Summer Reading

Recently, as My Judge has decided to take weeks off for his personal vacations, I have found myself with some blessedly free time.  I have used this time to catch up on life tasks (using loan money for important bills such as rent and food) and do some light, fun reading.

One thing that happens when you inform your parents and other close, adult relatives (like your girlfriend's parents) is that people start buying you books that they think are related to law school.  Having already read most of John Grisham's catalog, I have been fortunately spared that road.  But others come through, and being a law student, and therefore capable of reading for 8+ hours straight, I have read most of them.

First of all, I'll start with the good: A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr.  This is also a movie staring John Travolta and the father from 3rd Rock from the Sun.  My Civ Pro teacher showed us clips during football season when she was too lazy to prep for class.  The book, however, is a decent read for someone getting ready to start their first year of law school.  It is light on legal principles, but heavy on the personal destruction of a lawyer.  The beginning is laboriously slow and poorly written, but after 75 pages it picks up nicely and moves well to the finish.  Anyone with an interest in litigation or torts might want to peruse this.  This is a true story, and a solid piece of American legal history, something I think you should be able to talk about, or at least recognize.

Next, the Just Okay: May It Please the Court, edited by Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton.  This book purports to contain 23 live recordings of the oral arguments of landmark Supreme Court cases.  I was really, really excited by this book when I saw it on the used bookshelves.  Instead, what you get is 5 pages of background introduction to the case, 2 pages of heavily edited transcript (with interruptions from the "Narrator" explaining what each argument means) and then a heavily edited 2 page decision.  For an American, this book is invaluable, as it gives the arguments and reasoning behind cases such as Roe v. Wade, that everyone mentions but few really understand.  For someone about to enter law school, this book has some value in being a primer for Con Law, and giving easy to digest opinions to practice reading.  For someone with even a semester of law school behind them, this book is worthless.  The arguments are edited so heavily that you don't get to see them develop, the Narrator just tells you, "Here, Justice Marshall asks about the limit of executive privilege."  Then you read "Marshall: But sir, don't you think that extends the limit of executive privilege? Counsel: No, Your Honor, I would argue that it simply defines the outer limit." Well, thank goodness we got to hear it in their own words!  The edited decisions are the same, they might as well just be summarized by the editors, since the chopped sentences full of ellipses don't give any flavor of the actual judicial process.

And finally, the terrible: The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer.  Quite possibly one of the worst books I have ever read. Staring a Supreme Court Clerk, the book starts off awesomely.  The opening chapters discuss the clerk's role in shaping Supreme Court decisions by drafting the opinions, and assisting in review of certiori requests.  The author discusses the power held by recent law school grads in careful phrasing to influence the way law is made for the entire country.  Unfortunately, this lasts for about 100 pages, then it just turns into a crazy spy thriller type, with the Supreme Court becoming only the setting.  While this isn't in itself bad, most John Grisham books do the same thing and I generally enjoy them, the problem is that this book does it terribly.  One minute, the main character is a nerdy law school grad, the next minute he daringly fights off a trained assassin with a fire extinguisher.  The assassin is a great character too, at first he is a sort of weaselly nerd who gets winded running a few blocks, later he kidnaps three characters and a federal marshall!  Also, there is some great whodunnit intrigue that I was pretty genuinely mystified by, until the end when there was a "its all just a dream!" type explanation offered.  Not recommended for anyone, unless you are on one of those committees that gives awards to awful literature, in which case you might check this one out.