3L year starts

I started my 3L year today. My first class is called “Great Cases” and it is a survey of 22 noteworthy Supreme Court cases and sensational trials. The class has an interesting mix of students: there are 3 Scandinavian exchange students, two Chinese LLMs, and some people randomly auditing the class including a Chinese girl from Dartmouth and a former state attorney.

We spent most of our time on course mechanics and trotting through the United States Constitution. I’ve taken two constitutional law classes but this is the first time that I was assigned the entire constitution. The only surprising thing was its brevity and how seemingly unrelated things are clumped together.

The second class of the day was a Death Penalty seminar taught by Professor D.

Professor D. is a trial attorney at Dorsey and Whitney, one of the swank firms in Minneapolis that also employs Professor A.

Professor D. started class by conducting voir dire and quizzing each of us on our views of the death penalty. I tried to explain my apathy in the most intelligent way possible.

Today was also a randomly long day because I started reading for class at noon (after watching Jersey Shore) and I didn’t get out of class until 8pm.

Of course the classes are spaced two hours apart, which is just enough time to shuffle to a nearby café and complete the next class’ reading. Tuesdays are the “long day” in this semester’s schedule, but tomorrow will likely be the most interesting day of the week – my first tax clinic!