wine on expenses

[raven]

Today after work I went home to change and grab some food, and then headed out to Jesus Green to play a game of rounders with my colleagues (vs. a worthy team of local chartered surveyors), in the twenty-five degree sunlight on the grass, and when I was up to bat I got one rounder and when I was fielding I caught one batsman out (and it turns out playing rounders when you're not at school in PE kit not only an enjoyable experience but positively fun). And afterwards we drifted across Midsummer Common to the Fort St George and drank wine on expenses by the river Cam. The pub has no road access, which is deliciously peaceful, and means you wander across the common in the sunshine to get home.

And, sometimes I miss the US. Swedish Fish! Half and half! I have to walk all the way to the postbox to return my Netflix discs, oh my god my life. And then sometimes I really, really don't. Such a blissful evening. What a wonderful place to live.

In other news, the Supreme Court has not done a stupid thing today; I've read the abbreviated judgement and, as usual, am less than impressed by the reasoning. Which isn't quite accurate - the reasoning is fine, but it seems as though my fundamental ambivalence regarding a constitutional court persists, which means its tortured readings and re-readings, its invocations of the Framers and what they wanted, etc, just don't impress me. I find it hard to internally understand codified constitutions and sovereignty outside the legislature. (On another note, my supervisor and I have been quiet recently and I've spent the last couple of days drinking coffee and reading Fifoot's Law of Contract. After reading a gentle few chapters on mediaeval assumpsit, civil-law considerations and the economic effects on the law of contracts as a result of globalisation before I even got to phenomenal of agreement, offers, acceptance, invitation to treat, all the basic stuff, I decided again that the British way of teaching law is so much more gentle and thoughtful than the American one. It's less ritualised, less pivoted on oral confrontation, and more in the style of the trainee, the apprentice, clerk, whatever, being articled into a noble tradition with care. And I have all the issues with English law and liberal legal systems in general that any person who's familiar with radical political thought would have - it's inherently racist and very inherently sexist, it constitutes itself as rational and neutral when it's as fallible as the rest of us, blah blah you've heard it. It's just I also believe you can't critique the law before you know the law. And here in England and Wales it's a kinder, sweeter way of knowing what you are when you're a lawyer.)

All of which is obiter anyway, because who cares how they got there when they got there. I suspect it will be a long, long time before the US federal government is responsible for healthcare reform that brings the American healthcare system out of a system of total barbarism, but this is a first step.

In other other news I have been feeling very sad recently, but the evening in the sunlight has revived me somewhat; I have only a couple of months left in my current job; in a week I am going to Germany; I have just finished watching Quatermass and the Pit, which I enjoyed much too much for something made in 1958 (not only is it creepy as all-get-out, it also seems to employ a far more liberal hand in its politics than many things fifty years younger); and we crossed the solstice, so eighteen hours of daylight is now getting shorter each day rather than longer, but that's all right.

And we go on. I am much, much too drunk for someone who has to go to work tomorrow before it's the weekend. Tonight the Caped Crusader told me, over his Peroni over our very wobbly table, "When you caught that guy out, I turned to [another trainee] and said, 'I told you she was Indian!' And now I feel bad. Was that bad?"

I told him, fondly and drunkenly, that it was terribly bad of him, but somehow I can never think badly of him when everything he says to me is laced with the most uncomplicatedly joyful affection. I went home feeling like the sunshine was inside me.

Comments

[toft]

Aw, what a lovely post.

[thingswithwings]

It's always so good to hear from you - this post is like a lovely little portrait of you, and it reminds me to miss you and give you a long-distance hug.

re: constitutional law: I've told you before about Anthropomorphism in Lyric and Law, by Barbara Johnson, right? It's an amazing article about how the Great Framers are spoken of as we speak of romantic poets, as Great Authors who have nothing but control over every word they write. Anyway, that article was sort of my introduction to how messed up constitutional law is, and led me to always think of it as a kind of boyfannishness - you know, when you're really into all the details of how the starship enterprise works, and read every single missive from the executive producer as The Word of God, and get Watsonian on anyone who dares to go Doylist. I've always felt like what law needs is a lot more girlfannishness, a willingness to reshape to suit what we need and desire now. This is just a silly thing that a person who knows nothing about the law always has running through her head, but there it is. The rigidity of clinging to a text, or an author, it just . . . makes me sad. Because there's potential for transformation everywhere.

[surexit]

You made me miss Cambridge really fiercely for half a second. It really does have more than its fair share of lovely places, and I'm looking forward to being able to go back with uncomplicated emotions, sometime down the road.

[raven]

Thank you, sweet. We should talk about how great David Hyde Pierce is sometime. Isn't he just the best?

[raven]

Ah, complicated emotions surrounding a university city! There should be a name for that feeling, yes.

[raven]

aww, you! It's been a year now since I moved back and I still miss y'all so much. I guess Ithaca is all summery and beautiful right now? Here it is, ah, not.

