Category Archives: Law

May 26, 2012 · 11:57 AM

Intersession Course

I took Sports Law over the last two weeks with Michael McCann. The guy is a straight up stud. His Vermont Law School bio says this:

“Professor Michael McCann is a nationally recognized expert in the fields of sports law, antitrust, and law and economics. He received tenure in 2010 and is Director of the Sports Law Institute.

Professor McCann is also Sports Illustrated‘s Legal Analyst, the “Sports Law” columnist on SI.com (CNNSI) , and he recently joined NBA TV as the On-Air Legal Analyst.  He is providing on-air legal analysis of the NBA Lockout and other basketball and law matters.  Professor McCann’s commentary for Sports Illustrated has attracted national acclaim. He has received recognition from The American Lawyer and the Newhouse School of Public Communications, among other entities, for excellence in journalism.

In addition, Professor McCann is a co-founder of The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School.  He also teaches a sports law and analytics reading group at Yale Law School. It is the first sports law and analytics course to be offered at a law school.

Professor McCann has placed scholarly articles in the Yale Law Journal, Wisconsin Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Connecticut Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law, among other law reviews. His most recent article is American Needle v. NFL: An Opportunity to Reshape Sports Law, 119 YALE LAW JOURNAL 726 (2010).

Professor McCann was a visiting associate professor of law at Boston College Law School in 2008, during which time he also served as Chair of the Association of American Law School’s Section on Law and Sports. Professor McCann is also the Distinguished Visiting Hall of Fame Professor of Law at Mississippi College School of Law, where he was an assistant professor of law between 2005 and 2008 and where he now teaches a sports law course every summer. While at Mississippi, Professor McCann received the school’s most prestigious awards for teaching, including the Professor of the Year Award in 2006-07 and 2007-08 and the Professor of the Year for First-Year Courses Award in all three years. He was also honored with the Phi Delta Phi Professor of the Year Award in 2007-08 and his colleagues named him the recipient of the Shirley Norwood Jones Faculty Award, also in 2007-08.

Professor McCann is also a legal correspondent for the nationally syndicated Dan Patrick Show and he has been frequently interviewed on television programs, including HBO’s Bob Costas Now, CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, American Morning, Headline News, and Glenn Beck Show, Fox News’ Fox Live Desk, and CNBC’s Morning Call and Power Lunch. He has also been interviewed on NPR, BBC, CBC, CBS Radio, ESPN Radio, the Lou Dobbs Radio Show, and the Jim Rome Show, and by the New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week. Additionally, Professor McCann contributes to two award-winning blogs: Sports Law Blog and The Situationist.

Prior to becoming a law professor, Professor McCann served as counsel to college football star Maurice Clarett in his lawsuit against the National Football League and its age eligibility rule (Clarett v. NFL, 369 F.3d 124 (2nd Cir. 2004); cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 1728 (2005)). He also served as a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School and legal counsel to U.S. Congressman Marty Meehan.

Professor McCann received his LLM from Harvard Law School, his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, and his BA, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University. At Virginia, he was named a Hardy Cross Dillard Fellow, served as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, and received the law school’s Best Oral Advocacy Award.”

 

Needless to say, I have learned a ton. I wish it was a class I could take all summer instead of just these two weeks.

~YJ_SL

1 Comment

Filed under Blawg, Journalism, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 14, 2012 · 1:06 AM

1L Year: Done

What a ride.

There is no other coming of age ritual quite like the feeling one gets when they say that a chapter is over in life. None is more enveloping as the 1L year. There is no other question about the things you can accomplish when I think of the yeah I have had.

All the late nights, studying, practice tests and reading have lead to an academic life that is mid-range. The drinking, making new friends and being in a new city has given me a life experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Thomas Edison may have put my law school experience best. He said, “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” I started with real planning and perceived intelligence but realized that sometimes it is the head games of what others believe you seem to be doing that is just as successful. Yet, some of those hours in the library that people thought I was studying was merely me writing for this blawg. That may have made them work harder, in turn decreasing my grade.

But it’s over. At least for now.

Sugar Ray Leonard once said, “Although it was a great accomplishment to win a gold medal, as soon as they put it on you, that’s it; your career is over.” My career isn’t over, but my blawg is no longer in the realm of the 1L category. I am now a rising 2L with his own challenges and beliefs that will be chronicled to the best of my ability.

While, I am not necessarily a supporter of our current President, Barack Obama, I can say with no shadow of a doubt that he understood the same things that I am going through now as a true crossroads in understanding of law and society. In his book, Dreams From My Father; A Story of Race and Inheritance, he eloquently wrote this; “The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power–and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.
But that’s not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.”

