Dialogue session with Justice Antonin Scalia at NUS Law

Antonin Scalia, an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, visited my school yesterday for a dialogue session, which I attended. Justice Antonin Scalia is probably one of the more colorful judges on the US Supreme Court bench. At least, I hear more about him than the other Supreme Court judges. The other judge that I do hear and read somewhat about in the news is Justice Anthony Kennedy. The more popular American media outlets that I come more often across tend to be left-wing. They are shared more often by my peers on facebook, and have more channels on my cable television subscription. These include online news media such as New York Times and the Washington Post, and television shows such as The Daily Show with John Stewart, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the subjects which these more left-leaning media would lampoon or criticize. My more conservative friends in Singapore, especially those in my Christian community, have a much more favorable view of Justice Antonin Scalia, and I believe this is likewise in the US if I should watch some conservative television channels like FoxNews.

One of the reason why Justice Antonin Scalia would be viewed more favourably by social conservatives is because he is more guarded against reading certain rights, such as right to abortion or same-sex marriage, as stemming from the American Constitution/Bill of rights. His position would be that these rights ought to be legislated by the government of the respective states rather than through a blanket constitutional guarantee when the constitution doesn’t say anything explicit about providing for such rights. He propounds a originalist textualist approach towards interpreting the constitution, which is an even more restrictive approach than textualism per se in that the meaning that can be inferred from a statutory text is limited to what it could possibly encompass during the time it was promulgated to the public at large. Proponent of an alternative approach towards interpretation would suggests a ‘living tree’ approach, such that the Constitution should be read to correspond with the needs of its times, or of its ethos. For an enlightening discussion on this topic, see this video featuring a debate between Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer. Justice Stephen Breyer posits that there are underlying principles undergirding the Constitution that makes the Constitution relevant and applicable to social issues beyond the time of its enactment

Indeed, one of the pet subjects talked about by Justice Antonin Scalia in the dialogue session yesterday was his adherence to his preferred form of interpretation jurisprudence. Words, he says, must be given their ‘fair meaning’, according to the texts in its contexts, rather than subverted from this by some other broader method of interpretation that are prone to the subjective whims of individual judges. From the Wikipedia page about him, it says that he also dislikes using legislative history as a tool for interpretation. Legislative history involves things like reviewing changes to a statute over time to determine how to interpret the words of the statute. I am not sure whether Justice Antonin Scalia frowns upon using parliament/Congress readings from when the bill is being passed to aid in interpretation of the statute. At least in Singapore, this is allowed in the Interpretation Act section 9A, and is not discouraged.

There were several other things that were talked about at the dialogue session. But at least two of the students at the dialogue session asked him questions relating to Obergefell v. Hodges, the case where prohibition against same-sex marriage was ruled as unconstitutional in the US. The first student asked Justice Scalia what he meant when he said that the decision didn’t affect or interest him that much as reported in some article. I suppose why people found this remark by Justice Scalia puzzling was because it seem relatively indifferent compared to his dissenting judgment which was rather forceful and scathing of the majority judgment. Justice Scalia replied that what he meant by that was that even though same-sex marriage was deemed a constitutional guarantee, he as a Roman Catholic was still free to not practice it or to recognize it personally, and as such, it doesn’t affect him personally, though he acknowledged that it might have some repercussion on related issues such as whether a priest can refuse to solemnize a same-sex marriage. I wonder though what Justice Scalia would say if an analogous case were to come before a lower court subsequently. Would Justice Scalia condone a lower court judge bucking the trend of precedence and doing a Kim Davis by upholding a prohibition law against same-sex marriage as constitutional? Kim Davis is the county clerk for Kentucky who gained international attention when she defied a US federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following Obergefell v. Hodges. I doubt Justice Scalia would condone that, as much as he might be disagreeable to the majority judgment in Obergefell. The second student asked Justice Scalia whether his scathing remarks in his judgment affected relationship with his colleagues on the bench. Justice Scalia replied that all said and done, he did shook hands with the other judges whose opinions differed from his, including Justice Kennedy. I don’t know what relationship is like between Justice Scalia and all the other judges, but I have read at least that Justice Scalia and Justice Ruth Ginsberg are good friends, even though they stand on opposite sides on many issues of the law, especially where there is a divide of social ideology.

