A Mother's Worst Nightmare, Literally

I just read this horrific case about a mother who murdered her daughter at night.


The mother was prone to sleepwalking and apparently had a dream that an army was in her daughter's bedroom, attacking her daughter. She took an axe and ran into the girl's bedroom (all the while asleep) and started hacking away at what she thought were the evil soldiers (but was actually her daughter)!

She woke up over her dead daughter with blood splatters everywhere. She walked slowly to the neighbor and said, "I think I may have hurt Penny (her daughter)."

This case was especially chilling to me because I'm a big sleepwalker. I've often wondered if I might possibly harm Michael (or myself), unconsciously. I never worried too much about it becuase I had never heard of such a horrible thing happening during someone's sleep. Now I'm a little worried.

But at least I know I won't get any jail time for committing such a murder. You can't be punished criminally for an involuntary act.

More evidence that I'm just a 3rd grader

I know, I'm retarded.

My torts teacher said the word duty atleast fifty times in class today. I was so distracted by the immature thought that he said "doodies" that I could NOT focus, try as I might, on what he said.

In my defense, I didn't ever relate "doodies" with "duties" until I watched one very fateful episode of Friends in which Chandler giggles while his boss says,

"You'll have a lot of duties on this job.
Learn to delegate. You'll have plenty of
assistants you can dump on."
Torts is all about civil duties. All we'll be talking about is duty this, duty that, duty, duty, duty. I am so screwed.

(On a better note, thank you all who participated in my "judge" experiment in the previous post. Your opinions were invaluable to me because law is not just about what's in the books, it's also about common moral intuitions. And I can't trust mine because I'm a social freak -- and apparently very immature.)

YOU be the Judge

The following is one of the hardest cases I have ever read. Indeed it's one of the hardest cases in the history of Torts jurisprudence. It's not complicated, but it's a toughie. I need your collective brain powers to help me out.

Let's say you are Judge Blogreader and this case appears before you:

Harry was walking across a bridge and accidentally slipped and fell into the water. Poor Harry couldn't swim and thrashed about wildly in the river, and seemed like he would drown if he didn't get help.

Leonardo was on the bridge at the time Harry fell and could see that Harry's life was in danger. There was a rope tied to the bridge that could be thrown down to someone in the river so that they could grab a hold of it and save themselves.

Leonardo, for whatever reason, decided not to throw that rope down to Harry. He just stood there and watched Harry drown.

Harry's wife sues Leonardo for not helping Harry by at least throwing down the rope.

Do you think Harry's wife should win? Why or why not?

Snow Day

Yay! No day! Snow day!


School's cancelled because my professor's plane can't fly him back to Boston in this inclement weather. It's snowing like crazy today...so beautiful.

I'm a little ashamed for feeling so gleeful about class being cancelled. I should be mature about school. I'm an adult, for crying out loud. Not some ratty 3rd grader who hates school and moans about homework. I love learning and being intellectually stretched. I love discovery.

Oh, who am I kidding. I hate school. I am just an immature 3rd grader.

Out of the pan and into the fire

Tomorrow school begins again.

Round 2. Return of the Nerd. The Institution Strikes Back. Christina's Travails, Part II.

I'm a little cheered by the fact that I'll be taking, what appears to me to be, more interesting classes: Criminal Law, Torts (for those of you like me who think this is a dessert, it's not. It's about unwanted human contact-battery, assualt, etc.), and International Human Rights.


I'm anticipating lots of gory details, sordid facts, and deep feelings of righteous indignation. Murderers, rapists, and molestors, oh my!

Of course I'll be sure to keep you posted on all the depravity to come.

The opposite of fun

I had my first law school exam today.

It was brutal.

After dragging my sorry-ass out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30 a.m., after downing four cups of coffee and two pills of legal crack (aka Excedrine Migraine), I slummed through eight hours of bad writing and questionable analysis.

And I think I did poorly. Is it possible that I failed the class? What ignominy. What a short-lived stint of parental approval. What a waste of one year's tuition.

And this is the class I studied the most for! Imagine the carnage to come on the next two...

Until we meet again...

First final is this Friday, 1/6. Second final is the following Monday, 1/9. And last final is Wednesday, 1/11.