I don’t know if I can handle that at times. This societal memory. This bigger than I sense of accomplishment with a larger than life topic. Law is bigger than any of its pundits and teachers. It is us. It is in the very fabric of our being. And now, I, Aaron Hommell, am stuck within its varied conversations. Its endless wins and losses, coupled with shame and glory. Blind or not, justice is served.

Today a 2L, things are very much the same.

~YJ_SL

 

2 Comments

Filed under Blawg, Journalism, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 13, 2012 · 7:16 AM

Spring Colors Are A Problem

Wear for Monday

Not just myself, but a few others have taken on the look of colored shirt/tie and/or blazer everyday.

Yes, that is a lime green gingham shirt, navy blue and white polka dot tie, and a lavender polo sip up sweater.

Yes, It is before 7 AM in this picture and I am dying.

Get off me.

~YJ_SL

Leave a Comment

Filed under Blawg, Journalism, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 21, 2011 · 11:30 PM

Execution Controversy

Let’s talk Troy Davis. Quite a few friends on Facebook are trying to compare the case to the Casey Anthony verdict saying that “CA can walk the streets while TD is dying. unfair.”

These cases are so wildly not similar that I won’t even credit that with a response. Your statement is awarded no points. We are all dumber for having read it and may god have mercy on your soul.

The other post I have seen tonight is, “y is killing cops different from killing other people? What makes cops special?”

I’m sorry folks. I bit the bait on this one and responded.

‎”‘Y is it that a cops.life is more important than any other human life?’ Really? Do you think that is the major issue here? The reason society holds different standards is that there is a deterrence to the killing of a cop that is necessitated so as to stem violence against those who uphold the statutes in our respective states. The guy flipping fries at mcdonalds is not held to the same standards as police officers and doesn’t uphold law or keep peace. The Police do. By killing a police officer, a person is shooting at the government itself. The real question here is matter of evidence, not the social norms we place on society in our execution of sentencing. The man was given ample time to appeal the decision. The system, as JG said, is flawed. Question the system. It is good to do that. We are called as citizens to do this.”

While my response is filled with a few holes and I wrote it hastily, I think that will give the poster something to chew on for a few minutes anyway.

If the man is innocent the system is at blame: if the man is guilty the system is at blame.

Understanding my place in law school is harder when I think about these types of things. Some day, through no action of my own, I may be forced to prosecute a defendant to the death penalty. I may be able to defend a man and successfully keep him from being executed. That is a heavy topic to think about as I read about jurisdiction and minor torts like trespass to chattles.

~YJ_SL

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Blawg, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 11, 2011 · 11:56 PM

Weekend Update

Friday I went out to dinner with K and had a great time. We went to Outback Steakhouse and then were dorks and watched Law and Order on K’s 13 inch tv. I was home by 11:30. D wanted me to tell her a story on Friday night. I wanted to say “I’ll tell you a story about Annie McGory, and Then I’ll tell you another about her brother.” This was something my g-ma would always say and it still sticks.

Instead, I told her the story of the Pickle Jar. My G-ma used to tell me this story when I was little.

There once was a greedy little boy who loved pickles. He loved them so much and when he would get home from school he would race to the fridge and have a pickle. He was told by his mother not to eat more than one or he would spoil his dinner. Over time, the boy took more than one all of the time. Seeing her son eat up the grocery budget in pickles and barely being hungry for dinner, she devised a plan. She bought a different kind of pickle jar with a smaller opening. The boy got home from school that day and he raced to the fridge. He pulled out the pickles and jammed his hand down into the cold pickle-y goodness. When he grabbed the pickle he was startled to find that his hand wouldn’t come out. If he dropped the pickle he could get his hand out… but if he grabbed the pickle, his fist was too big to get out of the jar. This was not a good situation.

When I was little the story would stop there while I thought of ways to get the pickles out…. I wasn’t smart enough yet to figure it out.

Over time my g-ma added to the story… The boy’s grandmother came in and gave him a fork to pull out the pickles… she would say.

After I told D this story (annotated version) she said my stories “suck.”

I don’t think they suck. I had to get a birthday card for my brother and I happened to see this birthday card in the shape of a pickle. I got it and gave it to D, as a reminder that my stories don’t suck. When she opened it this evening, I think you could have hit her with a bus and she still would have been smiling! (bear in mind she was thinking of ways to commit suicide while she was procrastinating the writing assignment we have due tomorrow.) I’m happy I could make someone else happy.

