Legislative drafting
Feb. 24th, 2011 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenMy con law prof, this morning: "You're contradicting yourself. Yesterday I asked you if you thought McKinnon's Indiana anti-pornography ordinance would be upheld by the Supreme Court. You said no. Have you changed your mind?"
"No," I said, "today you asked if I thought the ordinance was constitutional."
"You're a cynic, Ms. [my last name]," he said, thoughtfully. And when I opened my mouth to argue: "I didn't say you're not right."
I heart my con law prof thiiiiiis much.
On the whole, it has been an aggravating day. Apparently I am whatever the opposite of a First-Amendment cheerleader is, for one thing, and after that the Siren and I attempted to go to the pool: she had forgotten shampoo; I had forgotten where my towel was, we couldn't find anywhere to park, couldn't find change, forgot the third person we were supposed to pick up and then it started to snow. Not what one would call an enormous success.
That said I had a very nice dinner and have made a start on some work, so.
My homework for this week: drafing a legislative amendment to a defence appropriations bill authorising funds for dredging a harbour, subject to two points of order: no separate authorisation of funds, and no affirmative substantive legislation. I am having ALL THE FUN IN THE WORLD doing this. I sometimes wonder whether I'm doing the right things with my life. Then I remember I am the only person in the world who actively loves legislative drafting, and then I don't worry so much.
(Okay, but I do love it! I do! It's like some kind of cross between formal logic, writing fanfic and doing cryptic crosswords, and it's a buzz to get it right.)
So, anyway, dredging of harbours. It's fascinating. Oh, and I finished The Merlin Conspiracy. I was sort of disappointed by it, to be honest. It suffers from the handicap of trying to be two books at once: a stand-alone YA novel, and a sequel to Deep Secret. And speaking of Deep Secret, it's completely hilarious how hard the publishers have tried to deny the fact it exists: the blurb doesn't mention it, the inner flap doesn't mention it, the "Also by the author" doesn't mention it! And yet, the plot wouldn't to me make any sense without it: I mean, who the Magids are isn't explained, neither is the fact that Nick is just casually heir to an Empire, and... yeah. I think the book suffers from a whole lot of things happening at once without any real structure, mainly because it doesn't know what it wants to be.
Which isn't to say it's all bad: the world-building's great, the characters are hilarious - I love how this book does confirm that yes, all Magids have completely, completely ridiculous lives; Maxwell Hyde being chased around by salamanders and having to get two-hundred-pounds'-worth of drunk before he can travel between worlds is fabulous - and I do love her refusal to write down to people. But, still.
Oh, and, I knew this, but Diana Wynne Jones is rubbish on race. I've read ten of her books in the last six months, and it annoys me that only one character in all of those is brown. (And Nirupam Singh only appears in the one book!) I know people are going to object and say Tacroy, but, well, Tacroy doesn't come from, say, Asia in our world, or Asia in Chrestomanci's world, or wherever: he comes from the EVIL WORLD OF BROWN PEOPLE. (edit: I forgot Millie, as well - Millie, whose origin story is very indicative of her being brown, to my delight, but then this is never so much as mentioned again.) In Deep Secret, Rupert's list of potential Magids is supposed to cover the whole world - and somehow everyone on it is white. And in The Merlin Conspiracy, Pudmini is quite probably Indian, and she has an Indian name, and she's... an elephant. A talking elephant. But nevertheless. An elephant.
Oh, and Nick (and, presumably, Maree) is dark, but the narrative deals with this by telling us that he keeps being mistaken for Asian, and doesn't like it. And there's this running gag about how some of the other characters talk about his "Oriental mysticism", and I get the spirit of it - it's meant to make fun of the people who do talk about that sort of thing - but at the same time I sort of think, okay, is it that hilarious that the magic-using protagonist of a fantasy novel could be brown?
So much as I have enjoyed her books so far, I think I am setting them down for the moment. I have The Wind's Twelve Quarters from the public library, which is the last Le Guin short-story collection I haven't read. I'm looking forward to that one.
"No," I said, "today you asked if I thought the ordinance was constitutional."
"You're a cynic, Ms. [my last name]," he said, thoughtfully. And when I opened my mouth to argue: "I didn't say you're not right."
I heart my con law prof thiiiiiis much.
On the whole, it has been an aggravating day. Apparently I am whatever the opposite of a First-Amendment cheerleader is, for one thing, and after that the Siren and I attempted to go to the pool: she had forgotten shampoo; I had forgotten where my towel was, we couldn't find anywhere to park, couldn't find change, forgot the third person we were supposed to pick up and then it started to snow. Not what one would call an enormous success.
