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February 03, 2006
Real smart
I'm taking this class at school called Civil Procedure, which is basically about what sort of rules people must follow when they want to sue each other. Currently we're learning about what criteria must be met in order to sue somebody in Federal Court as opposed to state court. Needless to say, this is all very complicated, and the applicable statutes are not very easy to understand.
But hey, I'm a smart guy. I can handle this, right? Well, a student is only as smart as his teacher. My teacher is one smart cookie, and I have the feeling she will teach us quite a bit. However, and I say this with unequivocal anger: our textbook sucks.
First, there are the statutes. A normal book might have an appendix or something with all the important statutes, but not this one. Instead, if you want to read the statutes, you have to pick up the supplement for an extra $40. Then, the supplement has this supposedly handy-dandy tab thing like on the back of an almanac. Suppose you want to look at the Constitution. On the back of the book, it says Constitution with an arrow pointing to the edge of the book. Then, with the book closed, you can see black lines drawn on the edge, which the arrows are supposed to line up with. (This probably makes no sense at all.) Except, on this one, the lines do not line up at all! So you have to shuffle through the book to find what you want.
But the most glaring problem with the book is a very simple and annoying one. All the cases in the book do not say which court it is making the decision. In these law books, it always has the name of the case, the citation so you can look the bitch up on your own, and it's SUPPOSED to say what court's decision we are reading. So, if you had a case like, oh, Roe v. Wade, and then 410 U.S. 113, which means you can find the case in volume 410 of the US Reports book (the official report of the Supreme Court, natch.) But, it should also, for exact clarification, say "United States Supreme Court," and maybe the year. But this book doesn't do that. It just has the name and the citation, so you have no clue what court is making the decision. Yes, you can sometimes deduce what court is making the decision based on the citation, but that is cumbersome and more than likely to result in mistakes.
I am especially annoyed about this because this is CIVIL PROCEDURE. It is extremely important in this class what court is making the decision. So, we read this case the other day where some Chinese nationals and California citizens wanted to sue a Chinese-government funded TV channel based in the USA in Federal Court for racketeering and defamation. For whatever reason, they decided to sue these guys in the District of Columbia. But, I had no fucking clue any of this was happening in DC, because the stupid citation did not say that the DC Federal Courts were making this decision. In fact, the only reason one could have found out that this was happening in DC is because the stupid plaintiffs missed the statute of limitations for defamation in DC. Ha ha!
Now, once again, I am sure none of this made sense at all. But the point is, in a case like that, it would have been of utmost importance for somebody to know exactly in what court the suit is taking place. Every other book tells us what court is making the decision. Why can't this one? I have decided not to include the author's name in my rant, because I do not want him to sue me in Federal Court, or State Court for that matter. But you know who you are, buster. I'm gonna be looking for you some day.
Posted by oz115 at February 3, 2006 08:35 PM
Comments
Oh snuggle wuggle... is there anything I can do to help? You just name it, and I'll do it! My poor honey doodle!
Posted by: Lady Christy at February 3, 2006 09:20 PM