In response to the moderator's question 'What makes a good lawyer?', Justice Scalia began by saying: "Instead of telling you what makes a good lawyer, let me tell you what makes a bad lawyer." He continued, "A bad lawyer; when the judge asks him a question in the middle of his oral argument to the court, rolls his eyes upwards, as if towards the ceiling of the Supreme Court being a miles high above him." Justice Scalia rolled his eyes upwards and sighed in a disgruntled tone to mimic how such a lawyer would react to the judge's interjection. "He does this to express his displeasure that he is being interrupted in the midst of something important in his speech.", Justice Scalia continued. "But it's when the judge asks a question and you answer that question; That's when your oral argument to the court is actually important!", Justice Scalia bellowed emphatically. Indeed, Justice Scalia is known for his inquisitorial approach in the courtroom, and is reputed for asking more questions from the bench than any of his other associate judges. I guess some lawyers might not take too well to being interrupted in the middle of their oral presentation by Justice Scalia, but Justice Scalia would think that they are missing the point since their oral presentations are not addressing the points he wants clarified.

I wish I had the opportunity to ask Justice Scalia for his personal insights about making sense of the depiction in the American media about the judiciary being as polarized as its politics, but I didn’t get to ask it due to lack of time, and the dialogue session had to end. It was actually my fault, because I tend to be hesitant to raise my question in a crowd until the last minute. From my casual viewing of sources from the American Media, a lot of things seem to be polarized between left and right, liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans. Is this necessarily an accurate picture when it comes to the American judiciary as well? I believe that there are many issues where things are not as polarized, or at least, not along the same lines as the liberal and conservative agenda. Most areas of law involve somewhat mundane issues such as determining liability for breach of contract and the appropriate remedies to be awarded, compensating victims of accidents and torts, deciphering the Bankruptcy code, and unraveling the mysteries of the Tax Act, etc. There is little to disagree about on these issues based on liberal or conservative ideologies. I wanted to glean whether Justice Scalia adhere to his interpretation jurisprudence because he genuinely believes that this is the right way of doing so, or whether there is some other motivations to it, such as politics? I believe some people who believe in the realpolitik or legal realist brand of school of thought would construe it as the latter. That is however a question that cuts close to the heart, and I doubt that those whose motivations are in the latter category will be honest about it. At least from my impression, Justice Antonin Scalia’s adherence to his espoused method of legal interpretation seems to be out of his genuine conviction that this method of legal interpretation is sound on its own merits, rather than out of some other motivations that is political in nature. 

Lee Kuan Yew

Today brings about the passing away of Singapore’s first Prime Minister and Founding Father, Lee Kuan Yew. I learnt about this news while on my way to school in the morning, and had turned on the facebook application on my phone to see people sharing news on the matter.

It certainly is a momentous event in Singapore, and a ubiquitous conversation topic amongst people from all circles of Singapore society for the day. For many people in Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew cuts a larger-than-life figure that is almost intertwined with the core of Singapore identity. For supporters, Lee Kuan Yew was chiefly responsible for the economic success and well-rounded development of modern Singapore society, whilst for detractors, he was an authoritarian whose heavy-handed methods suppressed democratic ideals and civil liberties. I know of a handful of people around me who fall into one camp or the other, though often, I am unsure about the reasons for either their support or hatred. I would like to be objective, but this is certainly not an easy task. I just think that credit should be given where they are due, and criticisms levied for where they are justified.

The only time I have come across Lee Kuan Yew in person was when I was walking through the Botanic gardens after school. That was some time ago last year in October I think. Lee Kuan Yew was being driven in a golf cart within the park, with two bodyguards sitting at the back of the cart. I was caught up with excitement with the sighting, and turned to an unacquainted schoolmate walking behind me to exclaim in as calm a manner possible that the person in the cart upfront was Lee Kuan Yew. But the cart moved quickly, and it wasn’t long before it had moved into another section of the park out of sight, so the schoolmate whom I had exclaimed to didn’t get to see it.