I like your rendering of (US) constitutional law as boyfannishness! Yes! I think I might've thought that, subconsciously, when I was actually reading it - because it's there, oh, yes, it's there, the Outpost Gallifrey fanboys explaining how there are only white Time Lords have so much in common with Scalia explaining why his view in Romer v Evans is not a bill of attainder against queer people. The other thing, the willingness to reshape, is there and not there, it's nascent, I believe. It's in critical race theory, it's in some judgements by Brennan and Marshall. In England and Wales it's much more apparent - if you ever have the time and inclination, I recommend reading R v R, the early nineties case which finally destroyed the marital rape exemption in the UK. It is a classic example of what the common law ought to be: the gentle moulding of the law to fit the people it serves, rather than the other way around. I think people sometimes have difficulty with how "everyone is subject to the same law" and "the law is ours and should serve us as we are" can be true at the same time, but they are, and that duality strikes me as a fannish view: the structure of the common law can be remixed and rebooted while still being what it is. Here, with no codified constitution - with no unforgivable canon - we do better, I believe.

This is a little longer than I meant it to be! But constitutional law, generally, is so fascinating and so, so constitutive of society, that it bothers me how people aren't encouraged to think it's a vital and vivid field of study.

[msilverstar]

Good on you for getting on and doing some of those things that are special to a time and place!

[surexit]

BITTERNESS is generally how I descibe it. :D

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

1. The title of this post is excellent.
2. You managed to make Cambridge sound nice! Impressive given my current 'hate them all; hate it all' stance.
3. I'm so sorry you've been feeling sad. You deserve quite the opposite.
4. <3

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You are the sweetest. I have not told you that recently. And as the days have got longer and longer and I get further from the job that made me so unhappy, Cambridge is growing on me. It's not as nice as Oxford, but nowhere is and I never stop being amazed that my boring and unremarkable workplace is on the edge of Midsummer Common and the River Cam, and all the quiet beauty of it all is within arm's reach.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for rounders and nice evenings in the sunshine! I'm glad it revived you (although how did you get such nice weather; it was grey and cold here this evening, although hot in the morning).

The ruling is excellent news, although I also am not overly fond of the US system of constitutional law. (I just find myself saying, "but this should OBVIOUSLY be a right, who cares if it wasn't written down by a load of white men ~250 years ago?")

[rhuia.livejournal.com]

It's less ritualised, less pivoted on oral confrontation, and more in the style of the trainee, the apprentice, clerk, whatever, being articled into a noble tradition with care.

Oh that's lovely. I've always been charmed by the language of your legal institutions (anything that can marry the word 'Temple' and 'Inn', however obliquely, is okay by my book). It's nice to hear those institutions are run with appropriate emotional gravitas -- although it's equally nice that Rumpole's the poster boy for the two Temples, which balances out the world splendidly, I think.

We've crossed the solstice the other way! Split the difference.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

my fundamental ambivalence regarding a constitutional court persists, which means its tortured readings and re-readings, its invocations of the Framers and what they wanted, etc, just don't impress me.

MY GOD, ME TOO. (Or, more grammatically, ME EITHER.) (They do not impress me either.) (You know what I mean.)

I love you and the last line of this post. The US misses you too (although I do not understand what you miss about half and half. :P) I'm so sorry you've been sad lately. If I could, I would send you Hayley to cuddle. <3

[fyrdrakken]

Sounds like a splendid day -- thank you for sharing it with us! (I briefly contemplated speculating on the differences both in the practice of law and more generally cultural that lead to the differences in UK and US legal training -- but it's not like I know enough about either to be likely to have any sort of an intelligent opinion.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

This, I have no idea. It was 28 degrees and sunny here while Newcastle was flooding! It's nice again today, though less ridic warm.

Codified con law, it's a mindfuck. My endearing pair of con law professors in the US used to treat me very kindly, and say things like, "That's a very non-American view" (and once, apologetically to a visiting speaker, "Iona is our resident Brit") rather than "are you mad, are you".

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Leigh, half and half is the best. It's like cream, but not. And the truly creepy thing about American dairy products is that over there they can put weird shit in them that the EU bans, so they DON'T GO OFF. I used to pick milk or cream out of the fridge to chuck and then be like... whoa, this is still fresh, this is creepy.

ANYWAY. Hi. I miss you lots! Give Hayley a kiss from me.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I believe people have written books on the subject! It's fascinating, especially because there's such a specific point of divergence where English common law ceased to be binding on American decisions. American law is fascinating, though - there is even one civil-law jurisdiction over there, which I just can't get over.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Me too. I'm a land lawyer by inclination, so I get more of it than most people. One case I had reason to look at the other day was from the fourteenth century, and oh, I love that, that continuity of experience so that I can be reading something written seven hundred years ago and apply it to something that's happening right now to real living people.

Rumpole is great! He claims to have been admitted at Outer Temple, which makes me think of an Inn of Court floating around in space...

[fyrdrakken]

See, elsewhere on my friends list is someone whose legal training took place in Scotland, and she mentioned in passing at one point that Scottish law differs from English law (as I pause to boggle) because so much of Scottish law is based on French (and IIRC therefore on Roman before that), whereas English law is coming from a standpoint of pre-existing local common law, or something like that. And Americans all grow up being taught there is federal law, and there is state law, and we learn from the news that state law is wildly varying -- but it's pretty easy to just write off the regional distinctions as being just that, without connecting the dots and looking into why they differ and which influences only affected which areas.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

The other half of this county was underwater quite recently, although East Sussex generally seems to escape such things (hurrah!). It's still a bit chilly and drizzly, though.

My endearing pair of con law professors in the US used to treat me very kindly, and say things like, "That's a very non-American view" (and once, apologetically to a visiting speaker, "Iona is our resident Brit") rather than "are you mad, are you".

So tactful of them!