Virginia Law Weekly

Virginia Law Weekly
The Newspaper of the University of Virginia School of Law Since 1948
September 16, 2005
Volume 58, Number 03
www.lawweekly.org
Firms practice the
business of law
by Lee Kolber ’06
Editor-in-Chief
Not many people lie in bed at
night dreaming of owning a soap
manufacturing company. But
people do lie in bed and dream of
becoming attornies, according to
Ralph Baxter ’74, Chairman and
CEO of Orrick, Herrington &
Sutcliffe LLP. Baxter delivered a
lecture entitled The Business of
Practicing Law on September 13,
and he used the soap company
example to help distinguish the
practice of law as a profession,
distinct from other forms of business enterprises. “Companies are
organized to deliver a product.
People don’t dream of producing
products,” said Baxter.
Speaking to a crowd of primarily first-years in Caplin Pavilion,
Baxter emphasized that while the
practice of law is changing to become more business focused, the
practice is still “first and foremost
a profession, and only second, a
business.”
At the heart of distinction,
Baxter stated that the purpose of
the practice is to serve clients, but
business realities have forced law
firms and lawyers to recognize that
they must function in the business world as service-providers.
Baxter identified four primary
Around
North Grounds
Thumbs up to Professor John Norton
Moore for sending all
second- and thirdyears memos to hype
his classes—which
are already at their enrollment
capacity. Great September
Fool’s joke . . . oh, wait.
Thumbs up to second-years who don’t
have callbacks but
skip class anyway.
ANG suspects there
is a reason you don’t
have callbacks.
Thumbs up to
third-year Rush
Howell and his performance with Second City Wednesday
night, even though
Rush makes ANG feel less
funny.
Thumbs down to
all the engagements, weddings,
and births. ANG
needs
better
game—or more liquor—because ANG
is lonely.
Thumbs down to
the lack of goldfish
in the Spies Garden
koi pond.
ANG
misses ANG’s underwater allies.
see ANG page 6
In this issue:
West Bank notebook
................................ p. 2
Ryan on Rehnquist
................................ p. 3
trends that are transforming the
practice of law. Globalization demands that firms be able to meet
the global demands of their clients through firm growth or other
arrangements. The emergence of
the mega-firm is symbolic of the
strong consolidation push that
forces medium and small size
firms to either grow quickly, acquire, merge, or be acquired. The
decrease in the number of firms
and the growth of large, powerful
firms has led to strong competition in the legal marketplace for
good business. Baxter lastly identified a more subtle but powerful
trend in legal economic – the segmentation of the marketplace.
Firms in the past would aspire
to handle all of their clients’ legal
matters, from the mundane contract to “bet the ranch” litigation.
Major corporations have changed
their approach to doling out legal
work. Recently, many businesses
will select certain firms to handle
their most important matters and
choose other firms to handle their
simpler, more basic legal needs.
Baxter believes that the segmentation of the marketplace is a
“critical issue in law firm economics” because higher fees attach to
the better work while the simpler
work draws in lower revenue. This
Student
evacueesrecountKatrina
experience
photo by Lee Kolber
Speaker Ralph Baxter ’74 answers a follow-up question from firstyear Mike Engle after his lecture Law as a Business.
trend is stratifying the market
into a range of firms and creating
a class system which leads to
heated competition to advance to
the top segment of the market.
Baxter pointed out another
important distinction separating
law firms from other business
enterprises. Due to rules of professional ethics, law firms cannot
raise money from outside investors like other businesses. This
means that a firm has two options
when it needs to raise capital. It
may either raise money from its
partners or take loans out from a
financial institution. This restriction constrains the ability of firms
to make capital expenditures and
forces them often to carry significant debt load. Baxter suggested
that law students in the interview
process would be wise to find out, if
see BUSINESS page 2
UJC’s Committee on Hate Crimes
holds town hall meeting
by Ulrick Casseus ’07
Associate Columns Editor
Last Wednesday, September 7,
the
University
Judiciary
Committee’s (UJC) ad hoc committee on hate crimes held a University town hall meeting. The
purpose of the meeting was to
inform those in attendance of what
options the UJC has in regards to
punishing those who commit hate
crimes, as well as to allow students to voice their concerns with
how the UJC deals with acts of
Pokertourneyraises
hurricanereliefmoney
Forty seven U.Va. Law Students assembled last Friday at
1700 Rugby Avenue to engage in
a bad habit for a good cause, more
specifically a friendly game of
poker to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The
SBA-sponsored tournament
raised over $1,800 for the Red
Cross Katrina relief effort, according to organizer Michael
Purdy.
Purdy said his despair for the
people of New Orleans was the
impetus for the fund raiser.
“I decided to do some sort of
fund raiser because I really love
the city of New Orleans,” Purdy
said. “My family actually has a
home right outside the French
Quarter. It survived, but I
thought raising money for hurricane relief was the least I could
do.”
Tournament participants
bought in for $50, half of which
was donated directly to the Red
Cross. The tournament lasted five
hours before third-year Nick
Margida emerged the winner,
pocketing $570. Third-year Rush
Howell donated his entire $150
third-place winnings to the relief
fund.
Overall, Purdy said he was
pleased with the tournament’s outcome.
“The players made it a great
success,” Purdy said. “We had some
first-rate poker players, including
one girl who was a professional,
who were all very enthusiastic
about the greater cause of helping
hurricane victims. Consequently,
we raised considerably more
money than we initially thought
we would.”
Students who were unable to
participate in the tournament can
still contribute to the Katrina relief
effort through the Law School. The
SBA Public Service Committee’s
U.Va. Law v. Katrina donation
drive, where students are asked to
brown bag a lunch and donate
their lunch money, will end today.
Printed on
recycled paper
racial intolerance.
This school year alone, there
have been at least eight reported
incidents of racial intolerance,
ranging from a group of minorities
having racial slurs yelled at them
during first-year orientation in
July, to an African-American Lawn
resident having racial epithets
written on the white board outside
of his door. Over the last five years,
the numbers of reported racial incidents has increased steadily. Last
year the student body decided to
do something about this recurring
problem at U.Va. During the Spring
2005 school elections, students considered harsher penalties for those
who commit hate crimes. This led
to the creation the UJC ad hoc
committee on hate crimes, which
is co-chaired by second-year law
student Eli Dejarnette. The ad hoc
committee will meet each semester. Its purpose is to gauge student
opinion on how to deal with hate
crimes and to decide if more needs
to be done to combat acts of racial
intolerance at the University.
Dejarnette informed the town
hall meeting about the legal ramifications and limitations on policing hate crimes. He explained to
the audience some of the obstacles
involved in combating incidents of
racial intolerance. Those who simply yell racial epithets from a car
may be protected by their First
Amendment right of freedom of
speech. However, those who commit a crime —trespassing, vandalism, or assault—would be subject
to UJC sanctions. Currently the
UJC has a number of remedies
available for those found guilty of
see HATE CRIME page 4
by Irene Noguchi ’06
Associate Reviews Editor
On Friday night, she sat pinned
to the television, watching the storm
unfold.
On Saturday morning, there it
was: the order to evacuate.
People raced to the airport. Cars
lined up outside gas stations. Every
Saturday flight was sold out, so
Alyssa Carducci, a third-year at
Tulane Law School, took the last
plane out on Sunday.
“I wanted to kiss the ground when
I got off the plane,” Carducci said.
“People were clapping, thanking
God, so happy to be there.”
