Summery Judgment

It is good. It is very good.

Lake Bled ranks high on the Most Beautiful Places on Earth list. We spent the weekend (read: Saturday) walking up to the castle and around the lake, rowing to the island and back (go Dad!) and eating good food including kremna rezina. It was nice to spend some low key time with the parents and commune just a bit with the great outdoors. And now I have pictures of my very own!



I'm working on a memo about certiorari for work...I sort of decided to do it myself, because I think knowing about SCOTUS's system (and why it's problematic but not a complete train wreck) will be important during the court's quest to not decide 2000 cases a year. Also, the first case where I had some mild input was decided last week. The court said that a difference in inheritance law between marriages and same-sex unions was unconstitutionally discriminatory. Did they actually use my work? Good question. I haven't yet been able to find the opinion, but I'll let you know as soon as I do. Meanwhile, I'm happy for Slovenia, which is apparently significantly more progressive on gay issues than America.

And I'm also happy for the awesome small-groupie who was on TV today, behind Al Franken at the Sotomayor hearings!

Go, Beth. It's your birthday. We gonna party like it's your birthday.

Other than that, I've been chilling, working on my paper, and spending quality time with Roberto. I can't seem to take a decent picture of him. I think my camera's cursed or something. I assure you: Roberto is not red, and he does not have bulging eyes. And yet...

I know, I know. As things in life get better, the posts get duller. No more random observations like, "this city is so small that apparently the better-known waiters and hairdressers are the primary subjects of tabloid gossip." Except for that one. Yeah, it's true.

All I'm Asking For Is Change

Two types of change, today:

Change One: Slovenian merchants, waiters, and the like, are really, really reluctant to give you change. Not that they want to cheat you, or anything...they just get so annoyed if you give them substantially more money than is required. I know this happens in the U.S. too, but here are a couple of examples: I bought a 2,50 € hot chocolate at a cafe and all I had was a 20. The waiter gave me a look like, "Are you kidding me?" and asked if I had anything smaller. He proceeded to dole out the change, muttering and shaking his head the entire time. Today I bought a 1,20 € ice cream. I had a two euro coin. "Do you have twenty cents?" the ice cream seller asked. "No, I just have fourteen cents." She motioned for me to give her the fourteen cents. She would rather be sold short six cents than, heaven forbid, have to give 80 cents (three coins!) in change. I wonder if this is related to the problem they're having in Argentina with monedas. Supposedly, Argentina is so short on change ("How short on change are they?"), that coins are worth more than bills of a nominally higher value. It's pretty much the craziest thing I've ever heard. Anyway, it sometimes feels that way around here.

Change Two: I'm in my new apartment! It's on the top floor of this great old building on Dalmatinova ulica. I'm in the red room (one wall is painted red, although you can't see it in the picture), and I have a skylight and plenty of space and a bed underneath a low wall, which is kind of fun:

I spent a little while this evening talking to one of my roommates. His name is Bogdan, and he's a Romanian student here for an electronics/telecommunications research internship. His favorite television show is Seinfeld, which speaks highly of him. The internet, however, blows. Supposedly it's in a slump tonight, which is good, because if it were this bad all the time, I'd never be able to watch the Daily Show again (until August).

Work today was fun...not especially work-ful, but not boring either. I spent nigh three hours chatting with another woman in the department about whether the Court acted as a positive legislator in a number of cases. That conversation quickly devolved into differences between Slovenia and America (namely that large corporate entities aren't actively trying to screw you over in Slovenia, like telecommunications companies and health insurance companies do in the ol' ZDA). Then it re-evolved into a discussion of Slovenian law in general.

I found out that Article 55 of the Constitution does indeed give women an affirmative right to have an abortion. No messing. In your first trimester, you can walk into a state hospital, and they do it for you, no questions asked. Apparently after the first trimester, you need to appeal to some government board and they have to approve you (and they almost certainly do). I thought it was kind of strange that you had to go to a board to exercise a right that's affirmatively granted in the constitution, but Katarina said nobody's ever complained. Perhaps they could use some of that American complaining spirit.

The real political battle is apparently over single women getting in vitro fertilization. The church is super-opposed to IVF for women without husbands, and since the right is much better at turning out the vote than the left, they've managed to keep it illegal. (I think I'm recalling this all correctly.) And the issue of surrogacy has never come up in their courts, but Katarina expects it will soon.

All right, moving (even across the street) is exhausting, and I need to catch some mad z's. There are more things in the news and NY Times op-ed page that I wanted to write about—people being openly critical of mothers, climate change, Ricci—but I'm tired, and the internet's too slow to call up the articles within a reasonable timeframe.

As government officials say to each other before signing their letters (which I found out today doing my proofreading duties), please accept the assurances of my highest consideration. I'm not sure it means anything, but I hope you feel important now.

