Category Archives: Law School

Apologies, blog readers, but this announcement is for UM Law 1L & 2L students only:

I would like to hire a UM Law student to be my research assistant for 10-15 hours/week during the coming semester. If things work out we might continue into next semester, the summer, and/or next year.

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I have updated my page on law school course selection advice. Primarily aimed at UMiami Law, but comments from any quarter welcomed.

Apologies, blog readers, but this announcement is for UM Law 1L & 2L students only:

I would like to hire a UM Law student to be my research assistant for 10-15 hours/week during the coming semester. If things work out we might continue into the summer, and/or next year. Continue reading →

Via Paul Caron, two linked facts: (1) LSAT Test-Takers Continue To Surge, With 10.7% Increase In Sept/Oct Following June’s 19.8%, and (2)”survey of law school applicants by Blueprint LSAT Preparation revealed that over 52% listed the Trump presidency as “moderately influential” to “very influential” in their decision to apply to law school.”

In short, there’s going to be a big ‘Trump Bump‘ in law school applications (click below for bigger version of chart).

I think I could teach a terrific law class around the sandwich alignment chart. Students so often underrate the problem of assigning meaning to (or deriving meaning from) words.

For what it’s worth, temperamentally I seem to be mostly an ingredient purist, except that I would count a burrito as a sandwich. I might count myself as more ingredient neutral, in that a chip butty does look like a sandwich, except that they are so disgusting no one should eat one.

I should also note that there is actually a case about this exact issue, White City Shopping Center, LP v. PR Restaurants, LLC, 21 Mass. L. Rptr. 565 (Massachusetts Superior Court for Worcester County, 2006). There was a shopping mall agreement that allowed a Panera Bread franchise to object to the opening of businesses in the mall “that primarily sell sandwiches”. The issue was whether a Qdoba, makers of burritos and tacos, was caught by that provision. Judge Jeffery Locke held that–at least as regards the interpretation of that contract–a burrito was not a sandwich. For more on the issue see Marjorie Florestal, Is a Burrito a Sandwich? Exploring Race, Class and Culture in Contracts, 14 Mich. J. Race & Law 1 (2008).

Some people think words have absolute meanings. Others think they are cultural. I tend to the cultural, but recognize that some legal documents, like contracts, should be interpreted to fix a meaning in a time and place. The hard question is to what extent our Constitution does that, and to what extent either its framers, ratifiers, or inheritors rightly treat those meanings as evolving over time.