Law School Exams or Falling Into A Burning Ring of Fire
Jake's Commercial Law final went very well. Professor Matthews was no-nonsense with his finals. He didn't bother with long essay questions; he belonged to the short-answer/multiple-choice branch of law school finals. When he said his tests were "short-answer," the answers were short. At most, he wanted two sentences, maybe three. You could answer his questions with two or three sentences, but some people wrote long essays. Most of the times, the people who wrote long essays were way off topic. By the time they finished their answer, they used up a half hour and had several more pages of questions to answer.
All of the questions involved UCC Article Nine, commonly called the Secured Transactions Article of the Uniform Commercial Code. Whoever drafted Article Nine, Jake thought, failed to take a legal writing class like Lawyering, quite possibly, one of the least-liked courses at Davis Law. It might have helped them with their command of the English language. You could sum up one of their convoluted paragraphs into a single sentence, only after you painfully parsed each sentence word by word.
While taking the midterm, Jake discovered he could figure out what questions were likely to be on the current midterm. Jake infered he could figure out what questions and topics were likely to be on Professor Matthews' Commercial Law final. Of course, there would be questions about perfection and security interests, as no Commercial Law final would be complete without one. Jake guessed there would be something about the perfection hierarchy, who would trump whom when there were multiple perfected security interests. His guesses were correct for the most part. Jake completed the final with little fuss; he had to look at the statute supplement a few times to check on the code sections. Other than for that, it went surprisingly well.
His Estates and Trusts final, well, that was a classic LaRusso test. Professor LaRusso was a strict adherent of multiple choice tests. Scantron tests were easy to grade. All you had to do was just stick the Scantron sheets into the machine and press a few buttons. In an hour or two, Professor LaRusso had all the exams graded. Other professors, not wise in the many joys of Scantron, were still grading poorly written essay exams. Professor LaRusso's JD from Harvard actually amounted to something.
Jake had a wonderful time answering Professor's LaRusso Estates and Trusts exam. It was three hours of sheer torture. Judging by the looks of the other students in the room taking the exam, they had the same opinion of the exam as Jake. The material that looked so straight-forward and simple during class became infinitely tougher and harder to understand. Professor LaRusso's exam had that effect on students. The simplest problem could become an ordeal. To get an answer, one had to dig deep into one's memory and spend time stripping away all of the details, leaving behind the bare bones of the problem. Once you got to the basic facts, one could apply the basic rule. Only then, one could apply the exceptions and the exceptions to exceptions. Once you had that down, answering the question became simple. After finishing LaRusso's Estates and Trust final, Jake had a well-deserved drink. He had some extra brain cells to burn.
Evidence. That wasn't a terribly hard final, despite it being a no-note, no-outline, no-nothing final. All the information had to be inside your head and rapidly regurgitated onto the pages of a standard bluebook. This came naturally to Jake. It was rapid-recall of random facts, but for an actual grade. As Professor Pearson promised, his questions were direct and to the point. If the questions was about the self-admissions exception to the hearsay rule, Jake could tell it was about the self-admissions exception to the hearsay rule. Jake also remembered Federal Rules of Evidence 401 and 403. They were the rules involving relevancy. The first, Rule 401, was the definition of relevancy. The second, Rule 403, was the balancing test. Relevant evidence was allowable if it possessed high probative value and low prejudical value. All in all, it was a fair and balanced test. The questions weren't irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent. Also, Jake couldn't object to them for any know reasons now and for any unknown reasons now and hereafter.
Jake took the Business Associations I exam. As advertised by Professor Hendricks, this was an extremely tough exam. During one particularly boring class, Professor Hendricks said that this would be an easy exam. He also added that to compensate, he would be generous and add the statutes in the answer. That way, you could frantically skim through your badly-written notes, your outline, your photocopy materials, and your statute book containing nearly 2,000 pages filled with small font packed into lengthy paragraphs. This, according to Professor Hendricks' expert estimate, would negate the easiness of the exam and make it very tough. After scaring the living daylights out of most of the class, he added that there was six weeks left to the semester and it would be advisable to begin studying and preparing an outline. If at all possible, the students should start doing these things now. Well, they should have ideally started last week, but that was just his personal opinion.
