random.: October 2004 Archives

Justice Clarence Thomas has been visiting the law school for the past couple days. He's taught a couple classes, visited with students, and supposedly even ate dinner at the local brewery.

He came to my lawyering class today and gave a 20 or 30 minute talk on legal writing and then spent the rest of the time answering questions. I was just aching to ask what he thought about John Stewart's new book which (in case you've been in a cave for the last couple weeks) has been wildly succesful. There is a nice little section on the judicial system in the book (including an article entitled "How to become a precedent") which includes an exercise where you are supposed to match the robe to the naked Supreme Court justice. These photos have caused quite a stir and have even led to Walmart not selling the book.

So when question and answer time came, people were asking all sorts of serious questions... about the Patriot Act, about life on the bench, about his rise to judicial stardom... which was all fine and dandy but it seemed that he wanted it all to be a little more light and personal and fun. I wasn't quite sure how to say "Have you seen the naked picture of yourself and your colleagues?" to a Supreme Court justice or if it was even approprate but I finally got the proverbial balls and raised my hand.

I asked my question... "I was wondering if you had seen or heard of the pictures of you... uh... unclothed... in John Stewart's new book and if you find it funny or offensive?" Everyone in the class turned around and looked to see who was asking the question and smiled... CT laughed but looked baffled... he said "haha... I have no idea what you are talking about... and who is John Stewart??" I briefly explained it and by this time CT (as well as the law school dean and my professor) (which means my question was probably not over the line) (at least I hope) was in a full on belly laugh. He seemed to think it was all really funny and thanked me for the "heads up". He then said "THAT was a good question"... which he didn't say to anyone else.

All naked jokes aside, I found him to be funny and warm and obviously well-spoken. It was really really cool (for lack of a better word) to hear him speak. He seems very personable and normal... at least as normal as you can be in his position.

I've been a bad bad blogger lately. And its not because nothing has been going on or there's nothing to write about. In fact, its quite the opposite. Things have been moving so fast around here these days that I haven't really had time to process much of anything.

Life is wonderful and I have much to write about when I sit down and finally catch up, which I am hereby promising to make an effort to do. I'm going to make myself sit down and write a post a day to get the blog rolling again... I kinda miss it.

Thank you to my loyal readers (even if there's not that many of you) who have contined to visit my little blog despite its recent lack of new entries....