It was a relief for Carducci. In the
three-day span from Aug. 26-28,
she had gone from a ghost town of
boarded-up stores (“You could hear
a pin drop,” she said) to starting
classes at U.Va. Law. After a speedy
application process, she joined 10
other Tulane law students and one
student from the Loyola University
School of Law, all of whom joined
classes on Monday.
“People have offered microwaves, have given their contact
information, and have asked if I
want to hang out,” she said. “People
have been absolutely incredible.”
Still, Carducci finds it hard to
grasp everything that has happened. “I’ve seen pictures of my
neighborhood where all the windows are blown out,” she said. “I’m
trying to be optimistic.” But without electricity and given the humidity in New Orleans, Carducci knows
her apartment will be covered in
mold. Her car – hastily parked at
the Louisiana airport – may be gone.
She has two suitcases, small mementoes of the home she left behind.
“It’s hard to focus on studying
when you’re worrying about where
you will live and clothes and what to
eat – when you feel everything
around you is just going crazy,” she
said.
She never expected the intensity
of Hurricane Katrina.
“It has been 100 years since New
Orleans took a direct hit [from a
hurricane], and this wasn’t even a
direct hit,” she said.
When Hurricane Ivan hit last
year, school was cancelled for a week
“and all we got was a tenth of an
inch of rain.” It was like the boy who
cried wolf, Carducci said. “This time
they were more gun shy to call an
evacuation for Tulane as a whole.
Never in a million years did we
think it would be this horrendous,”
she said.
The storm passed. But on August 30, “the levees went and things
deteriorated beyond belief.” While
many in the western part of the city
had evacuated, Carducci said, many
people in the eastern half of New
Orleans didn’t have the resources
or money to leave.
“With the evacuation order, [officials] were very cautious,” she said.
“I wish they would’ve ordered a
mandatory evacuation sooner, but
then the city would have had to
assume responsibility for everyone
there [and didn’t want to do so] until
everyone was out. It’s difficult having not been there to say what resee KATRINA page 2
2
News and Features
Marketforces
transformlaw
profession
BUSINESS
continued from page 1
possible, the state of a firm’s balance sheet.
Baxter suggested that law students must be ready to meet the
transforming practice of law, and
he provided some tips for students
in choosing firms and practicing
law as a business. The American
Lawyer’s Top 100 is good way to
distinguish firms, according to
Baxter. Though he recognized
flaws in the ranking methodology
and in firms’ reporting, he still
suggested to students that the
ranking is a good indicator of a
firm’s economic strength.
Additionally, Baxter recommended to students that they pay
attention to trends and issues in
the global economy and start trying to develop broad, strategic business thinking. Baxter told students that entering law practice
“with some grasp of the business
realities your clients face will you
place you miles ahead.”
Baxter fielded questions from
the audience to conclude his talk.
When asked what makes a rainmaker in a law firm, Baxter answered that the single most valuable trait an attorney can have in
order to develop clients is the ability to inspire confidence in clients
that their important legal matters
will be handled effectively. If an
attorney can achieve that level of
confidence, he or she will likely be
successful in their practice. After
all, said Baxter, “no law firm will
say you are too much of a rainmaker, go somewhere else.”
Virginia Law Weekly
One month in the West Bank:
Astudent’snotebook
by Melany Grout ’07
Editor’s Note: Second-year
Melany Grout traveled this summer
to the West Bank for a human rights
internship. Throughout the summer
she recounted her experiences in a
series of email messages, and a selection of them are printed here. Any
opinions and nomenclature stated
herein are not necessarily the views
of the Virginia Law Weekly or its
staff.
Message to friends: Thursday, 2 June 2005
I left Seattle in June for an internship in the West Bank, in the
Palestinian city of Ramallah. At
the final descent into Tel Aviv, Israel, it looked like I’d be landing in
Southern California…
I got off the plane yesterday and
experienced heightened security in
a new way. Israeli security officers
pulled me from the passport check,
and I had the uncomfortable new
experience of a thorough search. I
then watched several young men
carefully dissect all of my belongings for two hours. Several more
hours passed, and I witnessed, from
a holding cell, two men argue with
a female security person.
The men asked the reason of
their detention, and she told them
“you cannot fly in through Israel.
You need to go back to New York
and fly in through Jordan instead.”
One of the men said “but I have an
American passport. I am American.” She said “no, you’re American-Palestinian. You can’t fly in
here.”
This went on and on; faces were
red. “Where am I?” I thought. Eventually two Israeli security men led
me by the arm to an office upstairs.
Virginia Law Weekly
Lee Kolber
Editor-in-Chief
Drew Snyder
Dan Spurlock
Executive Editor
Production Editor
John Kabealo
Managing Editor
Scott Dorfman
News Editor
Toby Mergler
Joey Katzen
Features Editor
Columns Editor
Audrey Wagner
Anna Nisbet
Reviews Editor
Photography Editor
Andrew McCarthy
Austin Curry
Treasurer
Business Editor
Associate Editors
Ulrick Casseus
Associate Columns Editor
Friday, September 16, 2005
Irene Noguchi
Associate Reviews Editor
Archie Alston
Subscriptions Editor
C ONTRIBUTORS: Melany Grout
C OLUMNISTS : Eric Wang, Steve Glasgow, John Hardman, Jessica Angelette, Chad Bell
R EVIEWERS : David Lobe, A.J. Stephens
Published weekly on Friday except during holiday and examination periods and serving the Law School community at the University of Virginia, the Virginia Law Weekly (ISSN 0042-661X) is not an official publication of the
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submissions received can be published.
They questioned me for a couple of
hours. Why was I going to Ramallah?
Am I sure I’m not with the ISM?
Where did I get the money to come
here? Who are my professors? Am I
sure I don’t speak Arabic and Hebrew? Some queries were alarming,
like “how do you know Demetri H.?”
My response – “What? Why and
how do you know that I know
Demetri H.?” Demetri is a high
school friend of mine from Seattle.
Years ago, completely unrelated to
me, he was involved in Israeli-Palestinian political issues. I guess they
knew that. Eight hours after arriving in not Southern California, with
a warning that I’d better be careful
because Ramallah is a “war zone,”
they put me outside the airport…
Message to friends: Thursday, 9 June 2005
Kamal, from the office, retrieved
me last week from Tel Aviv. We
waited together in his VW van to
get through the Qalandia checkpoint into Ramallah. It’s hot, dirty,
and loud with sounding horns. A
concrete wall eight meters high,
pushing into the city and purportedly separating Palestinians from
Israel, flanks the lines of waiting
cars and people. Guard towers punctuate the stretch. Israeli soldiers
collect passports, search trunks, and
ask questions. In front of us, a truck
full of fruit was turned away. The
next car passed through, and so did
we…
Yesterday Kamal and I went to
Bethlehem, a town of mostly Palestinian Christians. Soldiers turned
us away from one checkpoint, but
we drove to another several miles
away and passed through. While
waiting in line we saw a commotion
from a car denied exit from
Bethlehem. The driver was a
woman, and she was animated,
screaming. I cannot describe well
enough how intensely angry she
looked. Her child was hysterical in
the back seat. She threw her hands
around and shouted, and when she
revved the engine, the soldier
pointed a gun to her head. I didn’t
see the end of it - we drove on into
Bethlehem. I told Kamal that I
thought I would go crazy if I didn’t
have a passport that allowed me to
leave this place as I pleased. “I’d go
insane,” I said. He said, “People do.”
Message to friends: Thursday, 16 June 2005
Some things here are surreal,
but I manage to grasp them. For
example, the tiny size of this land.
The other night I sat on a hill with
Palestinian men who own rows of
olive trees there. In the distance we
saw the flickering lights of Tel Aviv,
photo by Melany Grout
An Israeli soldier stands guard at a checkpoint in the West Bank.