Saturday I worked hard on an assignment for Legal Writing. It is just a memo but it is also 10 pages long (double spaced) and I hate citations. I don’t think it is very good, but it is just a draft and mine is 1,798 words of the maximum 1,800. I should be decently okay.

I went to a friend’s house and watched the Notre Dame fiasco Saturday night. Many things troubled me that night. 1) Denard Robinson is not my favorite person. 2) Notre Dame can do anything but score in the red zone this season. 3) Notre Dame’s throwback unis are horrid. No one wants a shamrock covering up golden helmets with 24 karat gold dust in the paint. 4) People are dating people in my section. 5) I’m not dating people in my section. 6) law students can still be catty even when outside of school. 7) even while I am noticing these things I am still happy as hell. 8 ) don’t judge people. They are typically all good people… unless they aren’t.

Today I finished up some editing and read for my other classes. All in all it was a glorious weekend minus the big loss for my Irish.

I hope ya’ll don’t think my stories suck.

~YJ_SL

Leave a Comment

Filed under Blawg, Family, Home, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , ,

September 8, 2011 · 12:17 AM

Birthday

Today (Wed.) was/is my birthday.

I don’t particularily like birthdays. I think they are kind of neat, but not my favorite thing in the world.

I worked my ass off today and got a lot of what I need done for the rest of the week out of the way so I can focus on an assignment for my legal writing class. I’m not sure how, but I have accomplished something I never thought would happen: I’m way ahead. I usually am the guy just strumming along… but not in law school.

With it being my birthday, and the fact that I am ahead slightly… I took the opportunity to sit down and right this post with a Hendrick’s Gin & tonic in my hand. Epic decision. Some of my twitter followers turned me away from my former favorites like Beefeater, Bombay and Tanqueray, and turned me onto this wonderfully sweet libation. Words cannot describe how much better it is than any other gin I have tried. Period. End of story.

I also promised that I would upload a picture of the cake I took to the party Monday. Here is the cake.

Flag Cake

Anywho, I’ll post a better update later.I have some wildly hilarious stuff to post.

 

~YJ_SL

2 Comments

Filed under Blawg, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 2, 2011 · 9:43 PM

SBA Elections

I may have been an avid member of my undergrad’s student government… but I doubt that will ever happen in Law School. We have elections for the representatives for the 1Ls coming up. Today… there was brownie and highlighter tables with handshakes and smiles. There are guys and gals running. Everyone seems like okay folks… but I’m not so sure.

Look, we have been in class for 2 1/2 weeks. It would be hard for me to run when I couldn’t possibly know if I would have the time or inclination to be that kind of leader in my school. I have a hard enough time getting ready for class each day. Surely it is the same for these folks as well.

I am more surprised by some of the folks who are not running. There are a few great (and I mean great) potential leaders that I have met. These folks have stood on the sideline. The other “power-hungry” ones are surprising that they will not be in the election as well. The “power-hungry” folks are the most worrisome to me. These people are the ones who would love to hide books in the library, not pass along outlines or tips as they get them. I’m a pretty fair guy. I think someone’s hard work should allow them to succeed. When some of these folks do the things they do… It shows me how insecure they are. I had a girl tell me in the library that a book I needed was on the “to be shelved” cart. It wasn’t. It was sitting on the table behind her. I figured this out 15 minutes later. (I don’t know that she knew for a fact that she sent me on a wild goose chase, I guess) Waste of my time. Why does something small like this matter? It matters because I play very fair. I’m helpful when a question is asked to me. I’m friendly. I’m not cutthroat in the least. But, oh hell can I be!

I have a core nucleus of friends here at school who all happen to be girls. I make that notation because in the library other girls outside of this group either think I am a stud or gay. I’m guessing they think I’m gay. Oh well. Game son. I have it.

Just kidding. These people think like I do when it comes to school. They are the best because they have insightful comments and are normal everyday people. I like that. There are 5 of us in this small self-made study group.

C-A is a southern belle with an accent that would slap your grand-daddy off his rocker on the hottest day in august. (I’m guessing that is like a southern-ism.) She doesn’t spend as much time with the overall group but she is pleasant and takes light ribbing well. She sees things from a different angle than myself often which helps us talk out issues.

E is also from this area and went to another school in my town. She is quiet except when she knows the answer in class. She then becomes the sniper gunner answering questions in perfect concise manner. She is a beast in the library and gets things done efficiently and effectively. She has a fiance that goes to school a few hours away. She is visiting him over the weekend and is thus out of town.