I guess a part of me was in awe, another somewhat intimidated, and yet another eager enough that I just might have called out “Hey! Uncle Harry! Take a photo with me!” But that would have been downright awkward and inappropriate given the formidable figure Lee Kuan Yew is. 

Law of Evidence : Thoughts on rules of admissibility, and character evidence

The law on Evidence is really an interesting topic actually. There are all these concepts governing the procedural aspects of evidence in court, like whether it is admissible. The rule of thumb is that an evidence is relevant so long as it has probative value to the issues at hand, but may be excluded if the judge deems that the prejudicial effects of the evidence outweighs its probative force. So for example, a person’s bad character would not be admissible because it would prejudice the jury into assigning greater weight in their evaluation of the accused’s guilt than what might have been so should the evidence not have been admitted. But there are the catches. For example, prosecution is allowed to adduce evidence of an accused’s bad character if the defence raises arguments bolstering the defendant’s good character. The rationale is that the prosecution should be allowed to attack the accused’s character if it is part of the case of the defence that the accused’s good character makes it less likely that he committed the crime.

 

I have some thoughts about this. The first one is whether evidence in favour of the accused’s good character should be admitted in the court of law in the first place. Isn’t evidence of good character similarly prejudicial as evidence of bad character? So let’s say, a person accused of committing a crime has a record of being a good public citizen like participating in community works or things like that. How does this exactly help the defence case that the accused has not committed the crime in question? If it is going to be argued that it is less likely that someone of upright reputation or standing in his community has less likelihood of committing a crime, then why can’t it be similarly argued that someone of bad reputation has a greater likelihood of committing a crime.

 

Perhaps the rationale for allowing good character evidence in the first place is because it has indeed great probative force in the defence case that the accused did not commit the crime, whilst this does not apply so much to bad character evidence. No one is totally all bad or good. But if he is generally good, he will not do bad. While if there are some bad in a person, it does not mean that he is all bad throughout.

 

But if this is the case, then shouldn’t there be circumstances whereby a defendant should be allowed to adduce evidence of his good character, without entire records of his misdemeanor or mud-slinging allegations by any Tom, Dick, or Harry, to be casted upon him? As the law is, once the defendant decides to present evidence of his good character, the gloves are off, and either the prosecution or the co-accused can impugn the accused’s character.

 

There is a quality about how the law of evidence works which seems pretty ‘gamey’ to me, in the sense that how the case turns out depends on the strategies used by either side in presenting his or her case. I dislike the idea that law is simply a game between lawyers. But perhaps there is a way in which such intricate procedures are necessary in an adversarial legal system as Singapore’s, and ultimately beneficial to the objective of obtaining justice.

Back to School – Questions about the concept of the Bills of Exchange

It is back to school for me this semester, and it is the second week of the school term. I am taking Evidence, Aviation law, Banking Law, and Advanced torts. I find banking law the most confusing of all the subjects. In part, I am not that familiar with the rationale for the different method of business financing, and the legalese used to describe the various parties involved in a transaction can be confusing. There is this concept known as the Bill of Exchange which is purportedly used commonly in international business dealings. I believe that this video on youtube explains the concept well, although I am still a little hazy on the rationale for such a method for business financing. For one, I am not sure what is the advantage of such manner of financing over a simple bank loan. I might be missing something in my understanding of the Bill of Exchange, but my understanding of it is that the seller of goods allows the buyer to pay for the goods at a later date on condition of a promise written in a legal document known as a Bill of Exchange that the seller buyer would pay at a later date. The seller then takes his copy of the Bill of Exchange and trades it in with the bank for money. The bank collects the money from the buyer at a later date. I wonder though why the buyer doesn’t just loan from the bank to buy the goods and pay the bank back at a later date. 