Israel. On a hill immediately adjacent to us, still inside the West Bank,
was an Israeli settlement. Earlier
that day, I stood facing the other
direction on that same hill, and
glimpsed the Dead Sea and the shore
of Jordan. The men described sitting on that hill during the first
Gulf War, watching Saddam’s
SCUD missiles fly over their heads
towards the lights upon which we
gazed. It’s all so close…
There are other things I haven’t
grasped. Every day I see more complicated depth to what it means to
be a lawyer. After reading affidavits of torture, the sanitized language of legal conventions seems
absurd. The words that come to
mind when I see pictures of a real
person’s tortured body are not those
I read in the UN Convention Against
Torture. And when I look around,
here and in Israel, I want to exclaim
“none of this has to do with law!” It’s
too human to make sense. I mean,
picture an interrogee reminding his
interrogators that Israel is a party
to the Convention Against Torture.
Or someone informing a suicide
bomber that it’s illegal to target
civilians because the Geneva Conventions say so. I’m making a distorted, stubborn simplification of it
all, but in the middle of everything,
I’m confounded…
Message to friends: Monday,
18 June 2005
A Palestinian coworker here told
me about his uncle, a well known
doctor, who was shot dead by Israeli
soldiers while driving home. He said
Palestinian and Israeli communities both were appalled, and that
within one month, six Palestinian
babies were named after his uncle.
Street names were changed, and a
hospital bears his name. Kamal
asked me what my opinion is of the
future here. I’m not sure, but at the
time I told him that as long as
children are named after slain
uncles, and there are slain uncles to
be named after, I don’t imagine
change. A child grows up aware of
the significance behind his name.
He is born waving a flag carrying
that meaning. I see soldiers search
four-year-olds at checkpoints. I don’t
imagine those children will grow up
to forget that experience as part of
their identity.
I played pool with two young
Israeli men in Haifa, Israel the other
night. Both were soldiers. They
won’t forget that part of their identity either. One said “the army
teaches you to hate Palestinians.”
He clarified, saying “You have to.
When you’re a soldier, they’re killing your friends.” Military service
in Israel is compulsory.
Message to friends: Saturday,
25 June 2005
I went to a prison with a lawyer
yesterday and we hit nasty traffic
near Jerusalem. The streets were
clogged with those protesting the
withdrawal from Gaza. An Israeli
boy no more than seven years old
approached my window and asked
if I wanted to buy an orange
streamer (signifying opposition to
the withdrawal). I thought about
what it means that he was protesting at his age. He knows what he
thinks. He was born waving a flag,
and maybe he was named after a
slain uncle too…
I do enjoy some of the funnier
surreal moments of each day. Like
sitting in “Pizza Up,” in Ramallah.
Over the speakers I hear Jay-Z. The
place is almost criminally similar
to Pizza Hut, but I’m not in the U.S.,
and I know that, as the hip hop
suddenly turns into the Muslim call
to prayer…
Students will miss studying law in the Big Easy
KATRINA
continued from page 1
ally happened.”
She added, “Next year if there is
an evacuation ordered, no one will
take it for granted anymore and the
whole city will empty out.”
Ben Winburn, a second-year
Tulane student, evacuated in a
car with local residents. “These
people were finding out they were
losing everything. It was rough,”
he said. “My friend went back to
his house and found everything –
the big TV, pool tables – four feet
underwater.”
When he was a first-year at
Tulane, Winburn would sometimes
escape the law library by sitting in
as a guitarist for a local band. He
summed up life last year as “hot
days, long nights, and great food.”
That was New Orleans, he said.
On any given day, “you could
people watch, enjoy good beer, and
hear some of the greatest music
ever,” Winburn said. “If you were in
a hurry in New Orleans, you
wouldn’t be for long.”
Winburn lived on St. Charles
Avenue, watching streetcars rumble
by. “It was really beautiful,” he recalled. “Old cypress trees made a
canopy over the road, [like a]
storybook. It was enchanting.”
Carducci lived uptown in New
Orleans, west of the French Quarter. “It’s very difficult to imagine it
all being destroyed, that the French
Quarter doesn’t look the same anymore,” she said. “I think it will take
us getting back to Tulane and physically seeing it before we believe it
actually happened.”
But one of her heaviest losses
cannot be replaced. “I never thought
I would be without my friends my
third year,” she said. “We knew we’d
leave a year from now, but on our
own terms, with more time to say
goodbye than frantic phone calls
asking where everyone is.”
If anything, Winburn said he is
“trying to put all of it behind [him]
and move on with my life.” The
morning after he evacuated, he
started calling law schools. “U.Va.
was the school where I got the biggest open arms,” he said. “Other
schools said, ‘We’ll have to call you
back.’ U.Va. reassured me I could
come over here and everything
would be fine.”
“It was unbelievable,” he said.
“It has been the same since the first
minute I was on the phone until
today. With the students, with the
faculty, [all] have been 100 percent
devoted to helping us out, helping
us move on with our lives.”
While Carducci admits she is
still stunned by the past few weeks,
“we’re really the most fortunate
people in this whole disaster because we got out, and the majority
of our friends and family are okay,”
she said. “At the end of the day,
we’re alive.”
Virginia Law Weekly
Friday, September 16, 2005
Columns and Reviews
3
SBA Notebook:
If you’re lucky, you might see a horse
Getyourseersuckerready
Late September is rapidly approaching, and that can mean
only one thing – Foxfields. Yes,
that’s right, the chance for the
guys to break out their madras
pants, seersucker suits, and bow
ties, and for the ladies to put on
their finest sundresses and Kentucky Derby-style hats.
Okay, so perhaps that’s pretty
much any day here at the world’s
greatest law school. But
Foxfields includes Jack Russell
terrier races, delicious food and
beverage spreads provided by
the first-year sections, guaranteed perfect weather, the world’s
greatest post-party (more on this
later), and, allegedly, horse
steeplechase racing.
As a service to all the new
students, here’s a quick primer
on Foxfields. First, you must
buy your tickets IN ADVANCE.
No tickets are sold on the day of
the race, so pick up your tickets
for $25 at either Greenberry’s,
Mincer’s, or online at
www.foxfieldraces.com. Fall
Foxfields is Family Day at the
Races, so feel free to bring kids,
significant others, or any friends
who you think might enjoy a
beautiful day outside with the
horses.
Second, be sure to buy your
bus ticket from SBA as soon as
they go on sale (probably next
week). Traffic to Foxfields is a
huge hassle, parking costs $15
per car, and since many
Foxfields patrons partake of alcohol, the police are out in full
force looking for drunk drivers.
The best way to enjoy Foxfields
is safely, which means riding
the bus. Foxfields’ safety also
includes wearing sunscreen,
eating plenty of food, and drinking plenty of water.
Finally, the bus has the added
bonus of delivering you directly
to the SBA-sponsored postFoxfields Party. This year’s
party will once again occur at
2304 Fontaine Avenue, the
home of third-years Paul Rugani
and Randall Warden, Red Robin
restaurant manager Matt
Fleming, and Peer Advisor CoDirector Chad Bell. The backyard festivities will include
bocce ball, beer pong, horseshoes, music, and plenty of food
and drinks for all. And for your
convenience, taxi cabs will be
available in front of the house
to take you home at the end of
the night.
