Back To The Law School To Hear Shannon Minter Speak

Above: The law school on a typical rainy spring day. It reminds me a lot of the style of buildings at Duke, where my father teaches.

It's the unusual veterinary student who makes the long trek down to the law school on two separate occasions within one week. But it was well worth the effort. Hearing Shannon Minter speak was way more of a treat than the same-sex marriage debate with Maggie Gallagher last week.

Once again, I feel woefully inadequate trying to summarize what I heard. I'm just not that conversant in legal matters. But it was the first time I had heard anything substantial about Perry v. Schwarzenegger so that was super interesting. The one name that stuck in my mind was Ilan Meyer, who gave expert testimony on the effects of stress on minorities. Minter said that Meyer stated that a situation that is not inherently very stressful becomes stressful for a minority because it invokes the reminder that the whole social and legal system opposes them. I would be more eloquent writing about this if I had taken any notes and if it weren't fairly late on a school night when I have a lot else to do.

One interesting legal tidbit that I picked up is that it matters how California's Supreme court interpreted the victory of proposition 8 and their interpretation of it being a denial of rights to a minority, or something like that, might matter immensely in how the courts handle the current appeal. This was something I hadn't understood before-- apparently no higher court can redefine the meaning once constructed by the California Supreme court. Again, sorry if this makes no sense as this is not my area of expertise by any means.

While certain areas of law are incredibly fascinating, I am still responsible for learning the entire physiology of the kidney this week and so must get back to work.

I definitely felt Minter's excitement and anticipation when he talked about current legal cases. Suffice to say that while a substantial portion of my class has spent the last few days taking breaks to watch vampire flicks, I'd much rather be at the law school when I'm not studying. It's not even that it's a more meaningful diversion, it actually is more thrilling to me, there is more plot tension in the same-sex marriage legal saga for me than in any movie.