law school

I’ve mentioned here before how much I hate mooting. Yesterday I realized there was a reason for it all. Because mooting is incredibly boring and annoying, but moot judging is immensely enjoyable, and I just played judge for the first time.

Four people, all bound by courtroom etiquette to subservience and extreme politeness. You, as judge, the recipient of this. The joy of catching someone out on a poorly thought out argument, and seeing that “Oh shit, she’s right” look appear on their face as they realize they’re in a fix. Equally, the satisfaction from challenging someone on something just because it’s a challengeable argument, and having them come back strongly in support of their stand with a well-reasoned defence of it.

At the end of the day, I look at what I like about the various relevant activities I enjoy (mooting, debating, drunken conversations…), and realize that what I find fulfilling and enjoyable in every case is the interplay of differing ideas.

The only time I ever enjoy a moot is when the judge questions me, and I then have to respond to his challenges. Otherwise, it’s a one-way speech, and it’s incredibly tedious. I love debating because (in the British Parliamentary format that I do) participation doesn’t begin and end with your speech. You can interject at almost any other time in the course of someone else’s speech, and they can interject during yours.

I love not being agreed with. I love not agreeing with others. I don’t understand why so many people, and so many Singaporeans in particular, seem to think that a discussion of differing opinions is something bad. One of the most annoying things someone could ever say to me is “Look, whatever. You’re right. You win. Can we stop arguing now?”

First of all, the simple fact of differing views doesn’t automatically make something an argument. It’s a discussion. Secondly, I’m not disagreeing with you to “win”, or trump you. I’m arguing because I want to understand how you see the issue. And I want you to understand how I see the issue. Why is that wrong? And if you have a view that can’t stand up to scrutiny, then don’t you want to know that your view isn’t necessarily valid? I’d appreciate being told if I was believing in something for no good reason, and it shouldn’t be my problem if other people are too insecure to handle a similar realization.

This turned into a bit of a rant. Well, all I really intended to say was that I enjoyed my moot judging yesterday. But I guess you probably already figured that out. :)

This pretending to be a lawyer thing seems to be working out. Today was the quarter-finals of the senior mooting competition. I had to argue that this guy who carved his initials on his girlfriend’s butt couldn’t try to get out of his conviction by arguing that she’d consented to it.

The leading case about this in English law is about a group of sadomasochists who got convicted for assault despite the fact that all their “victims” had consented to their acts. One of the arguments I made during the moot was that legalization of sadomasochism should be done by Parliament and not the courts. I’d been planning to refer the judge to this quote from one of the Law Lords:

“If it is to be decided that such activities as the nailing by A of B’s foreskin or scrotum to a board or the insertion of hot wax into C’s urethra followed by the burning of his penis with a candle or the incising of D’s scrotum with a scalpel to the effusion of blood are injurious neither to B, C and D nor to the public interest then it is for Parliament with its accumulated wisdom and sources of information to declare them to be lawful.” (Lord Jauncey, R v Brown)

But he said he got the point early on, without me needing to refer him to judgments, so unfortunately I didn’t get to read that quote out.

Anyway, I got through to the semi-finals of the competition. I’m glad because I think I deserved it, but annoyed that I have to keep at this activity which I don’t particularly enjoy.

Thanks go out to Russ for subjecting himself to one and a half hours of the tedium that is a moot – I appreciated the support.

Thanks do not go out to my alarm clocks, which failed to work this morning resulting in my awakening in absolute panic at 2 pm, with only one third of the moot prepared.

Oh, I forgot to say: I got through to the next round of of the senior mooting competition. The best two from each moot go through, and I somehow managed this despite the fact that I arrived late with only half my submissions written, and wrote the rest while the person before me was speaking. Which is a lot tougher in mooting than it is in debating, because you need to be far more precise with what you’re saying when the judge can interject at any time.

In his feedback to us, the judge said my strongest point was the fact that I wouldn’t take any crap from him. This is probably due to the fact that once I finished the stuff I’d actually written down, I was pulling everything else from various orifices, and thought the best policy was to just defend the whole damn mess to the death. Seems to have worked.

The judge in this one was extremely good – he was pleasant, but obviously understood everything that was going on, and questioned all of us thoroughly. If I hadn’t gone through, I’d have accepted it, firstly, because he definitely knew his stuff, secondly, because with my dismal preparation my arguments probably had holes in them, and thirdly, because it was the highest standard moot I’ve ever been in and my competitors all seemed better prepared. This does mean, however, that I have to go through the whole damn rigmarole again in the next round. This is so ludicrous. First I whinge about having to do the moot, and it being difficult. Then I get through, and I whinge about having to do it again. If I’d lost in a way I thought was unfair, I’d whinge about that too.

Guess there’s just no satisfying some people…

My brain hurts. I’ve just spent the last six hours trying to figure out what to argue for my moot (mock trial) tomorrow, and given that it’ll entail arguing about criminal law topics we haven’t even covered yet in front of a practising barrister, I’m figuring that no matter how wretched I feel right now, the actual moot might quite possibly be worse.

So here I am, sitting in the library typing away on a stone-age computer at 9.30 pm. I haven’t had dinner. The library windows are rattling with the strength of the wind outside. It’s the last week of term.

And again I ask myself why the hell I bother doing something which I don’t actually enjoy. I detest having to sit and listen to people using too much legalese and too little brainpower blather on about things that I am incapable of finding interesting at 6 in the evening. I resent the intrusion of moot preparation into my already packed and badly managed schedule. The only part of the moot I actually find enjoyable is if the judge challenges me and tries to throw me off – that’s when it goes into the realm of the unscripted, and that’s where I most enjoy the cut and thrust of argument. Unfortunately, a fair number of judges I’ve had are either incapable or uninterested in getting involved in this.

And again I ask why I do this…I guess the answer is, simply, that I’m too damn arrogant to pass up doing something I know I’m good at, even if I don’t enjoy doing it all that much and it comes at the expense of other things. And it’s good for the CV, obviously, as sellouty and un-rock’n’roll as that may sound.

Rishi and Mickey, two other people in the moot tomorrow, have given up and gone home in disgust. We had a satisfying kvetch about our collective misery. I’ll probably venture out into the wind and rain soonish as well, go get some dinner, and hopefully find some suitably mindless TV programme or conversation to eat it over. I suppose a good frame of mind to be in now would be to think of all the poor starving children in sub-Saharan Africa etc. etc.

And on that note, I shall trudge.