That said I had a very nice dinner and have made a start on some work, so.
My homework for this week: drafing a legislative amendment to a defence appropriations bill authorising funds for dredging a harbour, subject to two points of order: no separate authorisation of funds, and no affirmative substantive legislation. I am having ALL THE FUN IN THE WORLD doing this. I sometimes wonder whether I'm doing the right things with my life. Then I remember I am the only person in the world who actively loves legislative drafting, and then I don't worry so much.
(Okay, but I do love it! I do! It's like some kind of cross between formal logic, writing fanfic and doing cryptic crosswords, and it's a buzz to get it right.)
So, anyway, dredging of harbours. It's fascinating. Oh, and I finished The Merlin Conspiracy. I was sort of disappointed by it, to be honest. It suffers from the handicap of trying to be two books at once: a stand-alone YA novel, and a sequel to Deep Secret. And speaking of Deep Secret, it's completely hilarious how hard the publishers have tried to deny the fact it exists: the blurb doesn't mention it, the inner flap doesn't mention it, the "Also by the author" doesn't mention it! And yet, the plot wouldn't to me make any sense without it: I mean, who the Magids are isn't explained, neither is the fact that Nick is just casually heir to an Empire, and... yeah. I think the book suffers from a whole lot of things happening at once without any real structure, mainly because it doesn't know what it wants to be.
Which isn't to say it's all bad: the world-building's great, the characters are hilarious - I love how this book does confirm that yes, all Magids have completely, completely ridiculous lives; Maxwell Hyde being chased around by salamanders and having to get two-hundred-pounds'-worth of drunk before he can travel between worlds is fabulous - and I do love her refusal to write down to people. But, still.
Oh, and, I knew this, but Diana Wynne Jones is rubbish on race. I've read ten of her books in the last six months, and it annoys me that only one character in all of those is brown. (And Nirupam Singh only appears in the one book!) I know people are going to object and say Tacroy, but, well, Tacroy doesn't come from, say, Asia in our world, or Asia in Chrestomanci's world, or wherever: he comes from the EVIL WORLD OF BROWN PEOPLE. (edit: I forgot Millie, as well - Millie, whose origin story is very indicative of her being brown, to my delight, but then this is never so much as mentioned again.) In Deep Secret, Rupert's list of potential Magids is supposed to cover the whole world - and somehow everyone on it is white. And in The Merlin Conspiracy, Pudmini is quite probably Indian, and she has an Indian name, and she's... an elephant. A talking elephant. But nevertheless. An elephant.
Oh, and Nick (and, presumably, Maree) is dark, but the narrative deals with this by telling us that he keeps being mistaken for Asian, and doesn't like it. And there's this running gag about how some of the other characters talk about his "Oriental mysticism", and I get the spirit of it - it's meant to make fun of the people who do talk about that sort of thing - but at the same time I sort of think, okay, is it that hilarious that the magic-using protagonist of a fantasy novel could be brown?
So much as I have enjoyed her books so far, I think I am setting them down for the moment. I have The Wind's Twelve Quarters from the public library, which is the last Le Guin short-story collection I haven't read. I'm looking forward to that one.
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no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:08 pm (UTC)Tangentially, this raises a question that I've been meaning to ask you: am I right that the judiciary has had a far greater role in shaping the US, than it has in the UK? I mean, obviously neither body actually makes law, but it seems to me that parliamentary sovereignty has limited greatly what the judiciary can do, and thus I can't imagine the UK ever having had an equivalent of Roe V Wade or Brown V the Board of Education.
no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:13 pm (UTC)That is not an easy question to answer! On a fairly superficial level, you can argue straightaway that the British lack of American-style judicial review does have that effect, yes. In the UK, parliamentary sovereignty engenders a tradition of major social change through legislation, so there's much less interplay between branches. Some people have even argued that the US doesn't need judicial review at all, because the UK manages without it just fine.
[I wrote a paper about this last semester! It was.... long.]
no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:19 pm (UTC)I'd like to read that paper some time.
Thanks, this has been enlightening.
no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:22 pm (UTC)You're welcome. :) I can send you the paper if you really want it!
no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:24 pm (UTC)Oh, and one final question. How did the Supreme Court justify ruling it unconstitutional?
no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-25 07:57 pm (UTC)Thanks for the paper. I look forward to reading it.