After listening to that speech, Jake wasn't bothered the slightest bit. No, Jake wasn't the proverbial law school gunner; he was far from it. You didn't need to read a week ahead of schedule. You didn't need to buy the expensive commercial outlines. Jake believed that if you read the materials, took good notes, and did constant review, it wasn't necessary to put so much emphasis into making outlines and all-night study sessions during finals period or for any period before finals. Ultra-intensive study sessions just made a bad situation worse. If you didn't know the basics before finals, you weren't going to learn it in the week before finals, let alone the night before.
The last final in his schedule. The one final that Jake dreaded. Constitutional Law taught by Professor Tracy. Jake dreaded it not because it was tough, but Jake dreaded it because it was irrelevant. The final itself wasn't irrelevant (Constitutional Law was a required course and finals were always relevant), but most of the questions were irrelevant. Instead of focusing on applicable and current law, Professor Tracy always asked many questions based upon outdated and overruled law. For instance, Jake saw a Commerce Clause question that asked how the hypothetical fact pattern would have been ruled upon if they used the Marshall court interpretation of the Commerce Clause. This test was invalidated by the Lochner court, which was invalidated by the modern approach, which became current law in 1975. In Jake's opinion, it was a total waste of time to answer questions based upon outdated law. Then again, he wasn't the professor and he was paying for this experience.
In addition to asking irrelevant questions based upon antiquated and useless interpretations of law (this complaint also applied to Torts I, a class based upon the teaching of old laws that nobody used as they were replaced by modern laws), Professor Tracy also asked the most convoluted hypothetical questions based upon laughable fact patterns that would never exist in real life. Then again, one could argue that fact was stranger than fiction and some real cases just sounded improbable to have actually occured. A lot of the Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, and Torts I cases were prime examples. Fact has always been stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense, whereas fact is never required to make sense in any shape or form. The following is an actual fact pattern and question from a Professor Tracy Constitutional Law exam. Read at your own risk.
After completing his finals, Jake felt an immense sense of relief in surviving this ordeal. For some reason, Jake had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, that feeling of self-doubt and paranoia that one gets when things go better than expected, when a supposedly difficult experience is easier than expected. At these times, long after the final is over, Jake would mull on the questions, check his notes, and come up with the correct answers. He then would spend time wondering if he wrote the correct answer in his Bluebook or if he wrote the incorrect one in his Bluebook or if he added in that obscure reference to a certain comment in a certain statute. It was an endless cycle of doubt that drove Jake and other law school students crazy, especially the gunners, the people with the perfect 4.0 GPA during their academic career, and the Type-A personality perfectionists. Interestingly enough, all these qualities were found in one person. After going through several cycles, Jake would inevitably get out of it and take a more relaxed stance. He did his best and whatever grade he got, it was the grade he got. Grades were infuriatingly subjective in law school and once you turned your Bluebook in, it was up to the professors to determine it.
Jake decided that he would go to a party being held at Taylor's. There was going to be free beer and pizza. You really couldn't beat that combination. It was a lot better than worrying over law school finals and what grades he was going to get.
All of the questions involved UCC Article Nine, commonly called the Secured Transactions Article of the Uniform Commercial Code. Whoever drafted Article Nine, Jake thought, failed to take a legal writing class like Lawyering, quite possibly, one of the least-liked courses at Davis Law. It might have helped them with their command of the English language. You could sum up one of their convoluted paragraphs into a single sentence, only after you painfully parsed each sentence word by word.
While taking the midterm, Jake discovered he could figure out what questions were likely to be on the current midterm. Jake infered he could figure out what questions and topics were likely to be on Professor Matthews' Commercial Law final. Of course, there would be questions about perfection and security interests, as no Commercial Law final would be complete without one. Jake guessed there would be something about the perfection hierarchy, who would trump whom when there were multiple perfected security interests. His guesses were correct for the most part. Jake completed the final with little fuss; he had to look at the statute supplement a few times to check on the code sections. Other than for that, it went surprisingly well.
