What Nancy Reagan and law journal might have in common
Heather Davies
Issue date: 7/15/03 Section: Perspectives
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I admit it. I'm a product of the "Just Say No" generation. The spirit of Nancy Reagan was on my book covers, in my after-school specials, in my upbringing. Drugs are bad; peer pressure is bad.
Just Say No.
Last semester, I just said no to the short write-on. I don't know how much credit Nancy deserves for this decision, but the rhetoric she threw at me during my adolescence came in awfully handy for rejecting the rhetoric of law journal. And for that, I'm glad.
Here's my (honest) disclaimer: WCL has four great journals and a Human Rights Brief. They contain lucid, insightful articles that highlight relevant legal issues. They are researched, written and edited with care. They are published and read, discussed and remembered. And that's really cool.
What's not cool is how one obtains the privilege of working on these publications.
Take a minute and think about it. It's been a long winter, and if you're a 1L, it's been a hell of a long time since September when you started this whole law school thing. Christmas break was short. The snowy season was long. You've started dreaming about your appellate brief, and suddenly, it's time to outline again. You can't remember the last time you went to the grocery store, but you can articulately discuss the pros and cons of all the pizza delivery in your neighborhood.
Now, enter write-on. With what frazzled mental capacity you have left, you have to spend your spring break reading the 400 pages of material ($15 worth) that contain the information you'll need to write an incisive, error-free 10-page article with a roughly 1:1 ratio of text to footnotes and exactly one-inch margins. If you log onto Westlaw and try to pull any of the materials in that packet, or any others related to the topic, you're disqualified. If you underline instead of italicize, you're disqualified.
In other cultures, spring break is a week where there are no classes, the weather is nice, and friends gather to go to the beach, relax in the sun and search for their lost shakers of salt. I'm not saying that I wanted to spend my spring break with Carson or anything, and I do recognize that as a law student, you make some concessions.
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