Nightmares of Legal Academics:
From Jacqueline Lipton, a law professor at Case, it's about the law review placement process:
A few weeks ago, I had a dream nightmare that I became deathly ill in the middle of the submission season and was unable to continue expediting my pieces. In the dream, I asked a colleague (the one who dared encouraged me to write this) if he would take over the expediting process for me. He kindly did so and placed both pieces, but he couldn't remember where he had placed them and couldn't find any record of his communications with the journals. He knew the articles were going to be published in the fall, but the doctors said I wouldn't make it that long. So I was left knowing that I was going to die without ever finding out if I had finally cracked the Top 10.
  I haven't had any law review dreams that I remember, but I did recently have a computer search and seizure law dream. I was at my parents' house, and the police knocked on the door and asked to come in. Someone let them in (mom, maybe? I'm not sure), and then the police proceeded to pick up and take away my parents' desktop computer. I asked them what they were doing, and they told me that we had consented: Having agreed to let them in, we had consented to let them take the computer away. I responded that this was totally wrong, because the scope of consent test is what a "typical reasonable person" would think the exchange meant (Florida v. Jimeno), and it was ridiculous to think that consent to enter a home was the same as consent to take away a computer. The police shrugged and took the computer away anyway.

  I think the meaning of the dream is that I really need to write that article I have in mind on consent to search computers. Either that, or I need to take a vacation.
Hauk (mail):
Vacation, very clearly.
3.25.2009 8:51pm
OrinKerr:
Hauk,

The only difficulty is that I'm on sabbatical this semester and just got back from a week in Mexico. Maybe I need a vacation from my vacation?
3.25.2009 8:53pm
mls (www):
As long as you aren't waking up and finding that you have already posted something about your dream, I think you're ok.
3.25.2009 9:14pm
Working for the Man (mail):
Mexico? Brave man. I hope grenades and drug cartel shoot outs werent part of your trip.
3.25.2009 9:26pm
Siskiyou (mail):
Off thread, and like Larry the Cable Guy, Lord, I apologize. But did anyone else hear NPR in the afternoon a day or so ago? I think it was on Fresh Air. Either the host or an NYT reporter for (as far as I can recall) the American Southwest region told us that 90% of the guns used in Mexico's drug related killings came from the U.S. Do the assassins turn in their weapons after they do the deed, or make audited reports, or what?
3.25.2009 9:44pm
Anon21:
Siskiyou:
Do the assassins turn in their weapons after they do the deed, or make audited reports, or what?

Presumably they are caught or killed occasionally, and their weapons recovered. It seems reasonable to extrapolate from the sample of police-seized guns, unless you can think of some reason why criminals using U.S.-manufactured guns are more likely to be caught or killed.
3.25.2009 9:51pm
Mikhail Koulikov (mail):
Figuring out whether you've been arrested justly or unjustly does become an entirely irrelevant exercise once it's twenty-four hours later and you're walking out of the jail. It's like being a pedestrian hit by a car - the driver may be the one at fault, but that won't make your life any easier.

Incidentally, it amazes me (as a librarian who then chose to become a law librarian) to no end that there still hasn't been a comprehensive study out there of how often law school faculty just go screw it with their discipline's fairly in-bred scholarly communication process, and focus on publishing in general academic journals.
3.25.2009 10:06pm
BlackX (mail):
Sounds like you could use a nice vacation but I'd love to see the article as well.
3.25.2009 10:18pm
Sean M.:
If it makes you feel any better, Prof. Kerr, we on the other end have nightmares as well. The day after I was elected Senior Articles Editor of my journal, I woke up in a cold sweat, imagining a bottomless pile of articles that never ended, and that I would never fill my issues.

Unfortunately, that turned out to be something close to the reality, but ...
3.25.2009 11:21pm
Bruce:
Orin, actually, I think the meaning of your dream is that you have to have a talk with your mom about not consenting to searches.
3.25.2009 11:22pm
neurodoc:
The only difficulty is that I'm on sabbatical this semester and just got back from a week in Mexico.
Magic mushrooms or mystical experiences?

Any apercus in the course of the computer-seizure dream? The answer to some question that had eluded you during wakefulness?

How often do people awaken disappointed to discover they were only dreaming as opposed to awakening relieved to discover they were only dreaming. I have had many, many more of the latter than the former, most often happy to realize that it was not almost the end of term with exams coming and me totally unprepared with no hope of passing.
3.25.2009 11:27pm
zippypinhead:
A criminal procedure and cybercrime prof having bad dreams about botched consent computer searches? You need a longer sabbatical!

Some of the worst nightmares I ever had were in law school. In a dream the night before my tax final, I flunked my exam and had to call my mom and explain I was no longer in law school, but was now working as a scab bus driver (there was a bus strike at the time). Mom was not amused. But that was nothing compared with the night before my property exam, when the Rule against Perpetuities literally crawled out from under my pillow and laughed at me while I was sleeping (looked a lot like a gremlin). I let out such a loud scream that my roommate came running to see who was murdering me...

And just for the record, no I don't practice either tax or estates law, for some strange reason...
3.26.2009 12:07am
David M. Nieporent (www):
The only difficulty is that I'm on sabbatical this semester and just got back from a week in Mexico. Maybe I need a vacation from my vacation?
Maybe you need a beer?
3.26.2009 5:28am
Pete Freans (mail):
I've had a recurring dream (going on 15 years or so) that I completed a semester of classes, say 5 courses, but during finals I realize that I had a 6th course which I never attended nor took notes for. I never discover what that 6th class was...very frustrating.
3.26.2009 8:03am
Non-consenter:
"it was ridiculous to think that consent to enter a home was the same as consent to take away a computer"

Hah! It was lingering guilt from your position in Pearson v. Callahan.
3.26.2009 9:02am
arbitraryaardvark (mail) (www):
3.26.2009 11:19am
Dan Simon (mail) (www):
I once had a nightmare in which I was a legal academic.
3.26.2009 11:55am
George Weiss (mail) (www):
dan- hilarious
3.26.2009 12:26pm
Ryan Waxx (mail):
At least you were'nt dreaming of being an illegal acedemic.
3.26.2009 2:53pm
Visitor Again:
A couple of the entries in this thread demonstrate there ought to be one called Nightmares Caused by Legal Academics--you know, the one where you're about to take a law school exam totally unprepared. I still have it once in a while, and law school is 41 years ago. Of course my real life experience in law school wasn't much different than the nightmare.
3.26.2009 3:12pm
RichW (mail):
Based on the thread I would say that academic legal nightmares are not that much different from PhD nightmares but ours tend to be that we have to defend our dissertation and either our advisor can not be found anywhere or you can not find the room where you have to defend. Fortunately, they disappear eventually, though they are replaced by others :)
3.26.2009 5:35pm

Post as: [Register] [Log In]

Account:
Password:
Remember info?

If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.

Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.

We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.

And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.