The Write Bailiwick

Signing Off . . . At Least for the Time Being . . .

Emmel Philips — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:49:33 +0000

My extraordinarily ordinary life has experienced a few changes, as you might have guessed from the dearth of posts lately. (No worries, all is fine, just a few alterations in daytime routines.) At the moment, my priorities and allocations of time do not have room for posting. If I get more efficient, perhaps I will return to the blogosphere. Until then, you can join me in encouraging my Dear Husband to start a blog, which would undoubtedly be much cooler than these humble pages!

Thanks for reading and sharing this space with me for the past few months.

Feddie’s Back!

Emmel Philips — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:41:48 +0000

Feddie’s Southern Appeal has happily returned to the blogosphere. (I’ll amend the blogroll soon!)

Meanwhile, our family has been visited by the flu, but I hope to return to blogging soon.

Natural Born Presidents

Emmel Philips — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:06:00 +0000

Hillary Clinton was born in Chicago, Illinois.

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Mike Huckabee was born in Hope, Arkansas. (Oddly, the same place where Bill Clinton was born nine years earlier.)

John McCain was born in Coco Solo, in the Panama Canal Zone, Panama.

Article II, section 1 of the United States Constitution requires that “[n]o person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Is a person born outside of the fifty states, in a United States military installation within a foreign country, a natural born citizen?

This article reports on the issue, concluding that most likely a birth in a military installation makes the child a natural born citizen. Notably, Theodore Olson is in the process of preparing a legal analysis for Senator McCain. The issue is one that surely fascinates academics, but realistically, I do not know how such a case would move forward. Someone would have to have standing to sue McCain. Who would that be? Any citizen? It would probably be politically risky for his opponent to bring the case. It would make a case for the case books, though!

Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

Emmel Philips — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:01:27 +0000

My Little One just devours books (hopefully after the teething passes, we will work on reading them too), and one that we often choose is Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Thinks You Can Think! (I admit I read this several times before realizing that Dr. Seuss thinks thinks, not things.) I thought I would share a few of the recent Google searches that brought readers to this modest blog. Oh the thinks you can think on the web!

“merry xmas in algonquin words” (Um, did I write about that?)

“oedipus the king bailiwick” (I wonder what this person was really looking for!)

“what does the word crapulous mean” (At least the blog may have helped somebody out there with this post.)

“work crapulous?” (Obviously, there must be a shortage of blogging on crapulous.)

and

“moose skullduggery” (I think that one was my dear husband trying to find a googlewhack for my blog. A googlewhack is a two-word search on google, without quotation marks, that yields a single hit.)

Prayers for Bar Examinees

Emmel Philips — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:01:14 +0000

This Tuesday and Wednesday (and Thursday in a few jurisdictions), gaggles of stressed law school graduates will be attempting to hurdle the bar exam of states across the country. Please offer prayers for them today (as the anxiety before the test sometimes seems worse than the test itself!), especially through the intercession of St. Thomas More and St. Joseph Cupertino (patron saint of test takers, because he was asked the only question he knew the answer to in his examination for the priesthood), and for the Children of the Sacred Heart out there, we implore the intercession of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne and St. Madeline Sophie Barat!

The country may not need more lawyers, but a few more good ones are worth the prayers. I have three friends taking the bar in three different states and I wish them each a smooth, successful examination!

Courage and Confidence!

Incidentally, the term “bar” exam refers to the bar or railing separating the area around the judge in a courtroom. See here (near the bottom of the page).

A Word Without Context: kerfuffle

Emmel Philips — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:01:20 +0000

Well, dear readers, it seems I have a favorite word that I cannot find in a court opinion, at least on the free resources! (I feel as if I should get extra credit for such a discovery, like we would get for successfully stumping our third grade science teacher with scientific questions.) In the last five years in state and federal courts and in Supreme Court cases from 1781, no judge (not even Judge Selya!) has employed the delightful word “kerfuffle.” A kerfuffle is a sort of disturbance, of which factual recitations would seem to provide plenty of opportunities for use (“After observing the kerfuffle in the parking lot, the officers approached the defendant . . . .”). Any clerks out there with limitless Lexis or Westlaw abilities care to extend the search? This word has been a favorite since I learned it from a friend’s page-a-day calendar a few years back. I thought kerfuffle would surely have wound its way into an opinion in the last few years. Let this post effectively throw down the gauntlet to the lurking clerking readers out there!

A Sentence Out of Context

Emmel Philips — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:47:06 +0000

I read this sentence last night and thought it worth sharing. If I am reading carefully, I try to be alert for well-tuned sentences, which are fun to collect even though more cumbersome than words.

I have a passion for writing on clean single-lined foolscap; a smear, a tea-mark on a page makes it unusable, and a fantastic notion took me that I must keep my paper locked up in case of an unsavory visitor.

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair. I suspect a few others out there might be reading this one too these days . . . . Foolscap, by the way, refers to paper that is 8 1/2 by 13 1/2 inches. More information on it can be found here.

Word in Context: insouciance

Emmel Philips — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:01:04 +0000

Here is a short one from Judge Posner: “The parties, illustrating lawyers’ typical insouciance about quantification, have not told us what the retired pilots’ unsecured claims are likely to be worth.” In re UAL Corp., 468 F.3d 456 (7th Cir. 2006). Insouciance means characterized by a nonchalant or cheerful lack of concern.

As an aside, I challenge our readers to begin using “chalant” as a word; if one can be nonchalant, one should certainly be able to be chalant.

Happy Birthday, Washington!

Emmel Philips — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:09:44 +0000

My Hallmark calendar announces today as Presidents’ Day (as do so many commercials–what do presidents have to do with kitchen appliances anyway?), but The Code (not the one that includes parlay) considers today the observance of only one president’s birth: Washington. See 5 U.S.C. 6103(a), which lists the following federal holidays:

The following are legal public holidays:

New Year’s Day, January 1.

Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., the third Monday in January.

Washington’s Birthday, the third Monday in February.

Memorial Day, the last Monday in May.

Independence Day, July 4.

Labor Day, the first Monday in September.

Columbus Day, the second Monday in October.

Veterans[*] Day, November 11.

Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November.

Christmas Day, December 25.

Perhaps its best, as all presidents are not equally honorable, and few could dispute Washington’s grace and leadership. A tip of the hat to loyal reader and code aficionado, Prawnik!

* Why isn’t this punctuated Veterans’ Day?

The Historical Record

Emmel Philips — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:47:30 +0000

I am a bit pressed for time today, but just thought I would share this fun link of trials with you. The website chronicles famous trials: from Socrates to Jesus to Thomas More to Nuremberg to Moussaoui.

A tip of the hat to my dear husband who manages to find all sorts of things using this magic box (as one of my older professors used to call the laptops that had begun to invade his classroom).