An account of school life, and a brief description of equity and trust

I have been sitting in for lectures at law school for this semester, even though I am officially on medical leave of absence still for the semester. The modules which I have been sitting in so far are the year 2 core modules like public law, and equity and trust; modules which I did not take the exam for as I exempted myself in the middle of the semester last year. I just sat in for a family law lecture today as well which is an elective as it was coincidentally after the public law lecture in the morning. It was the second lecture for the semester and the class was going through the topic of domicile and the conflict of law in governing marriage status and divorces. Truth be told, I do enjoy sitting in for lectures and simply listening to whatever is being taught without having the pressure on me to study the subject in a exam-competitive manner. The cohort people are those of the following year, few of whom I recognize from the varsity Christian fellowship. The majority are unfamiliar to me.

 

So we were just going through a lecture on equity and trust, over the really basic concepts on defining a trust. For the unacquainted, a trust is a legal concept in law whereby certain proprietary objects like money or houses are held by a group of people called trustees appointed by a class of people called the settlers for a class of people called the beneficiaries. A common example of a trust in action is the will that is drawn up by a person to pass his estate over to his descendents as inheritance.

 

I felt that the lecturer who was teaching the subject was much clearer than the lecturer I had when I sat in for the class last year. He explains the basic concept whereas I feel that the previous lecturer I had came into the class expecting that every student had already read the materials and understood it and thus spoke in terms that rides roughshod over the basic principles. But to each student his preference. I have heard of other students saying that they learn much more from the other lecturer.

If there was any module which appears most unfamiliar to me when I first encountered it, it is equity and trust. I wasn’t able to determine simply based on the name of the module itself what the purpose of that area of law was about. But I don’t think that I should think myself as an exception in my puzzlement. After all, the trust concept is one that is only prevalent amongst common law countries like the UK, whilst civil law countries like France have only recently begun to adopt trust concepts, albeit in a ameliorated form of the conventional contractual arrangement. Why are these civil law countries so suspicious of adopting the trust concept? As I hear from my lecturer today, it is because of the complexities that the trust concept engender for the tax system. I am not exactly too sure how this is done, but the trust system can be used to circumvent taxation and other proprietary acquisition mechanisms such as requisition by creditors for bankruptcy. The lecturer was telling an anecdote where at an international conference convened with the purpose of increasing recognition of the trust concept, the British representative was asking the French representative why France was so leery of the trust concept in its legal system. The French representative curtly replied, “How many books do you guys have on tax law?” Indeed, common law jurisdictions spot voluminous tomes on tax law that can take up multiple shelves on a law library. This is so because there needs to be many exceptions to the operation of the trust system so as to prevent people from avoiding taxes. The French seeks to avoid complicating their taxation law in such a manner.

 

There are many functions apart from intestacy and wills which the trust system helps to administrate. Others, like setting up of welfare funds for employees, or the setting up of charities, also relies on the concept of the trust system for resources pooled to be used in a manner directed towards the objectives of the trust and be capable of being supervised by the legal system. A question that I have on my mind that I haven’t yet explored is how a trust concept in the legal system is superior to the contract concept is administrating such transfer of property. Perhaps it isn’t, or at least some people don’t think it is, which is why the trust concept is not prevalent in all jurisdictions.

Visiting other church services

I attended a different church last week, and a different church service at my church today. Last week, I went to a Presbyterian church because a friend invited me over to witness her baptism. Today, I attended the Anglican service at my church which is held in the morning, just before the Lutheran service. I have recently been thinking of exploring different churches and services to interact with young adults my age in the Christian community. A church mate of mine had also been doing that, because he is intending on settling down and wishes to find a Christian soulmate. I don’t feel such pressure just yet to get a girlfriend, but I would like to interact with more girls from the Christian community.

The most conspicuous observation regarding the difference between the Presbyterian service and the Anglican service from the Lutheran service that I regularly attend, is the liturgy. The Lutherans do sing more hymnal kinds of songs and have more processional creeds that they recite during service. Another noticeable difference, though I am not sure whether this is necessarily due to the denomination, is that at the Anglican service, the wafer thin bread is supposed to be dipped into a grail filled with wine, whereas in the Lutheran service, the  wine is poured into communion cups.