A couple of announcements
for the Peer Advisors: First,
please contact your section’s
small section professor. The
small section professors really
want to meet all of you, and
we’d encourage you to take your
small section professor out to
lunch (maybe with some of your
advisees?), and include them as
you plan events over the next
couple weeks. Finally, TWEN
training will be happening over
the next week or so, so please
sign up and learn about
Westlaw’s amazing TWEN program.
by John Hardman ’06
SBA Vice-President
The Katrina Relief Poker Tournament was a huge success! The
SBA raised over $1,800. 1700 Rugby
Ave boys, thanks for hosting. More
importantly, though, a special
thanks to Michael Purdy who spent
hours of his time organizing the
event. Well done! Also, commendation should be directed toward Rush
Howell, who donated all of his thirdplace winnings to the fundraising
pot. Shame on you, Nick Margida,
for not doing the same with your
first-place winnings. Texas 25, Ohio
State 22 – karma is a...
Go Dawgs!
Congratulations to the new First
Year Council officers and all of the
first-year section representatives.
It’s a great group and we’re anticipating great things from you all.
First-years, get crunk! Be sure to
read next week’s SBA notebook,
where Jessica Chilson, the newly
elected FYC President, will introduce the council.
Now for a report on your SBA
Committees. Things are going well,
and as expected, we’ve got a great
group of committee chairs and vicechairs. A couple of updates:
(1) At some point this semester,
the SBA Academic Concerns Committee is going to look into improving the course enrollment process.
Dean Bennett and the Student
Records Office have done a fantastic job, and we are unsure whether
it is even possible to make the process more fair and efficient than it
already is. Nevertheless, we are
going to try. If you have any suggestions, criticisms, or, most of all, solutions, please email Tom Reece (ftr4d)
or Lindsay Buchanan (lbuchanan),
the Academic Concerns Committee
Co-Chairs. The reality of the situation is that we have too many students to place everyone in every
class they would like. However, as
always, we want to remind everyone how great we have it here at
U.Va. Thanks for your patience –
we know it can be frustrating.
(2) The Law School’s Katrina
Relief efforts have been going extremely well. If you or your student
organization would like to help, or
have ideas regarding fundraising
efforts, please contact Grace Su
(gs9v) or Kelly Voss (kellyvoss). They
are the SBA Public Service ViceChairs, who are in charge of coordinating the various ongoing efforts.
So far, the response from U.Va. students and organizations has been
very inspiring.
(3) The SBA Student-Alumni
Relations Committee is sponsoring
a golf tournament today, September 16. Both alumni and students
are participating, and we’re expecting it to be a great success. Also, the
committee has organized two great
panels. Come hear a panel on nontraditional legal careers on Thursday, September 22, and on Friday,
September 30, a talk by Joe Gladden, former general counsel of CocaCola, on business and the law. Check
your events email for more details.
Thanks, Law School Foundation,
for all that you do to improve our
law school experience.
In other news, be sure to buy a
Foxfield bus ticket next week. They
will be on sale Monday, September
17 through Wednesday, September
19. Tickets will be sold in Hunton &
Williams hall between 10:00 and 2:00
for $5 dollars each. Get yours early –
they go fast. Also, please remember to
get a Foxfield ticket at
www.foxfieldraces.com, Mincers, or
Greenberry’s. You cannot buy tickets
at the event. Also, congratulations to
the winners of the D22 parking lottery. The SBA raised over $6,000
for PILA as a result. Thanks to all of
those who participated.
Dean Ryan remembers time with Chief Justice Rehnquist
by John Kabealo ’07
Managing Editor
Editor’s Note: As a tribute to the
late Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, the Virginia Law Weekly
asked Assistant Dean Jim Ryan to
share his memories of the Chief.
Ryan was a clerk for Rehnquist during the 1993-94 term.
VLW: What was your first impression of the Chief when you
met him?
Ryan: I do remember thinking
that the Chief was not an especially
sharp dresser, and that he had a
rich and distinctive voice — which
inspires imitation, as I learned later
in talking with his clerks, all of
whom imitated him. He also struck
me as unusually normal for someone in his position.
VLW: As an admitted liberal,
did you ever feel any tension
working under and writing the
opinions of a man of a different
political ideology? What was
the Chief’s attitude towards hiring people of differing political
ideologies?
Ryan: “Admitted liberal?”
Sounds like “convicted sex offender.”
I didn’t feel much tension working for
the Chief, whose legal and political
views differ from my own on a number
of issues. Part of the reason had to do
with the cases heard and decided the
year I clerked; there simply weren’t
many blockbuster cases that provoked
clear ideological divisions. To the contrary, it was a year filled with cases
that didn’t have a strong ideological
valence and others that split Justices
who usually voted together.
Another reason that I didn’t feel
much tension working for the Chief
was that he made the clerk’s role
pretty clear: we could argue as much
as we wanted and say whatever we
wanted before the Court voted on a
case. After the Court voted, we were
to act like the Chief’s lawyer and to
advocate his position. I don’t think
[Rehnquist] cared much about his
clerks’ ideologies. All three of his clerks
the year I was there were Democrats,
which surprised each of us. When I
raised the issue of ideology in my
interview with him, he told me that he
mostly wanted to hire clerks with
whom he and his permanent staff
would get along for a year. I think the
Chief was confident enough in his
own views that he didn’t feel the need
to hire clerks who would always agree
with him; he just didn’t want clerks
who would pursue their own agenda
and be lousy company for a year.
VLW: What was day-to-day
life as the Chief’s clerk like?
Ryan: Day-to-day life was fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable. The
work was great; my co-clerks and
the Chief’s staff were terrific; and
the clerks in the other Chambers
were great as well. We met with the
Chief each morning at 9:30 to talk
about our work, how cases assigned to
other Justices were coming along
(“What do you suppose they’re doing?” he would often ask when an
opinion assigned months earlier had
yet to surface), the weather (in which
the Chief took great interest; he served
in a weather station in North Africa
during World War II and meteorology
remained a serious hobby from that
point on), sports, current events, etc.
My co-clerk was fearless about asking the Chief questions about a wide
variety of topics, and the Chief
seemed more than happy to answer
them.
VLW: What was the Chief like
during oral arguments? Was
there a difference between his
public persona and how he acted
inprivate?
Ryan: In public and private, the
Chief prized efficiency. He was not
gruff at all in private. Those who
knew him personally, and this includes the other Justices, uniformly
had great affection for him. He was
unfailingly gracious, polite, and considerate to those he already knew or
first met. Because he was so interested and knowledgeable about such
a wide range of topics, and because he
had a great sense of humor, he was
also terrific company.
In public, this sometimes translated into a fairly gruff demeanor,
especially when he was on the bench.
He would come down pretty hard on
lawyers when this happened,
though the effect was as often humorous as not. I remember when a
lawyer kept dodging a question from
Justice O’Connor, saying three
times in a row: “With all due respect, Justice O’Connor, the Court
doesn’t have to answer that question.” The Chief finally interceded,
telling the lawyer: “WE may not have
to answer that question, but YOU do!
VLW: Some say that the Chief
threw a great Christmas party
for the Court every year?
Ryan: He loved that party and especially loved leading everyone
there—clerks, other Justices, all of
the Supreme Court staff—in song. The
year I was there, a small, older man
was banging out tunes on the piano,
and I asked the Chief: “Where did you
find that guy? He’s really good.” He
told me: “The Third Circuit.” It was
Judge Becker, who was in town and
happy to play for the party.
VLW: The Chief was wellknown for having a great sense
of humor. Do any particular
events stand out?
Ryan: People often point to practical jokes he played, including the
time when he had a life-size picture
of then Chief Justice Burger pasted
onto a cardboard cut out, and placed
on the Supreme Court steps. Burger
was quite formal, and the Chief
knew that Burger would be aghast
at the sight of tourists taking their
picture with a cardboard cutout, on
the steps of the Supreme Court. He
was right.
