I PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!

Yay - bar exam results are in and I passed!

Bar Exam Day 3

The test is finally over.

After the stress of the last two days, today felt easy. It was almost like they gave us softball questions. Overall, I don't think I did too badly. I had an answer for every question - even if I had to boldly assert my made up rule law on occasion :)

I won't offer any words of advice on the test itself - those will come after I find out if I passed! My tips to future Ohio bar takers are:

• take some kind of cushion - you'll spend 2 1/2 days sitting on a metal folding chair and by the middle of the second day your back will be screaming at you.
• make sure you can stand to use your ink pen for three hours at a stretch if you're handwriting.
  
• definitely dress in layers - the room has the potential to be freezing cold, especially if it's raining outside and you're wet.
  
• work on developing your bladder of steel - there are only three restrooms for 1200 people. The lines at the restroom right before the start of a testing session are extremely long.
  
• if you feel the need to socialize, arrange to stay at the same hotel as your friends
• make a pact with your friends not to discuss the test
• you're going to be too tired to study on Tuesday and Wednesday nights
• there is nothing to eat in the vicinity of the hotels so you're stuck with the hotel restaurant unless you bring snacks of your own.
  
• there's no point in rushing toward the doors after the test - if you're in the back of the room like I was there's going to be a bottleneck by the time you get to the exits and you're not going to get out of the parking lot anytime soon anyway.
  

That's it so far. I'm just glad to be home. Now I need to figure out what to do with myself now that I don't have to obsessively study.

Bar Exam Day 2

I've concluded that today was more a test of endurance than a test of legal knowledge. Today was the second full day of sitting on a hard, metal chair in a freezing room. Instead of aggravating my carpal tunnel syndrome by writing for six hours, I spent the six hours today filling in bubbles for a multiple choice test.

Supposedly, the morning and afternoon portions of the MBE are of the same difficulty. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is a significant drop in score between the morning and afternoon sessions. By the time the afternoon rolled around I was too tired and in too much pain to really give thought to the questions. I found myself wanting to just pick an answer and get it over with. That wouldn't have done any good though because no one is allowed to leave before the end of the time for the exam and until the proctors have collected all the materials.

Tomorrow is the final portion - six more essays over three hours. Then begins the wait until the end of October for results.

Isn't there some scripture about litigation?

From Tennessee - gotta love it when the church split makes it to court.

Avondale Church of Christ

Texas Style Deposition

WARNING: Some Offensive Language

Red Mass 2007

Mark your calendars:

Friday, Sept 14, 2007
4:30pm
St. Xavier Church, 607 Sycamore St, Cincinnati
Sponsored by the St. Thomas More Society of Greater Cincinnati

Featured Speaker: Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, Ohio Supreme Court

"A Chill Wind From Rome...."

The Legal and Catholic Blogspheres are abuzz with discussion of the Supreme Court's recent affirmation of the partial birth abortion ban.

A lot of the discussion is centering around whether the majority (all five of whom happen to be Catholic--Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy) voted based on the law or voted based on religion.

I strongly suspect the majority vote was based more on the justices' theory of Constitutional interpretation much more than it was based on their religion. After all, it's not as if they did anything overly radical--they upheld a law that had been passed by Congress.

Sure, Alito, Roberts and Kennedy were dark horses but anyone who's ever read any opinions authored by Scalia or Thomas had to know how their vote would go. Neither of them sees a Constitutional right to an abortion.

What saddens me is that the discourse focuses on the justices' religion than it does on the state of our society. What kind of society legalizes infanticide? If you don't think it's infanticide, read the description of the procedure from the majority opinion.

Constitutional Evil?

The Northern Kentucky Law Review hosted a symposium today at Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. My Constitutional law professor was on one of the panels, so his students were "strongly encouraged" to attend (there will be a question on the final.)

I found the whole thing fairly interesting. The panelist opposite my professor was a professor from the University of Maryland named Mark Graber. Graber hypothesizes that the Dred Scott decision, one of the most reviled Supreme Court decisions, was decided rightly given the time and the state of the law at that time. While I'm not sure I can agree with him (I haven't read his book yet, so I'm not entirely clear on what all of his points are), he raises an interesting point.

(For non law-types, Dred Scott was decided in 1857 and held that African Americans had no right to sue in federal court and also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.)