Just a smattering:
feoffment
escheats
untenantability
consanguinity
tortfeasor
It doesn't even matter what these words mean. They are just fun to say.
And on that note, there are some phrases I like because by virtue of word order they just sound so old and dusty, and you can almost hear the quill pen scratching in the background:
subject to a condition subsequent
within 21 years of a life in being
an action for trespass on the case
OK, so all those are from property...maybe property law is just really old...
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
The Article I Wish I had Time to Write
This might be the first of a whole series of posts that could be subtitled "if I had time." It goes like this:
If I had time, I would love to write a law review article about asylum & narrative. This is because the central piece of an asylee's application is a declaration describing the persecution they suffered in their home country. This might seem to be a reasonable request on the part of the U.S. Government -- after all, your life story is free and when everything else has been taken from you, it is likely to remain.
Or is it?
The irony or tension here is that many if not most asylees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, which is what happens when you are persecuted and/or tortured. One of the main effects this has is to disrupt the coherence of your past and even yourself, and part of the healing process is taking the fragments of traumatic experience and assembling them back into a narrative that allows you to move forward.
So you can look at the asylum process in a very positive way -- that lawyers are facilitating healing in the form of narrative reconstitution. Or you can look it in a more cynical way that SOMEHOW the Government has contrived to ask for the one thing that may be impossible to give.
I would love to write this article but obviously I can't due to the fact that I am spending all my time trying to collect the various springs and moving parts that keep popping out of my brain. BUT if I had time...
Actually, if I had time I would probably start by doing laundry and taking a seven-hour nap...but that is a topic for another post.
If I had time, I would love to write a law review article about asylum & narrative. This is because the central piece of an asylee's application is a declaration describing the persecution they suffered in their home country. This might seem to be a reasonable request on the part of the U.S. Government -- after all, your life story is free and when everything else has been taken from you, it is likely to remain.
Or is it?
The irony or tension here is that many if not most asylees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, which is what happens when you are persecuted and/or tortured. One of the main effects this has is to disrupt the coherence of your past and even yourself, and part of the healing process is taking the fragments of traumatic experience and assembling them back into a narrative that allows you to move forward.
So you can look at the asylum process in a very positive way -- that lawyers are facilitating healing in the form of narrative reconstitution. Or you can look it in a more cynical way that SOMEHOW the Government has contrived to ask for the one thing that may be impossible to give.
I would love to write this article but obviously I can't due to the fact that I am spending all my time trying to collect the various springs and moving parts that keep popping out of my brain. BUT if I had time...
Actually, if I had time I would probably start by doing laundry and taking a seven-hour nap...but that is a topic for another post.
I hope you weren't expecting too much...
...from my first post in almost 7 months, which also happens to my first post-law school post...
because here's what I have to say: the other night I dreamed that I slept through my contracts class two days in a row. not that I went to class and fell asleep, but that I took a nap before class and just slept right through it.
this sounds like a typical anxiety dream except that a) my anxiety dreams are usually about forgetting to wear shoes to important events, and b) I am pretty sure this is related to the time last week when I fell asleep on BART and woke up at the airport (ask me about it! it's a good story).
but the real reason I think this is worth sharing is the mise-en-abyme effect of dreaming about sleeping. in my dreamt nap, what was I dreaming about? and what about the idea that maybe the self you think is a dream is awake and dreaming the self you think is awake -- are those two selves now interchangeable for me?
and furthermore, is my subconscious really that unimaginative that all it can generate is a copy of what I'm already doing? am I that nap-starved? is this the best my fantasy glands can do?
because here's what I have to say: the other night I dreamed that I slept through my contracts class two days in a row. not that I went to class and fell asleep, but that I took a nap before class and just slept right through it.
this sounds like a typical anxiety dream except that a) my anxiety dreams are usually about forgetting to wear shoes to important events, and b) I am pretty sure this is related to the time last week when I fell asleep on BART and woke up at the airport (ask me about it! it's a good story).
but the real reason I think this is worth sharing is the mise-en-abyme effect of dreaming about sleeping. in my dreamt nap, what was I dreaming about? and what about the idea that maybe the self you think is a dream is awake and dreaming the self you think is awake -- are those two selves now interchangeable for me?
and furthermore, is my subconscious really that unimaginative that all it can generate is a copy of what I'm already doing? am I that nap-starved? is this the best my fantasy glands can do?
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