D-S is from Orlando, Fl. and reminds me of someone familiar but I cannot figure out who. She is a fellow somewhat-lapsed catholic and is a good time. She has some aspirations for school that are high but definitely manageable from her work ethic. We think differently when it comes to some political issues, however she is fun to hang around and our conversations leave both of us for the better. I haven’t seen her upset yet. Just a happy-go-lucky person.

Dix is, like E, from this town. She is a sorority sister of E and the daughter of a local lawyer. She is an avid studier… just not in the library unless it is in the middle of the day. She is more of a “at-home” study type. She is easily my favorite person I have met so far down here. (She reads this blawg and I’m sure that she will feel totally awkward and that is okay! She is the self proclaimed mayor of “awkward-town.”) She hates… and I mean hates… law school. For her, the school politics and the competitive nature is tough. I don’t disagree. I’m a super competitive person, but I have never fully felt like I was competing against those I was in school with. I have found myself taking pleasure at how Jackson hammers away at some of the people I don’t like and caught myself thinking… “Wow, you are being a douche. Hope those people get right answers.” But secretly I love it. This scares me.

People talk about how law school changes you on the inside. I feel that happening. This is terrifying. It is as if the voice in my head that always looked for the good in people has been eaten away by this black cancer that is tearing me apart. I’m a cynic more than I ever was before. I was sitting in a chair yesterday and I was openly criticizing some of the things that had bothered me about a classroom exchange to D and I stopped myself cold after she goes, “Damn, that is cynical.”

I constantly “issue spot” when I read things or see it on the street. Every interaction becomes a tort hypo. I DO NOT LIKE THIS. However… it is enthralling. I have had a few people give me compliments recently in class and such about my attitude towards life or the way I think. Is this just posturing? IS this someone trying to put me at ease while they work harder than I?

I am taking this weekend off. I will treat Monday like an ordinary day. Saturday and Sunday are ALL MINE. I’m going to get my camera out and go take some pics early tomorrow, watch Notre Dame football at the bar in the afternoon and try to have a good time not thinking about anything law school related.

This blawg is law school related. Don’t expect a post over the weekend.

Go enjoy union appreciation day on Monday.

~YJ_SL

Leave a Comment

Filed under Blawg, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , ,

September 1, 2011 · 10:12 PM

In Honor of Football Season Starting

Leave a Comment

Filed under Blawg, Law, Law School

Tagged as , ,

August 26, 2011 · 1:48 PM

My Contracts And Civil Procedure Professors

Civ Preezy – Prof. J. is my professor in Civil Procedure. He is an abrasive man with a disposition of disgust towards his students. He has no want to be anywhere near us. Standing at 5’10″ or so and his stocky figure is intimidating as hell. He is also one of the funniest professors I have ever had as well. He has his own facebook page where students over the last 6-7 years have discussed some of his most memorable quotes. Here are some examples:

J: Warren! Why did they choose to sue Merrill Dow in Ohio?
Warren: *short pause* I don’t know.
Jj: Really? Well thanks for sharing. You know, you could have kept us in suspense for a little longer.

 

The good news is that we’re ahead of schedule–we may be lost, but at least we’re making good time.

 

‎”Usually I say if you want to talk to someone who cares about your class schedule, I tell you to ask my wife. But I called her earlier today and she says she doesn’t care either.”

 

‎”Oh, you’re sending me an email? Should I go back to my office and wait? You know, I put on my resume that I get emails from Ms. Norris.”

 

“Now there are some things to know about summary judgment… *skips several slides* … but I don’t care.”

“My defense was… it was God. He didn’t like this church.”

“When I went home that day, I felt really good about being a lawyer. I had ruined a church. That’s what I went to law school for.”

I’m sure I will add more as the semester goes on.

Professor H. is my Contracts professor. He is from Germany and was taught law over there. He has an L.L.M. here in the states. He makes jokes constantly that only half the class gets. I am one of that half.

We were talking about what an advertisement was yesterday and he goes, “You know Pandora? They always be like ‘You want this cupcake’ when you play it right?” Absolutely hilarious.

A fly flies past his head and midsentence, while discussing offers, he goes, “Oh, look a new friend.” I was the only one about to roll on the floor- it was awesome.

 

~YJ_SL

Leave a Comment

Filed under Blawg, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , , ,

· 12:50 AM

UPDATE

Made homemade qdoba style meal tonight. It was glorious.

I’ll upload the info on profs tomorrow. I was way too busy today.

Enjoy

20110825-114454.jpg

20110825-114707.jpg

~YJ_SL

3 Comments

Filed under Blawg, Home, Law, Law School

Tagged as , , , ,