VLW: What was his funeral
like? Did you feel that it did a
good job of representing him?
Ryan: The funeral emphasized
his personal, rather than professional life. President Bush and Justice O’Connor each spoke, though
only briefly, and Justice O’Connor
spoke as much as a friend as a
colleague, as the two of them were
long-time friends. [E]ulogies were
given by his son, one of his daughters,
and
one
of
his
granddaughters. The resulting portrait was one that was familiar to and
well-loved by those who knew him,
including his clerks, and I think somewhat surprising to those who did
not know him personally and had
no idea, really, who he really was.
VLW: What did you learn from
him?
Ryan: I expected to learn a lot
about the law; I didn’t expect to
learn so much about life. But I
did. What struck me most about
working with the Chief was his sense
of perspective and balance. Despite
the nature and obvious importance
of his job, he never lost sight of the
fact that his job was just one part of
his life. He loved his job, but he also
loved his life outside of his job, in-
cluding, most importantly, his family, to whom he was deeply
devoted. He never let his work overwhelm him, nor did he become obsessed by it, either of which would
have been completely understandable given his job. I’ve often thought
back to his example when trying to
balance my own commitments to my
job and to my family, and his example
has helped remind me that, regardless of what you or others might
think about the importance of your
work, it is just one part of your life.
VLW: Is there anything else
you would want people to know
about the Chief or your time
with him?
Ryan: What I also learned is
that it is too easy to demonize those
with whom you disagree, especially
those who are in positions of
power. Spending time with the Chief
made me — and anyone else who was
fortunate to spend time with him —
appreciate who he was as a
person: incredibly smart and knowledgeable, funny, kind, devoted to his
family, and gracious. He was, in short
(and with no disrespect to my current,
fabulous boss) the best boss I have
ever had or expect to have.
Those who disagreed with the Chief’s
legal views and did not know him
occasionally described him, casually
and with the benefit of ignorance, as
essentially a bad person, and I think
this tendency to assume those with
whom you disagree are “bad” or somehow intellectually or emotionally deficient is rampant. My year with the
Chief cured me of that tendency and
helped me and my co-clerks understand that it is possible to have deep
personal affection for someone with
whom you disagree, and to genuinely admire that person.
4
Columns and Features
Virginia Law Weekly
Friday, September 16, 2005
Katrina exposes last superpower as
Firmswastemoney
unprepared, unresponsive
courtingstudentsinsummerassociateprograms
by Archie Alston ’07
Subscriptions Editor
Issues of race and class are as
old as this country itself, with
the pain of the indigent woven
into the stripes of the U.S. Flag
and the stories of the oppressed
hidden neatly behind all fifty
stars. Because this is the history
of this beloved nation, it is no
wonder that the issue of race and
class has become one of the main
reasons given for the turmoil and
chaos that was New Orleans two
weeks ago. Americans that find
comfort in just looking at the
skin of the victims of last week’s
flood and concluding “George
Bush doesn’t care about black
people,” are letting the government off easy. Honestly, if it were
simply an issue of race we would
all know how to deal with that
it’s what we as a country do best.
However, what if Americans took
the time to look deeper than the
skin tone and socio-economic status of those affected in New Orleans and faced a far starker reality? What if last week was not
merely the scab of racism and
classism once again being pulled
back, but rather a frightening
sign that our government is incompetent and not equipped to
deal with any type of national
disaster, whether it’s an earthquake, nuclear attack, or hurricane?
No one can deny that race and
class played a role in the delayed
treatment of victims of last
week’s catastrophe. News outlets were reporting that the individuals who remained in New
Orleans “chose to stay,” but in
reality, there was no choice to be
made because they simply did
not have the means to leave the
city. The majority of those left
behind were poor blacks. Even
though the government knew
that thousands of people would
not have the means to evacuate, officials did not adequately
plan for the situation; consequently, there was no transportation provided for those
who couldn’t leave. In fact, the
only thing that minorities and
the poor in New Orleans received from their government to
prepare for the hurricane were
directions to the Superdome and
the New Orleans Convention
Center—not much of a ‘plan’
when one takes into account the
fact that experts ranked a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast as
the number three worst disaster
that could hit the United States
behind a massive earthquake in
San Francisco and a nuclear attack. At the Superdome and Convention Center, the poor were
met with many things, fear,
chaos, rape, murder, but not the
essentials, such as supervision,
food or water. Again, it wouldn’t
take a genius to realize that once
thousands of poor people are
placed into a huge space, one
might want to provide supervision, maybe some water, or heck,
maybe even some food. To simply
pass off these oversights as another case of the government not
caring about poor minorities is
only looking at part of the problem.
As much as the media played
into the race/class issue, it did
not push Americans to think
deeper about the government’s
incompetence in dealing with the
situation. The media showed
images of blacks looting and acting out violently for four days. As
always, the news outlets asked
the basic questions: “Why are
these blacks looting?,” “What are
they going to do with those TV’s?,”
and “Are gangs really shooting
and robbing people?”
Sadly, the media wasted four
days asking questions that are
very easily explained. For example, the looting – if a person is
in the heat with no food or water
and there’s a Wal Mart within
walking distance, would it wise
for the person to just look at the
store instead of going in and
getting food? In addition, as
with most poor cities, New Orleans has its share of drug addicts. If the situation in New
Orleans two weeks ago would
make a non-user frustrated,
imagine what it would do to a
drug addict who hadn’t had a
fix in days. Unfortunately, New
Orleans is a city where people
are murdered and robbed everyday, but I guess the media
assumed that in a situation
where these same people were
left to fend for themselves without food, water, or supervision,
they would resort to some other
means to survive. The news stations explored the aforementioned ‘easy’ questions and
avoided the tough questions like
“Why is there no supervision?,”
“Why have we not fed these
people?,” “Why have we not given
these people water or rescued
them?” Once asked, these questions went unanswered for days
and many attributed this to the
fact that New Orleans was full of
poor blacks. Is this a case of
Americans looking at one side of
the problem and avoiding the unsettling truth?
Currently, New Orleans is 60%
under water, which comes as a
surprise to no one. Three years
ago, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a five-part series
called “Washing Away” which began with the words: “It’s only a
matter of time before south Louisiana takes a direct hit from a
major hurricane.” While the hurricane itself did not destroy New
Orleans, the levees, which surrounded the city to keep water
out, broke and a flood of epic
proportions commenced. Even
though the federal government
was completely aware that the
levees broke and the intensity of
photo courtesy piersystems.com
A Coast Guard seaman assists a wheelchair-bound woman while
evacuees board a school bus in New Orleans.
devastation that was to ensue
once the flooding began in New
Orleans, it took four days before
any substantial government activity commenced. Four days of
complete chaos for all in New
Orleans. How could this happen
to the most intelligent, powerful,
and wealthy nation in the world?
One can’t attribute this solely to
racism and classism.
After September 11, 2001, the
Bush Administration placed the
Federal Emergency Management
Authority (FEMA) under the umbrella of the Department of
Homeland Security. It was
FEMA’s responsibility to create
and execute an evacuation plan;
FEMA failed at both these tasks,
which, to me, means that Homeland Security failed. While some
may sleep easy thinking that the
system failed because of the
nation’s ingrained disdain for
blacks and the poor, I have endured many restless nights over
the last few weeks because I fear
that there is a deeper, more
frightening explanation for the
failure in addition to racism and
classism. I fear that we are in no
way prepared to deal with any
major national disaster, whether
it be spawned by mother nature
or the workings of man. In the
Department of Homeland
Security’s first attempt to show
what they have been working on
for the last four years since the
terrorist attacks on 9/11, they
failed. I find it hard to believe
that my President, while looking
at the same CNN reports as every other American, decided not
to send in the cavalry simply because the people to be saved were
unsavory characters. I dare to
say that the United States simply was not prepared and it took
four days to throw a ‘plan’ together. Today, the United States
is considered the last of the true
Super Powers. Is this title deserved when we had years to adequately plan for an event and
still dropped the ball? I fear that
we are in no better position then
we were on September 10, 2001.
