Fun and games with Professor LLamabutcher

Today in Legal Theory and Public Policy we were working on Lon Fuller's failures of legal systems, using our own honor code as an example to (unfortunately) explain each of Fuller's eight points. We started class with the random idea I had on class Monday, of using the lyrics of Folsom Prison Blues and Lincoln's Second Inaugural to illuminate the concepts. Having the kiddies read them out together, particularly how these two moral concepts are related in terms of the expectations we place on ourselves, but also the expectations placed on others, was pretty cool.

Civil Liberties seminar after lunch we are continuing our Civil Liberties during War theme by doing the Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer case, often known as "Steel Seizure." Monday was the Civil War era Prize Cases, and Friday is US v. US District Court, the decision on domestic surveillance that led to FISA. It was nice Jimmy Carter made such a big deal yesterday about the surveillance of the Kings by that evil John Ashcroft and Chimpy Mc Hitleralliburton---oh wait, it was Saint Bobby Kennedy..........warning, danger danger, does not compute does not compute....

This afternoon in The Rivalry that Shaped America (the senior seminar) we are doing the second half of David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, looking at patterns of English immigration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its affect on American political culture. Fischer concludes the book with some interesting looks at American political trends in the 20th century, up to the election of 1988. We're going to take it through the election of 2004, particularly the role of "NASCAR Dads" and "Security moms" and to what degree Fischer's type of political cultural analysis really holds water.