I had actually attended the youth service for the Anglican service instead of the main service two weeks earlier. I felt quite out of place there since the people who attend their youth service are mainly teenagers in their secondary school years. It was nonetheless, a pleasant experience, and an eye-opener to the different communities of Christian that worship on Sunday at the same church as me whom I have never interacted with. Listening to the testimony shared by one girl regarding her academic struggles with her first year of junior college reminds me of my own junior college years. Although I did relatively well academically in my junior college years, I can identify with the girl’s academic struggle given that I am now struggling academically myself at law school. I asked the girl after service what subjects she took at junior college. She said that she was in the science stream and took subjects like physics, chemistry, mathematics, and economics. Those were the subjects I had taken as well when I was in junior college, and I did well in them. I asked her whether she had considered that she might be more suited towards the humanities instead of the sciences. She replied that she don’t think it would be convenient for her to change her subjects given that she has already been taking those subjects for a year at junior college. It is the sentiments I have regarding my law studies as well. I don’t think it is convenient to change course given that I have already undergone two years of legal education. During her testimony, she was talking about how she managed to just pass her subjects for the first year and promote to the following year when she had been flunking those subjects throughout the year, and she believes that this is a sign of God’s graciousness to her. As for me, I have encountered too many instances of unanswered prayers that I am really skeptical that there is such a thing as God’s will for me in life, or that he is concerned with any details regarding how my life goes.

The bold and the meek – personality types in a legal drama

I was watching an episode of Boston Legal yesterday evening. It was the second episode of season 3 which introduces some new characters to the cast. One of these characters was a guy named Jeffrey Coho. He played the archetype of the alpha-male mentality lawyer who comes right in on day one ready to show everyone else who is top of the league. I was thinking when I first saw that character that it would simply be a duplicate of Brad Chase, a junior partner at the firm who had appeared in the earlier two seasons of the episode. Jeffrey was confronted by Brad who attempted to put Jeffrey in his place by telling him that there was only one guy at the firm who could play the macho guy who gets all the women, and that was Brad himself.

I never quite find such characters likable. They tend though to appear as an stereotypical archetype in a lot of lawyer shows. The more recent production named Suits features a law firm consisting of such figures with such excessive alpha-male syndromes. I don’t identify myself with such characters, neither do I find them likable. I prefer characters which display a certain humane quality in their characters such as compassion and a desire to help the weak gain justice. For me, Alan Shore, played by James Spader is my favourite character amongst all lawyer characters in law dramas. I don’t find the other protagonist of law shows likable, whether this be Denny Crane, or Harvey Spector.

I wonder how far those at the law school where I am studying at display the alpha-male mentality. I guess there are a diversity of personalities and characters that I have encountered during my time at law school. I do see some fellow law student who seem to be trying to imitate the bad, brash behavior of the show protagonist in these law films. They come off as arrogant, and condescending. But there are also nice people, who display the more gentle, Christian qualities.

I sometimes wonder whether my more genial personality is suited to the legal profession especially when I watch these lawyer shows where the characters come off as being aggressive. I suppose there might be different roles in the legal profession suited for different people with different personalities. For example, being a litigator might be suited for someone who is able to handle the stress of competition, whilst a meeker, more meticulous person might be better at drafting corporate deals. But I want to be careful not to stereotype, and I dislike the idea that one has to come off as what seems to me to be a jerk in order to be successful at what he does.

A write-up about writing

Today, I want to examine the topic of writing. I don’t exactly know how to go about writing this post about writing, but I will try to talk about all the stuff that I have on my mind on such a topic in an enjoyable and coherent way.

When one reads a good article of some kind about some topic, the content that is delivered unfolds smoothly and coherently, as if the author had simply narrated the entire content from the tip of his head. The method and effort to craft out that article might be obscured from this rather face-value depiction. When I try to write out a post, as I am doing right now with this article about writing, I am quite readily met with the daunting situation of a blank page with the faintest idea of some things that I would like to write about this topic of writing. Let me describe a little of my initial thought process in going about to write this article as I do with some of my articles on this blog.

