The Last Four Days

Friday was one of the best days on record. At midnight, I turned 25. That's cool in and of itself. Half an hour later, I proposed to Lea on a beautiful night over by the broken fire hydrant. When I came into work the next morning, my boss offered me a job for after graduation at the firm. And it was pay day. That doesn't hurt either. One hell of a day. M.N. and I are pretty damn excited too.

Since then I've been engrossed in moot court hell. For those who haven't been stuck there with me, I've been writing an endless brief on something called the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Rooker-Feldman itself is pretty simple. It bars subject matter jurisdiction in federal district courts over (1) claims that have already been adjudicated in state court or (2) federal claims that are "inextricably intertwined" with previous state court claims. So basically, you can't appeal a state court decision to a federal court. It's actually a tool used to keep judges employed. See, if we just used the legal system to resolve cases and controversies, then there might only be enough work for a few dozen judges. By creating neat little ways to dispose of cases, judges can keep themselves busy--as well as entertained. Rooker-Feldman? Preclusion? Res Judicata? Collateral estoppel? Hell, take your pick. They're all practically the same reinvented doctrine anyway. Sure, we'll create little differences between them....Like the fact that Rooker is an issue of subject matter jurisdiction while preclusion is a matter of respect for state court judgments. Pure semantics. They all do the same damn thing. It's little wonder why the U.S. has 75% of the world's lawyers. Not that I'm complaining. It all reminds me of Topicality.

Whatever. Anyway, the brief is done. So now I can spend my time obsessing over whether or not my brief is as good as all the other ones in the region instead of writing one.