Argue with Jack

[jack24]

Now I do think law school is a massive time waster, but that doesn't mean I don't think it's necessary, and I don't really have many ideas to improve it.

Now this all depends on your goals, so if your goals are far different from mine (learning what I need to learn to be a great attorney) then you may have a different outlook. 
Reasons why it's a waste of time:

1: All classes are not equal.  Some 3 credit classes shouldn't take nearly as long to learn as others, but the 3 credit classes all get the same amount of time. 

2:  Learning to think like a lawyer is important, but it really doesn't take all that long.  At some point you need to get down to what is going to be on the test and what will be on the bar, and unfortunately, most students have to do that on their own.

3:  All the time you have to spend in the summer prepping for the bar is time that you could have spent during your third year prepping for the bar.  If you took new 3Ls and new graduates, ran them all through a tough barbri course, and then had them take the bar 3 months later, do you think the pass rates would differ substantially?  Most of my third year classes are going to be classes that just happen to fit around my work schedule.

4:  You can learn a lot faster on the job, especially after the first year of law school is over.  Law schools are trying to correct this with clinics and practical training, which is evidence that the industry thinks law school is inefficient.

5:  Some of my teachers are amazing, and some suck.  Therefore, my time is automatically less efficient in the sucky classes.  This may be due to individual preference, but it's still a time waster.

6:  A lot of your time in law school is spent learning a general form of the law.  Chances are you'll just have to go out there to your job and learn the applicable law for your jurisdiction.  Or you may go out and practice criminal law, and so some of your business classes might have been a waste.  I think we'd all be better suited if the 3rd year was an apprenticeship instead of in class.

7:  I'm reasonable sure that my grader for 1L spring would have been similar if I would have never gone to class.  I wish the law school would give me a chance to try this method out, but unfortunately that's not possible.   Seriously, if you've learned how to write a good final exam answer, and if you know how to read a statute, you could probably learn and apply article 9 or the business associations statutes and get a good grade.  There's a lot of people out there who say that going to class is where you learn what the professor wants.  I'm sure that's true in some cases, but most of my professors have so many finals to grade that they reward people who bring up good issues, state good rules, and provide solid analysis. 

[dashrashi]

oh my god. Carolene Products footnote 4.

Or do you prefer mob rule generally?

[jack24]

oh my god. Carolene Products footnote 4.

Or do you prefer mob rule generally?

Hey Dash.  Good to hear from you.

I'm not saying that there isn't a strong legal argument against my point about gay marriage, I was arguing that Irrx's argument was an argument for taking religion based morality out of the law.  His argument didn't do anything to refute the idea that the vote of the people should be able to determine contracts. Morality and law don't always go together, but there are many circumstances where the vote of the people upholds a societal norm or moral.


Now I know this argument drives you absolutely crazy, but please do me a favor and think about this for just a second:
Not allowing Gay marriage is not discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  It effects everyone regardless of sexual orientation.   Maybe that's ludicrous, because it naturally has the biggest impact on homosexuals, but what people want to do (i.e., get married) isn't really a determination.  I can't marry my best guy friend and get all the benefits of marriage.  So what if I don't have that desire.  The ability to marry a man depends on sex, not preference or sexual orientation.  It's not like we will require a homosexual man to prove he's homosexual before he gets married.  Therefore, he will be evaluated based on his sex alone. 
So not allowing gay marriage discriminates equally against all men/women.     Women can marry men, but men cannot marry men, so women have a right that men don't have. (The opposite circumstance also applies)
So should the courts apply strict scrutiny on this basis?  I assume you'll bring up Loving v. Virginia, and rightly so, but I think gay marriage is more similar to the argument over women fighting war on the front lines, and I believe they currently aren't allowed to do so.
I'm not as knowledgeable about constitutional law as you, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but the court doesn't always have to apply strict scrutiny on sex discrimination cases does it?
Also, I want to say that you have a strong argument for the court to overturn the vote of the people, but I don't think it's open and shut. 

