Three of my four law classes have met twice this week – the last, a German law survey course, will start next week. That one and one of the other ones will run the whole semester; the other two will be replaced by two new courses in November.
The one that runs the whole time is International Conflict of Laws. (Not "ConflictS of Laws," which my professor insisted was something else.) The course is, at least so far, a civil procedure course. We're going over a lot of what I learned as a 1L involving jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, etc. In the United States if you want to sue someone you can't just sue them anywhere and in any court. There's rules about where people can be sued having to do with place (for instance, it may not be fair to a defendant to sue them in a place that's far from where they live, especially if they have no significant connection to that place) and subject matter (not all courts can hear cases on any subject) and choice of law (the court that hears the case may need to use the local law of another place in making its ruling). Complicated? Well, that's just in the US! All these issues are magnified when you put them on the global stage. Then we are no longer talking about whether a plaintiff in California can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a California court – we're talking about whether a plaintiff in Germany can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a German court. And when we start asking these questions, we run into a difference of philosophy (for instance, the US tends to be more concerned about fairness to the defendant, and Europe more about fairness to the plaintiff) plus differences in the rules about whether and where people can be sued. Also, it's not like the systems in any of these places have been worked out to precision: many legal disputes in the US still take place over these issues, as do they in Europe, where there is another level of complication because in Europe there are both national rules on the subject and EU rules, and then there are more rules about when one or the other applies.
I find this kind of thing really interesting
One of my other classes is Comparative Tort Law. In a way I sort of enjoy these flashbacks to 1L year because the first time all these things came at me, they came a bit too fast and without any real context (it was only the first time I'd considered them, after all). Now that I have my legal faculties about me, I'm enjoying contemplating them much more. And I like the course because it addresses where we got some of these notions of tort law from (Rome!) and will (I think) compare US notions with those around the world. The Roman law itself is really interesting, and in the last few classes we've been reviewing the Lex Aquilia - comments by Roman legal thinkers explaining how Roman law applied to various tortuous injuries.
The other class is Comparative IP. In one sense this class is disappointing – I think if I took it in the US, it would have presupposed that the students had a background in IP law already, so that we could build on that background entirely. Unfortunately, there was no prerequisite for the course here and some students are taking it as their first taste in IP law, so the professor needs to make sure more of the basics are covered. She told me she wouldn't be offended if I dropped it, but I've decided to keep it. For one, it won't hurt me to brush up on some of my basics. For another, as I told her, I eat sleep and breathe this stuff... If there is anything to be gleaned from her course – and I think there will be, as there will be more focus on comparison of international IP paradigms than there were in my US classes where they were mentioned more in passing – I'll glean it and add it to my arsenal of policy arguments.
It's also interesting, because in the US law school is hard. At least BU is hard. And I think I do ok – I'm not a legal dullard – but there's so much, so new that it always feels like I'm always running in place, trying to keep up. It does feel different now to actually know what's going on and to have MY notes be the ones being shared. I have offered, and it's come up, to do review sessions for my friends in the class who have not had this background, and that itself is good practice for me because I will need to know how to explain these things well if I push for policy changes.
It is possible that this semester won't be as academically challenging as the ones I've had in BU. In a way that's frustrating, because I'm used to that kind of academic demand and have come to appreciate it in its own, annoying way... But in a way it's also a nice change, and I don't think it will cause me to learn any less. In fact it may help me learn more. In the US I'm always under such pressure to do readings and prepare, that there's no time left to think about what I'm learning. Here there's more time (and an absence of so much thought-squelching pressure) to think about it, to let all these things stew in my head so that I can come away with grander realizations about how things work together than I necessarily have the luxury of doing at BU.