I experience the dilemma in knowing how I am going to write what I want to write. Should I simply start the page typing away and see where that leads? For this article at least, I chose to first hash out all the ideas that came to my head on a blank page of Microsoft words in what can be roughly described as brainstorming. Ideas on contents and associated materials that could be included in this article would come into my mind, and I would jot this down on the paper. I try, as far as possible, to organize these ideas in such a way that they would fall in place sequentially, but I sometimes find it difficult to know where to place an idea on the list after putting so many of them down on the page, and quite frankly, I don’t like the trouble of being too rigorous in organizing these ideas too meticulously. I notice that I had simply written down the phrase “how to write” on my first line, but I didn’t find it easy to write from there. So I decided to type out the introduction passage that you see write now at the top of this article. I thought that it might be good for the learning process if I “print-screen” my drafts and paste the image on my blog, but I figured that would be a little more tedious and I would have to take the trouble to find out how to paste the pictures correctly on the blog. So I am editing the draft as I go along.

I notice that as I write, some other ideas about what I can write comes into my mind, and I write these down at the end of my article so that I would not forget to include them. For instance, I am reminded of a book I read by Christopher Hitchens titled Mortality quite some time ago, and I am prodded about a point I observed in his writing in that book that I would like to mention in this article. Well, I guess since I already start mentioning Christopher Hitchens, I might as well shift over that point to this passage and explain what I would like to mention about his writing in that book. Now, I have read it somewhere before that Christopher Hitchens is quite a masterful writer, and during his living years, he was a contributor to Vanity Fair. I haven’t really read much of his written work, but I do get the impression that he must have quite an eloquence in expression when I watch youtube videos of him debating for the atheist side on topics of religion. In that book, Christopher Hitchens was writing about his experience and thoughts as he battled cancer. He finally succumbed to the disease after about a year or so and passed away in 2011. The book was published posthumously, and an unfinished chapter which contained his “fragmentary jottings” were included. What strikes me upon reading this “fragmentary jottings” section was how disjointed these writings seemed to be as compared to his prose in the earlier chapters. There were the dashes of eloquence, but they do not complete. It seemed to me as if he left them there with the intent of writing more about them, or including them into his essay later. But I inferred that he did have some sort of method to writing his pieces, and these fragmentary jottings were like the scaffolding that he erected before filling them up to form his article.

Whew, I have written to this part so far and it has taken me at least an hour or so? I am afraid I sometimes find myself losing the energy to continue writing, and have the tendency to postpone my writing to another day. But I don’t like to do that because I may lose interest or ideas altogether and not finish the piece. I also wonder whether I take too long to write. I did delete and rewrite some of my sentences a couple of times. I feel that I might be a little inefficient in my speed of writing which does affect my performance to write in severely time-constraint law school exams. This especially so since a law school paper is hand-written, thus making it difficult to edit my sentences or adding in new points after writing down the content. Some professors can be really not understanding about this aspect of technical problem faced and penalize for untidy submission if there are too many arrows drawn all over the script to add in points that were added out as afterthoughts, something which I find myself having a tendency to make. I would think that education faculties at NUS ought to find a way in which computers can be used to type out pieces in exam settings, but I haven’t quite figured out a way to prevent the practical problem of students cheating by using the internet to confer with one another. I am also still not sure what would be the best way to go about doing a law school exam question. Should I spend sometime organizing first before writing, or jot down my answers on my script and write at the get-go on the blank paper? Furthermore, the thing about law school questions is that they are application based, in that I have to refer to the law and apply it to the facts given. The format may be summed up in the acronym CRUPAC which stands for : Conclusion, Rule and Rule proof, application to facts, and conclusion on how the ruling would turn on the facts of the hypothetical question once again. It might thus require a different method from brainstorming out contents and filling them up. Correct citations must also be given, and I sometimes have difficulty remembering the case name where I got the law from.