[EarlCat]

Not allowing Gay marriage is not discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  It effects everyone regardless of sexual orientation.   Maybe that's ludicrous, because it naturally has the biggest impact on homosexuals, but what people want to do (i.e., get married) isn't really a determination.  I can't marry my best guy friend and get all the benefits of marriage.  So what if I don't have that desire. 

I think there's some Section 1985(3) scotus caselaw (specifically regarding discriminatory animus) that deals with a similar idea.  It might have been in a dissent, so I forget which way the court went.

[dashrashi]

sexual orientation discrimination, and specifically anti-same-sex-marriage ordinances discriminate on the basis of sex. My friend Austin is a man. I can marry him because I am a woman. If I were a man, I would not be allowed to marry him. Similarly, my friend Evan cannot marry Austin because Evan is a man. If Evan were a woman, Evan would be allowed to marry Austin. Anti-"gay"-marriage ordinances discriminate against Evan on the basis of Evan's sex. This is not constitutional (under rational basis or intermediate/strict scrutiny). This is exactly analogous to Loving, where prohibiting whites from marrying blacks as well as prohibiting blacks from marrying whites was explicitly held to be discriminatory and NOT "equal treatment." That was held in the 1960s not to constitute equality in the meaning of the Equal Protection clause.

Sex discrimination demands heightened scrutiny when the statute/law is facially based on sex, as these ordinances are. It's kind of mushy whether it's intermediate scrutiny, strict scrutiny, or something in between. Depends on who you ask, but sex discrimination at least gets "intermediate" scrutiny.

(Although same-sex marriage ordinances have been overturned on rational basis review, I believe.)

I don't see the analogy to Rostker, which is still good law for a number of doctrinally different reasons. (Not to mention wrongly decided in the first place.) (Nor to the combat exclusion as a policy, which may be what you're referring to.)

The Bill of Rights, and arguably the Supreme Court, exist in order to ensure that the majority does not have free "democratic" reign to oppress the minority whenever it feels like. That's the Carolene Products point, and it gets at the underlying point of homophobia and bigotry, which is what these laws are really about, just as Loving acknowledged that what was really going on was racial purity as a means of reinforcing white supremacy. Oppression by the majority is something I am extremely attuned to, and I have absolutely no qualms about the court stepping in to do its job of preventing it.

[jack24]

The Bill of Rights, and arguably the Supreme Court, exist in order to ensure that the majority does not have free "democratic" reign to oppress the minority whenever it feels like. That's the Carolene Products point, and it gets at the underlying point of homophobia and bigotry, which is what these laws are really about, just as Loving acknowledged that what was really going on was racial purity as a means of reinforcing white supremacy. Oppression by the majority is something I am extremely attuned to, and I have absolutely no qualms about the court stepping in to do its job of preventing it.

But do you recognize any other motivations behind opposing gay marriage other than homophobia and bigotry?

[dashrashi]

--Religion, which often has aspects of homophobia built in
--visceral disgust and dismay at the thought of the homosexual act, which I am straight-up willing to call homophobia when manifested anywhere beyond the bounds of one's own personal skull
--considered disgust and dismay at the thought of the homosexual act (see above)
--the belief that gay people should not raise children or are less appropriate/effective parents, although this is of course irrelevant (infertile and non-reproducing opposite-sex people marry all the time), such that the very raising of this point as a possible ground of opposition tends to show bad faith and pretext, evincing homophobia
--"tradition" for its own sake; also so fundamentally stupid that, like the irrelevant grounds, simply raising this as a basis for the opinion tends to indicate to me the presence of bad faith and pretext, therefore the real-but-heretofore-hidden ground of homophobia/bigotry
--"majority rules"--this is unsatisfying since it does not account for the reasons of that majority, who presumably are not all doing this just because everyone else is doing it (i.e. certainly not everyone involved in the "majority" feels the way they do because they believe in "majority rules"--it gets tautological and nonsensical very quickly, as well as being wholly hypothetical and not based in reality)

I'm out, pretty much.