First homework assignment...hide the ball?!?!?

[inthesun]

Today was the first official day of classes.  We only had legal writing.  The assignment given to us seemed simple enough: read a case, state the rule, where the rule comes from and what it means.  I get to the case and it is a MESS.  This is not my first time reading a case (I did a summer program at another school to prep), so it's not just reader incompetence.  It literally was a cut and paste mess.  I would be in the middle of one paragraph and it would abruptly stop and start with something else entirely.  I would continue reading and what do you know?  There's the rest of the paragraph that got cut off.  It didn't happen just once, but multiple times.  What the f***?  How am I supposed to complete an assignment when I can't even piece together the frickin case? 

[inthesun]

I understand the need for them to omit particular points, but this is ridiculous.  It was like someone cut and pasted from the case, and did not match the pieces up.  Part one of a paragraph would be on one page and left dangling midsentence, then a few other paragraphs, and then the rest of that first paragraph would be dumped in the middle of the reading.  I literally cut the page up into pieces and tried to put it back together in the correct order (so it would actually make sense).  This is just stupid! 

[kristin1644]

This sounds cruel--law school is hard enough 

[lincolnsgrandson]

Here's a tip - no professor will put a question about fox-hunting on your final.

[inthesun]

 

[cburkedavis]

"Here's a tip - no professor will put a question about fox-hunting on your final."

Not necessarily true--my first year property prof. asked a question about baseballs that are hit out of the park in San Francisco (I think) and who had property rights in them, Barry Bonds or the person who caught the ball.  We were supposed to use the fox hunting case as the starting point for our analysis. . . 

[rapunzel]

Am I understanding this correctly, the professor scrambled the case?  What pedagogical nonsense.  Find an intact version and do your brief from that.  Good lord, there are enough judges out there already writing in a disorganized manner.

[lincolnsgrandson]

That's very interesting.  The Barry Bonds baseball question was based on real-life events - there was a property lawsuit over a Bonds home run ball in San Francisco.  There's even a documentary about it.
As a matter of fact, my professor asked me about the Bonds case in class.  I compared it to that case about ownership over that man's genetic material.  I argued that the gene case wasn't brought because of integrity over his body - he sued because his DNA was a million dollar baseball.   

So the question wasn't actually about fox hunting, but he did expect students to apply the case.  I guess that's fair.  He's asking you to you apply an archaic case, but to a very topical situation. 

Did your crim law professor put any cannibalism on the exam?

[eray01]

Same deal happened to me. I went to Westlaw and pulled the case. Problem solved.

[cburkedavis]

I had actually just watched a news story about the Bonds baseball escapade a few days before, so I was fairly prepared for the question.  I was so obsessed with studying at the time that I was applying the law to everything.  We had to discuss the gene case as well, but you lost points if you didn't mention the fox case.

No cannibalism in crim--just your typical Texas Bar Fight