It is a stark reality and a bitter
pill to swallow.
Email: [email protected]
by Eric Wang ’06
Senior Staff Writer
Cost of summer associate junkets and first-class accommodations: $1,600. Cost of lavish feasts
and drink: $500. Cost of cab fare
and town car transportation:
$400. Deadweight loss to society:
Priceless. Well, not entirely. Over
the past two summers, the difference between the marginal cost
of expenditures lavished on me
by my firm and my personal marginal benefit (i.e. what economists call “deadweight loss”) has
easily tallied into the thousands
of dollars.
Although I am easily bought, I
am less impressed by in-kind benefits. As a perfectly rational economic actor, my currency of
choice is cold, hard cash, and I
never spend a penny unless doing so will yield a net consumer
surplus according to my own,
idiosyncratic personal preferences. Thus, it has made me
more than a little uneasy to be
the subject of such unbridled
spending.
Lest this article find its way
into the hands of someone on my
firm’s hiring committee, let me
be perfectly clear: None of this is
meant as a slam against my summer employer. As everyone familiar with legal employment
knows, it has long been customary for major firms to break the
bank on their summer programs.
And that, precisely, is the problem.
Just as neither side was willing to unilaterally disarm during
the Cold War-era arms race, law
firms have created a vicious cycle
where no firm can underspend a
rival for fear that law students
will defect to the one that spends
more. Not only is much of this
keeping up with the Jones Days
quite wasteful, but it risks creating false impressions and giving
young lawyers an inflated sense
of their worth.
Ask anyone at a firm whether
their summer program is reflective of the associate experi-
ence, and most will say, yes,
but… we won’t be treating you
to five-course dinners and
three-martini lunches every
day. If the summer program is
supposed to represent what it
is like to permanently work at
a firm, then the lavish upfront
spending would be misrepresentation and fraud in any
other industry. At best, it is misleading.
With all this feting by firms,
summer associates could be forgiven for having delusions of
grandeur. To put things into perspective, however, according to
Controlling Law Firm Costs (yes,
there is such a journal), it may
take as many as five years for
firms to turn a profit on associates. Thus, although firms may
woo summer associates the way
NBA teams woo all-star collegiate athletes, in truth we are
not God’s gift to firms’ bottom
lines.
Even as some equity partners
grumble at the summer program
budgets, others try to justify the
expensive meals and entertainment as an opportunity to gauge
how well prospective lawyers will
be able to interact with clients in
such settings. Although there
may be more than a kernel of
truth to this rather plausible rationalization, this still does not
explain the sheer frequency of
such events. Firms need only hold
one or two such events to ascertain that their sober summer
associates do not become party
animals outside of the office environment.
In the end, I cannot say that I
have been entirely impervious to
my summer employer’s entreaties. The perks broke the monotony of the summer and left
me with favorable impressions
of the firm, making it more likely
that I will return. Still, I cannot
help but think all that will be of
little value to me next year when
the perks dry up. For that, however, I will blame not my firm,
but the system.
Lawstudentsconcernedaboutraceincidents
HATE CRIME
continued from page 1
committing crimes, ranging from
admonition to expulsion. Each student found guilty of a UJC offense
goes through a second trial to determine his or her punishment.
Attendees raised a number of
important issues. A repeated suggestion was the possibility of a
single sanction for those who commit hate crimes. While many students equate the single sanction
with the Honor Code, the UJC
can also adopt a single sanction
policy; however, it would have to
pass a student vote or be created
unilaterally by the University’s
Board of Visitors. Black Law Students Association (BLSA) VicePresident, second-year Candace
Glover, stressed that “the University needs to send the message that it will no longer tolerate acts motivated by hatred and
anything less than single sanction is not sending a strong
enough message to the community.” Along with the single sanction, students pushed for more
education for first-year students.
The
importance
of
the
University’s Honor Code is
heavily stressed to first-year students before they set foot on
Grounds, and some feel that the
same emphasis needs to be placed
on educating incoming students
about racial tolerance and the consequences for committing acts of
racial intolerance. Another issue
raised was the liability of those
who know of a hate crime but do
not come forward with information. Some students feel like these
people should be subject to the
same punishment as the perpetrators.
Third-year law student Tim
Lovelace felt that this would serve
as a deterrent to those thinking
about considering a hate crime.
“Too many students refuse to report other students who they know
have committed a hate crime.
Thus, the University community
should consider a non-toleration
policy, which allows the University to sanction a student who has
knowledge that another student
has committed a hate crime but
fails to report the offending student.”
Coming up with solutions to
the problem of racial intolerance
at U.Va. is only part of the puzzle.
The final solution agreed upon by
members of the committee will
ultimately have to pass a student
vote.
Lovelace feels that the committee needs to act now. “This is my
seventh year here and this is the
most I’ve seen students involved
in this issue, not just minority
students. We need to move on this
energy now because I’m worried
that this process will get bogged
down in bureaucracy, impeding
the good work that people are presently doing.”
Members of the Law School
community are pushing for law
students and faculty to get involved in the dialogue. BLSA Admissions Chair Matthew
Gessesse commented that, “What
happens on the undergraduate
campus has a real effect on the
Law School. Most African American students I talk to that are
interested in coming here for law
school have numerous questions
about the racial incidents at
U.Va. and since they don’t necessarily separate the Law School
from the undergraduate campus,
they think the racial intolerance
affects the Law School as well.” He
went on to add that the Law School
is “losing many minority students
each year simply because they feel
they will not be welcomed here.”
The UJC ad hoc committee on
hate crimes will continue to hold
meetings that are open to the public throughout the school year.
Those who want more information on the committee and on what
they can do to help should contact
Eli Dejarnette at [email protected].
Virginia Law Weekly
Reviews
Friday, September 16, 2005
5
Laguna Beach: So horribly good
by Audrey Wagner ’06
Reviews Editor
I usually hate television, and I
haven’t owned one in about seven
years. However, that stretch
technically came to an end this
summer when I shared a furnished sublet in the American
University area of Washington
D.C. Far away from convenient
public transportation and without anything better to do on Monday nights, my roommate and I
rotted our brains on our hundred
plus channels of cable television.
It was there and then that I was
lured into the Venus Fly Trap of
entertainment that is Laguna
Beach: The Real Orange County.
Now I have to wonder how I fell
for one of the most vacuous shows
on TV today.
Laguna Beach is a reality television show on MTV that follows
the lives of seven or so privileged
teenagers through their senior
year of high school in Laguna
Beach, California. These kids
wear designer clothing, drive expensive cars, and get makeovers
just to go for sushi. But surprisingly the show isn’t about materialism and consumption—MTV
has My Super Sweet Sixteen for
that—it’s about “relationships.”
Set against a social back-drop of
absentee parenting, blatant underage drinking, and apparently
not enough homework, these kids
party, fight with each other, and
hook up randomly. Sometimes in
exactly that order.
The characters’ lives are filled
with an amazing amount of
drama. For instance, most of the
first season is about a love triangle between seniors Lauren
and Stephan and junior Kristin.