His Estates and Trusts final, well, that was a classic LaRusso test. Professor LaRusso was a strict adherent of multiple choice tests. Scantron tests were easy to grade. All you had to do was just stick the Scantron sheets into the machine and press a few buttons. In an hour or two, Professor LaRusso had all the exams graded. Other professors, not wise in the many joys of Scantron, were still grading poorly written essay exams. Professor LaRusso's JD from Harvard actually amounted to something.
Jake had a wonderful time answering Professor's LaRusso Estates and Trusts exam. It was three hours of sheer torture. Judging by the looks of the other students in the room taking the exam, they had the same opinion of the exam as Jake. The material that looked so straight-forward and simple during class became infinitely tougher and harder to understand. Professor LaRusso's exam had that effect on students. The simplest problem could become an ordeal. To get an answer, one had to dig deep into one's memory and spend time stripping away all of the details, leaving behind the bare bones of the problem. Once you got to the basic facts, one could apply the basic rule. Only then, one could apply the exceptions and the exceptions to exceptions. Once you had that down, answering the question became simple. After finishing LaRusso's Estates and Trust final, Jake had a well-deserved drink. He had some extra brain cells to burn.
Evidence. That wasn't a terribly hard final, despite it being a no-note, no-outline, no-nothing final. All the information had to be inside your head and rapidly regurgitated onto the pages of a standard bluebook. This came naturally to Jake. It was rapid-recall of random facts, but for an actual grade. As Professor Pearson promised, his questions were direct and to the point. If the questions was about the self-admissions exception to the hearsay rule, Jake could tell it was about the self-admissions exception to the hearsay rule. Jake also remembered Federal Rules of Evidence 401 and 403. They were the rules involving relevancy. The first, Rule 401, was the definition of relevancy. The second, Rule 403, was the balancing test. Relevant evidence was allowable if it possessed high probative value and low prejudical value. All in all, it was a fair and balanced test. The questions weren't irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent. Also, Jake couldn't object to them for any know reasons now and for any unknown reasons now and hereafter.
Jake took the Business Associations I exam. As advertised by Professor Hendricks, this was an extremely tough exam. During one particularly boring class, Professor Hendricks said that this would be an easy exam. He also added that to compensate, he would be generous and add the statutes in the answer. That way, you could frantically skim through your badly-written notes, your outline, your photocopy materials, and your statute book containing nearly 2,000 pages filled with small font packed into lengthy paragraphs. This, according to Professor Hendricks' expert estimate, would negate the easiness of the exam and make it very tough. After scaring the living daylights out of most of the class, he added that there was six weeks left to the semester and it would be advisable to begin studying and preparing an outline. If at all possible, the students should start doing these things now. Well, they should have ideally started last week, but that was just his personal opinion.
After listening to that speech, Jake wasn't bothered the slightest bit. No, Jake wasn't the proverbial law school gunner; he was far from it. You didn't need to read a week ahead of schedule. You didn't need to buy the expensive commercial outlines. Jake believed that if you read the materials, took good notes, and did constant review, it wasn't necessary to put so much emphasis into making outlines and all-night study sessions during finals period or for any period before finals. Ultra-intensive study sessions just made a bad situation worse. If you didn't know the basics before finals, you weren't going to learn it in the week before finals, let alone the night before.
The last final in his schedule. The one final that Jake dreaded. Constitutional Law taught by Professor Tracy. Jake dreaded it not because it was tough, but Jake dreaded it because it was irrelevant. The final itself wasn't irrelevant (Constitutional Law was a required course and finals were always relevant), but most of the questions were irrelevant. Instead of focusing on applicable and current law, Professor Tracy always asked many questions based upon outdated and overruled law. For instance, Jake saw a Commerce Clause question that asked how the hypothetical fact pattern would have been ruled upon if they used the Marshall court interpretation of the Commerce Clause. This test was invalidated by the Lochner court, which was invalidated by the modern approach, which became current law in 1975. In Jake's opinion, it was a total waste of time to answer questions based upon outdated law. Then again, he wasn't the professor and he was paying for this experience.
