the least, actual cause. None of it would have happened if you hadn't been talking on your damn cell phone.

Which brings us to "proximate cause." This really has almost nothing to do with causation, apart from the fact that you can't have proximate cause without actual cause. It's really all about how far a person's liability ought to extend. In the above example, you probably should be held accountable for my broken leg, but what about the rest? Are you liable to my family for the lost income and emotional distress brought about by my death two years later? As you can see, things get very interesting very quickly, and I think this has been my favorite part of torts to date. There are philosophical questions involved, which ties in nicely with my other interests, but I think what I love about it is how it's all tied to practicality. Philosophically, every event has infinite causes, and infinite consequences, but this is real life, and we have to draw a line somewhere. Seeing how different courts, at different times, have gone about drawing that line, and trying to figure out where I would draw it, is fascinating. (In case you're curious, although you'd still be liable for the broken arm I got in the ambulance, most likely the hospital staff's gross negligence in amputating my arm and leg would be considered a "superseding cause," and would therefore cut off your liability at that point. Lucky you.)

So, steady on. Shockingly, there are only four weeks of class left (followed by a little over two weeks to study for finals), so it will all be over soon, one way or another. Not so shockingly, I'm feeling very ready for that moment. Not necessarily because law school is so hard, but more because I'd like to be able to spend a bit more time with my family. It's not much fun having to decide between being a good student or being a good father and husband; even worse is feeling like I'm sort of doing a half-assed job of each. Thank goodness Amy and Dashiell (and even Eleanor, already) are so wonderful and forgiving. The best thing I can do is try to deserve them.