Speaking of which, I wonder whether I have the problem of rambling in my writing and going off-point. I feel that I have a little of what can be described as a one-track mind which sometimes hitches onto an associated idea and start talking at lengths about them before going back on point. I have read on Wikipedia that circumstantiality is a communication disorder associated with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and I do think that I suffer from some features of OCD. Sometimes, I lose my train of thoughts. It can be difficult for me to put on hold a certain thought in my head while entertaining another. So when I get distracted by a certain thought, I might totally forget about the thought that I originally had. It may takes me a while to recall the thought I originally had. But I would jot down the passing thought as I am also afraid of losing the passing thought if I ignore it and focus on the initial thought that I had on hand.

Perhaps the reason why I have been finding writing hard is because I had not been writing in a competitive sense after being in the army for two years for national service, and had lost somewhat the skill of writing. The way to go about writing might not be as intuitive to me as it used to be.

I also feel that my vocabulary is a little too sterile for my liking. I have encountered materials from the internet and elsewhere where the writer presents his piece in quite beautiful and eloquent terms. And I feel my writing just doesn’t quite match up to that standard in terms of expression and vocabulary prowess. However, when it comes to the study of law, the language used is rather sterile and clinical as well, so it shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance if a person does not have too wide a vocabulary range.

The easiest kinds of piece to write for me are those that don’t require too much research. Eg: A thoughtpiece on something that comes to my mind like this. I am trying writing thoughtpieces based on some material that I read or see, which I find a little more difficult as I usually don’t find myself having an opinion upon reading something. It is even more difficult when a piece requires that I research, process the data, and deliver them in a coherent format. I never knew that it was quite so difficult until I entered law school and had to write law memos. Researching the copious amount of text from case law, and linking the bits to map out the milieu of the law, before applying them to the facts seems a little above my intellectual capacity, and I find myself stuck often.

Perhaps I might be better in numbers or in the sciences, although I am skeptical about my abilities in such areas as well. I was the usual B student with the occasional A in those subjects when I was in junior college, but I was inconsistent enough such that I could flunk them as well. If the SAT is any good measure on where my aptitude lies, then numbers is certainly the indication. Out of a maximum possible score of 800 for each section, with 700 being an excellent score for application to the Ivy league universities in America, I scored above 700 for math, whereas my writing section is somewhat a little below 700. It’s way above average nonetheless, but simply not good enough for the ivy leagues. And I have taken a psychometric test before administered by the ministry of education for prospective scholarship holders, and scored average amongst the batch taking it where it comes to pattern and numbers, but disappointingly below average where it comes to verbal reasoning. I wonder whether this is any good indication for me that I should have pursued a degree in an area that taps more on my strength rather than in law where I might suffer some natural deficit in aptitude.

Nevertheless, I do enjoy the studying in the field of language somewhat more than I did when I studied for the math and science based subjects in junior college. I prefer studying concepts in natural language rather than in symbols and technical terms. I envy those who come off eloquent because they appear smarter. But as I have come to realize, those eloquent people may not necessarily be good in the study of law. Conversely, there are people who do very well in law in the cohort who I feel are not exactly that eloquent. And furthermore, those who do well at law might not be good in numbers or the sciences as some law school friends have shared with me about their struggles with those subjects in junior college.

I still have the bad habit of being too eager to publish my blog writings upon writing them instead of patiently reading it through at least once and revising it to make it better. I guess there is that eagerness to want to get those words out there into the blogosphere where they are expressed, but I realize that it probably would be better to review them and improve the piece before publishing it.

I redeveloped the interest to blog sometime about last year after reading another person’s blog, and discovering that there is indeed quite a joy for oneself to be able to express oneself in writing, and for someone else to read your writing and realize that a human being quite like themselves can be identified in you. I haven’t been writing on my blog as frequently as I had wanted to because I have been struggling with my preoccupation with tension headaches, and found it difficult to focus on writing when my mind keeps thinking about my tension headache. I have been on about a month now on the antidepressant Prozac for treatment of OCD and it has helped reduce my preoccupation, as well as reduced the intensity of my tension headache. So I have found myself now at least functionable enough to write this piece.

Feel free to comments on your personal experience and methods on writing. Is there anything in my description that you can identify with in your own method or style of writing?