In addition to asking irrelevant questions based upon antiquated and useless interpretations of law (this complaint also applied to Torts I, a class based upon the teaching of old laws that nobody used as they were replaced by modern laws), Professor Tracy also asked the most convoluted hypothetical questions based upon laughable fact patterns that would never exist in real life. Then again, one could argue that fact was stranger than fiction and some real cases just sounded improbable to have actually occured. A lot of the Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, and Torts I cases were prime examples. Fact has always been stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense, whereas fact is never required to make sense in any shape or form. The following is an actual fact pattern and question from a Professor Tracy Constitutional Law exam. Read at your own risk.
Question 1 (50 Points):The previous question was one out of a series of questions in a typical Tracy exam. One question written by Tracy was bad enough. Just imagine answering three questions just like that, but even longer. Two parts to each question is abnormal for a Tracy question. In general, there were three or four parts to each question, thereby making the experience worse. Just when you thought the question was over, there was yet another subpart to it. Likewise, just when you thought the exam was over, you had one more question to answer. It was no wonder the wiser students at Davis Law said to avoid Constitutional Law during the fall semester and to take it during the spring when Professor Alliston taught the class. Jake heard that Alliston was much better. He had proof that the previous statement was correct.
The following facts apply to the following questions.
In the State of Green, the legislature has enacted a law called "Richard's Law." This law, named after Richard Douglas, makes it mandatory for all citizens of Green to donate bone marrow once during their lifetime and blood on four specific days every year. The state of Green rewards citizens who donate blood on non-mandatory days and who donate on a regular basis. The citizen can choose between a $500 tax credit or $500 check at the end of the year. The state justifies this law by stating that thousands of people die every year due to a lack of bone marrow and that there is a shortage of blood in hospitals and at blood banks.
A. (20 Points) Mike Blue, a citizen of Gray, argues that this law is unconstitutional. Assuming this case makes it to the Green Supreme Court, what level of scrutiny will the Court use and why?
B. (30 Points) Assume that Green Blood Center located in the State of Green sells leftover blood to BioMed Incorporated, a biomedical reseach company located in the State of Confusion. BioMed uses this leftover blood to test anti-malaria and sickle cell anemia drugs. Under Confusion Statute 3-1415, it is illegal to transport blood products across state lines if it was received without the consent of the donor.
According to Confusion Statute 1-9090, consent does not include mandatory acts required by law. Does Confusion Statute 3-1415 violate the Commerce Clause under the modern view?
After completing his finals, Jake felt an immense sense of relief in surviving this ordeal. For some reason, Jake had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, that feeling of self-doubt and paranoia that one gets when things go better than expected, when a supposedly difficult experience is easier than expected. At these times, long after the final is over, Jake would mull on the questions, check his notes, and come up with the correct answers. He then would spend time wondering if he wrote the correct answer in his Bluebook or if he wrote the incorrect one in his Bluebook or if he added in that obscure reference to a certain comment in a certain statute. It was an endless cycle of doubt that drove Jake and other law school students crazy, especially the gunners, the people with the perfect 4.0 GPA during their academic career, and the Type-A personality perfectionists. Interestingly enough, all these qualities were found in one person. After going through several cycles, Jake would inevitably get out of it and take a more relaxed stance. He did his best and whatever grade he got, it was the grade he got. Grades were infuriatingly subjective in law school and once you turned your Bluebook in, it was up to the professors to determine it.
Jake decided that he would go to a party being held at Taylor's. There was going to be free beer and pizza. You really couldn't beat that combination. It was a lot better than worrying over law school finals and what grades he was going to get.
posted by J.U. at 11/17/2005 05:47:00 AM
0 comments