Astonishingly, Stephan goes back
and forth between the two girls
with no attempt to conceal his
“philandering” from either. Both
girls are so obsessed with this
one surfer-dude that they completely put up with it. The situation is so unbelievable that somehow it’s entertaining week after
week, despite the repetition.
The second season of Laguna
Beach has focused less on the
Lauren-Stephan-Kristin triangle
and more on the relationship between Kristin’s good-girl friend
Jessica and school bad-boy Jason (who incidentally looks like
the only kid old enough to shave
his face everyday). Jason is brazen enough to completely stand
up his girlfriend Jessica one night
in order to make a play for another girl. He lies to Jessica about
the incident and generally everything else. But she is so enamored with him that her only
standards are that, “he not lie to
me…and call me once in a while.”
Both standards which she consistently compromises. Jason’s
got it good. And Laguna Beach
offers no judgment and no moral
beyond that.
Laguna Beach has become one
of MTV’s flagship programs. And
two indicators suggest that it’s
not just being pitched at other
vapid teenagers. The first is all
the tire commercials that run
during the show. The second is
the number of law students who
have confided in me their secret
penchant for the program. Over
and over again, we all say, “It’s
so horrible, but so good.”
So, what’s the appeal of watching reality TV’s version of a
trainwreck? No sex or violence is
ever shown on camera. And you
can’t really say that you watch
for the beautiful people because
they are all seventeen years old,
and that’s kind of gross. Additionally, shows like the O.C. have
compelling and interesting
storylines whereas most of Laguna Beach consists of cookiecutter teenagers driving around
Southern California complaining
to each other on their cell phones
about all the aforementioned
drama.
Having ruled out quality programming as a reason to watch
Laguna Beach, I’ve finally had to
conclude that it is sheer, mindless entertainment. But perhaps
that is the epitome of reality television.
You might have to judge for
yourself Mondays on MTV at 10
p.m.
photo courtesy mtv.com
Real life never looked so good.
photo courtesy ugo.com
Nothing morbid about Death Cab’s sensitive tunes
Death Cab for Cutie
by David Lobe ’06
Reviewer
For a band that got its start courtesy of Seth Cohen from The O.C.,
it’s no surprise that the band members of Death Cab for Cutie are
sensitive and in touch with their
feelings. In the video for “Title and
Registration” from their breakthrough album Transatlanticism,
lead singer Ben Gibbard is literally
opened up for the world to see. His
bandmates (guitarist Chris Walla,
bassist/keyboardist Nick Harmer,
and drummer Jason McGerr) perform a heart transplant, replacing
Gibbard’s black heart with a fresh
red one, as they cut through his
onion peel-thick skin and carefully
manipulate his papier-mâché organs. Gibbard is no less delicate on
Death Cab’s latest offering, Plans.
Death Cab’s major-label debut
has flashes of brilliance, including
“Crooked Teeth,” “Marching Bands
of Manhattan,” “Soul Meets Body,”
and “Your Heart is an Empty Room.”
It debuted last week at number four
on the Billboard charts, but this is
likely more a testament to the influential power of The O.C., than it is
to a groundswell of popular support
for indie rock.
“Crooked Teeth” is the most radio-friendly song on the album with
a rollicking base line, expertly layered vocals, and a playful spirit.
Unlike most indie rockers, who focus on their inability to find love,
Gibbard explores the role of the
heartbreaker. He confesses to sabotaging his relationship from the
start, claiming “there was nothing
there all along.” But he doesn’t seem
entirely ready to walk away, when he
sings “you’re so cute when you’re slurring your speech / But they’re closing
the bar and they want us to leave.”
Gibbard creates another heart-
breaker in “Someday You Will Be
Loved.” He walks out on his lover,
leaving only a note, but promising
that her memories of him will seem
more like bad dreams when she
finds Mr. Right. If this were any
other emo band, you can be sure
that the singer would have been the
recipient of that note.
The steady crescendo of “Marching Bands of Manhattan” reflects
the urgency of someone who is willing to move mountains (or at least a
very large island) in a futile attempt to please his lover. His frustration builds until he declares that
“sorrow drips into your heart
through a pinhole…your love is
gonna drown.”
Plans has its dark moments as
well. “I Will Follow You Into the
Dark,” features Gibbard, accompanied only by a plaintive acoustic
guitar, singing about the inevitable
demise of his love, but promising
that he’ll be close behind. The otherwise upbeat “Soul Meets Body”
expresses the wish that “if the silence takes you, then I hope it takes
me too.” And “What Sarah Said”
suggests that love is watching someone die, and asks who will watch
you die? Gibbard has been quoted
as saying that the band is starting
to realize that their youth is over,
but the constant harping on themes
of death is excessive.
It seems as though Plans was
released prematurely as there is an
uneven quality to the album. Some
songs are thoroughly produced and
arranged while others seem unfinished, with sparse instrumentation.
In that regard, Plans is a minor
disappointment. While it might not
be a complete album, there are several notable singles that you’ll definitely hear on WNRN…and maybe
even The O.C.
ArompthroughtheBalkansinElizabethKostova’sTheHistorian
by Andrew J. Stephens ’06
Senior Staff Writer
Elizabeth Kostova’s new novel,
The Historian, is about several
things. First, it is about historians and the pursuit of history.
The novel unfolds along three
separate plot lines, each of
which follows a historian. One
storyline follows a graduate
student searching for his mentor who has disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. Another is about that same
mentor’s travels twenty years
prior. The third follows the
main narrator of the story, the
teenage daughter of the graduate student, as she uncovers
secrets of her father’s past.
The great strength of this book
is Kostova’s understanding of the
historian’s discipline. The characters spend their time chasing
down musty documents and
fragments of memory. Some of
the characters may be exotic
and their failures life-threatening, but the search itself
should be familiar to any stu-
dent of history. As the bits accumulate,
there
is
a
professional’s sense that they
are related and significant, but
the coherent story the three
historians are chasing is slow to
percolate. In this way, reading
the novel mirrors the action of
the novel. The reader slowly accumulates half-clues and impressions of the story.
Parts of the novel take place
in France, Spain, England, and
the Netherlands, but the soul of
the story lies in the Balkans, from
Istanbul to Transylvania. Of
course, it is impossible to speak
of the Balkans without speaking
of its history, which is why the
characters, the place, and the
plot are such a good mix. The
three modern plot lines stretch
from the 1930s to 1970s. Little
details are included from this
period, such as the Iron Guard,
liberalization in Hungary before
1956, and the gradual filtering
exposure of Stalin’s excesses,
which flavor the story. Overlaid
on all the storylines are flash-
backs to the Balkans’s formative
medieval era. The centuries of
struggle against the powerful
Ottoman Empire shaped the
people and the land in ways
which resonate through out the
novel. In Kostova’s hands, the
mountain villages and cosmopolitan cities are a compelling setting.
Some of the most powerful passages of the novel are the short,
dry descriptions of the actual medieval cruelty of Vlad Tepes,
sometimes King of Wallachia.
Short sentences about the burning of children and the impaling of “a large family,” are powerful because they are unadorned. Upon first reading of
these exploits, the narrator remarks, “For all his attention to
my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me
this: History’s terrible moments
were real. I understand now,
decades later, that he could
never have told me. Only history
itself can convince you of such a
truth.” I believe this is completely
correct.
Finally, the book is also about
Dracula, the legend and historical person. Truth be told, I was
not particularly excited to read
another Dracula story. Vampires, ever the chic thing, have
been done and overdone in
popular culture almost ad
nauseum. But the other
strengths of the novel got me
past this initial skepticism. It
helped that Kostova is not particularly interested in the nuts
and bolts of vampire lore. The
reader is never subjected to a
list of vampire power and weaknesses (yes—crucifixes work, no
to silver bullets, no to garlic,
yes to shape-changing, etc.).
Dracula becomes more of an embodiment of an awful past, but a
past that stays with us and that
we moderns cannot escape. The
haunting of the vampire is the
haunting of “history’s terrible
moments.”
I feel compelled to address the
inevitable comparisons to Dan
Brown’s historically-based ad-
ventures The Da Vinci Code and
Angels and Demons. I enjoyed
The Historian substantially more
than either of Brown’s books.
In Kostova’s story, there is no
neat resolution, no puzzle to be
solved, no “Ah-ha” moment. Instead there is a gradual unfolding of evidence and events, some
significant, some not, which
answer some questions, but not
others. The reader gets the
sense that this is only part of a
much larger story. Of course,
this is all like real life and real
history. Historical discovery is
not about solving a puzzle, but
discovering a story. Any real
story can only be a part of a
larger picture. Which is to say, I
like the dose of ambiguity in this
book.
All in all, the time I spent
reclining in my reading chair devouring this book was one of the
best Saturday afternoons I have
had in a while. If you like history, especially of the medieval
variety, I would recommend this
book.
The Back Page
6
Virginia Law Weekly
Friday, September 16, 2005
More Around
North Grounds
Thumbs down to
first-years for not sending Professor Harrison’s
quotes to the Law
Weekly. Granted, ANG could just
look at a Law Weekly from five
years ago to determine what jokes
he would have recycled.
Thumbs down to
Dean Cary Bennett for
his handling of the situation when he—surprise,
surprise—
dropped the ball with
Law Reg last week.
Thumbs down to
Britney Spears. ANG
need say no more.
Thumbs down to
John Roberts. ANG
owes ANG’s bookie for
betting on tha J.
Harveezie from the
Fourth Ceezie.
Thumbs up to thirdyears. Do you all actually do anything?
Thumbs down to steroids. ANG isn’t usually this aggressive.
Congratulations to
second-years John
Bates and Leota
Tennant on their engagement.
photo courtesy va.gov
Congratulations to
second-year
Lisa
Kinney for her engagement to Steve Helvin,
a U.Va. alumnus and
former adjunct professor.
Faculty Quotes
D. Leslie: “As I sit here
at ten minutes after twelve,
I realize I’ve forgotten my
wedding anniversary...”
G. Rutherglen: “You
know the old maxim.
[pause] Actually, what is
the old maxim?”
B. Cushman: “I am related to my wife by affinity, and I hope everyone
else is too.”
D. Leslie: “I don’t think
they [your glasses] would
look particularly good on
anybody!”
F. Heblich: “When
you’re acting like a lawyer
you should dress like a lawyer. Now some of them
dress like sh*t, so this is
not a hard and fast rule.”
R.
Schragger:
“I
wouldn’t have even called
on you if I knew you were
from Massachusetts. I
thought you were from
California.”
C. Craver: “When is a
lie not a lie? When it’s by a
lawyer.’
G. Rutherglen: “It’s not
sexual harassment if you
fondle everyone.”
J. Harrison: “I am only
able to watch the [John
Roberts] hearings for about
seven seconds before I have
to either mute the sound or
throw something at the
television.”
Bocce, badminton, and Birdwood
by Josh Kaplowitz ’07
Mel the 2L
by Stephen Glasgow ’07
Columnist
After a summer of working long
hours in a small windowless office
building, it’s great to return to the
good life in Charlottesville. As a second-year, I feel that it is my right - no,
my duty - to continue to develop the
lifestyle that served me so well
throughout my first year at U.Va.
Law: the life suitable for a man of
leisure.
As many of you already know, a
key component in the life of leisure is
the presence of one, or preferably three
or more, games of leisure. That is
where bocce, badminton, horseshoes,
and yes, even croquet, all come into
play. I know what many of you firstyears are thinking: “A life of leisure?
How is that possible, isn’t this law
school?” Well, I’m happy to be the
one to break it to you, it is possible.
Although a good portion of your
time will be taken up with classes
and reading, if you limit your sleep
and compress your work week into
five 18-hour days, you will have
plenty of time left over to begin
cultivating the proper habits of a
true man or woman of leisure. Plus,
think of how impressed your parents will be when you can tell them
that you were able to achieve grades
“slightly” below the mean while
studying only five days a week. Imagine how much smarter that makes
you than all the other first-years who
studied seven days a week!
So, without further ado, here are
five tips that I stand by that will help
you craft a day where a true person of
leisure can feel at home.
1) Beer (Or a suitable substitute)
Typically, a true “day of leisure”
is not achieved unless you can let it
all go. No studying, no laundry to
do, no golf lessons: nothing. At this
point having a few spirits to help
you relax is perfectly acceptable. Be
careful, however, because a day of
leisure lasts much longer than a
typical Bar Review night of debauchery. Drinking must be carefully moderated to keep things from getting
out of hand. Use Doug Leslie, or
alternatively, second-year Rob
Weissert, as an example of how to
keep it together. Additionally, when
you are fortunate enough to be presented with a day of leisure, don’t
shy away from a more creative form
of consumption. Drinks that you
might normally avoid, such as the
Mint Julep (Foxfields), the Black
Eyed Susan (Preakness), and the
double shot of 151 (your 21st birthday) may be fun when they are
mixed in with a day of leisure. I
typically think that wine coolers
and appletinis are still a bit out
there for the typical man of leisure,
but follow your heart, it will point
you in the right direction.
2) Bag o’ Wine
Many of you who went tubing on
the James might be familiar with
these, the horrifying innards of a fiveliter box of wine. They often rear their
smiling faces when “leisure” has been
taken just a little too far. Refer to
number one, supra, for acceptability
of a bag o’ wine during a day of leisure.
3) BBQing
This one should speak for itself.
Creativity on the grill is never a bad
thing. The late (and sometimes great)
SBA President, Adam Greene, was
fond of throwing a few oysters on the
grill, and although they tasted horrible, I remain optimistic that their
fabled aphrodisiacal affect will one
day pay big dividends for me.
4) Tailgating (and you thought
they all were going to start with
B, didn’t you? Well, so did I until
the old creativity well ran dry
after a mere three B-words)
Tailgating is an art, not merely a
pastime. A good tailgate should incorporate all of the other things on this
list. Note, however, that a football
game is not the only acceptable reason for a tailgate. A softball tournament, the Dandelion parade, and the
first warm Tuesday in March are all
also great times to gather for some fun
outdoor festivities.
5) Lawn sports
A must have. No true person of
leisure can feel at home without the
proper games of leisure. The debate is
still out on whether outdoor beer pong
is a lawn sport, but after an attempt to
define “sport” in my sports law class,
I feel confident that the competition
element of the game makes it a sport.
Stay Tuned … tips six through ten
may be appearing in the coming weeks.
But, for now, you should be well on
your way towards living life, leisurely…
Top ten worst undergraduatepickuplines
10) Oh, you got in from out of state? The
Law School is still harder to get into.
9) The facebook? What’s that?
8) I can help get you out of that Minor In
Possession charge.
7) Have you ever heard of a fee tail?
6) Eighty hours a week leaves you plenty of
time to cheat.
5) I go to Darden.
4) Actually, I’m a townie.
3) Double the hoo, double the fun.
2) You’re a Dee-Gee? I’m a Phi Delta Phi—
you know, the international legal fraternity.
1) Guess my future earning potential.