Lend Me A Hand

Someone up there is trying to tell me to stop drinking Coke. Today, I went to my lunch place, as usual, got a Coke and a new sandwich, and headed back to the court. I opened the sandwich, forked in a bite, and grabbed my Coke. It wouldn't open. Now, as I may have mentioned, oh, fifteen times, I drink a lot of Coke. Sometimes, if I don't finish a bottle and put it back in the fridge, it can be hard to re-open. But never have I had trouble opening an unopened bottle. I used my napkin. I used a paper towel. I tried using my hand again. Nothing. It wouldn't budge. I walked down the hall and asked one of the other girls if she'd give it a try. She used her hand. She used her shirt. Nothing. I tried some more, to no avail. Yet another girl from down the hall...her hand, her skirt. Nope. Me again: Fail, fail, fail. This was the Coke bottle of doom. So finally I asked my boss, the only man on our half of the floor. He couldn't do it with his hands, but he had a real towel in his office, so with that, he managed to open the Coke bottle. Victory! And that was when I looked at my right hand.

Wow. And I promise, it looks worse in real life. "Won't forget, can't regret, what I diiiiid foooooor Coooooooke. What I did for Cooooooooke..."

Did American research for a case today. I'm still not entirely sure what they want from the quick-turnaround not-quite-memos or the long-turnaround more-like-memos. Hopefully I'll get some feedback, though. I'm enjoying having to be humble about American law. At law school, we get very wrapped up in all the economic sense these laws make, but the rest of the world seems to see things through a more Fissian lens and less of an Ellicksonian lens. "You have a 'property' right to your child's corpse? Really?" "So, if it's not in the Constitution, human rights don't matter? Really?" And of course the answer to both of those is "well, sort of." But it's still interesting. Not as interesting as Adam D.C.'s most recent case, but you'll have to talk to him about that directly.

I also discovered the joys of Slovenian ATMs today. The funny thing about Slovenian ATMs, you see, is that THEY DON'T DISPENSE CASH. I eventually managed to get some cash out of one (of six), with my back-up credit card, but apparently my debit card doesn't function in these things. Lovely.

And the apartment company pushed back my move to the place-with-roommates until June 30th. I guess that means I'll be moving directly into the good room, but it also means another couple of weeks without friends. Or Roberto's smiling face. Eh, maybe I'll hit up the marine happy hour on Friday.

Besides all that it was actually a nice day. Did some reading, had some bad pizza and beer and some good hot chocolate and watched a thunderstorm over the city right after dusk. I have some pictures that haven't yet made their way onto the blog, so as your reward for looking at my hideous blisters, you get pretty scenes of Ljubljana. We start, as always, with the river:

Next up, the view into the courtyard from my apartment:

The beautiful University of Ljubljana. I think over 20% of the city's population is university students:

Here's a great old building in the south-of-center area (which, as you can see, is a lot like South Central):

And finally, sunset over an old building behind a construction site. I love this stuff:


Eso es todo. Goodnight, friends!

Killing, Mourning

Someone in this room is going to die. I don't know where he's hiding, but as soon as he starts flying around or lands against a nice white wall, that will be the end of him. I have become a remorseless mosquito killer since I moved into this apartment. I may not own a single shoe without blood on its sole (metaphorically, that is; there's usually no blood). If reincarnation's true, perhaps I'm killing someone's grandmother. Then again, if reincarnation's true, and they've been a good mosquito, I'm doing them a favor.

Two more assignments came down at work today...I actually have a lot on my plate now, but only one due date, which is nice. One case relates to what they call the "Right to Piety." Now, if you were to read "Right to Piety," what would you think it meant? I sure thought it was some sort of freedom of religion thing...possibly the right to observe strictly even if it interferes with other obligations. But no. The woman in the office started explaining to me, "It's like this statue with Mary holding the body of Jesus." "The Pietà." "Yes. It is the translation of that." Right. So apparently what they mean by "Right to Piety" is, like, the right to have an appropriate relationship with your deceased loved ones. The right to mourn and visit their grave, etc. Yes, Google Translate tells me that "pietà" translates as "piety," but good ol' dictionary.com doesn't seem to give the definition they want. I guess "pay your respects" is the most appropriate bridge between them. Still.

Update: The mosquito is dead. Don't worry. It was quick.

This is how getting assignments at work usually seems to go.

Them: Here's a description of this case. We're wondering if there's anything pertinent to this question in American law.
Me: That actually sounds completely antithetical to everything American law is about.
(Pause)
Me: But now that I think about it, there is a lot of stuff that might be relevant. But email me the question.
Me (aside): Because I have no idea if I understood what you just said.
Them: Ok!

So I'm, in some bizarre way, figuring out what European-style rights American courts have created but given American names. ("That's not personhood! That's property!") It's kind of cool.

I should be feeling great right now. I turned in the assignment I had to do for today (still no email confirmation of receipt, four-and-a-half hours later) and had a great dinner (gnocchi with beef, chanterelles, and mushrooms and a glass of red wine at the adorable Le Petit Cafe). I'm even reading a great new novel. But I'm feeling low. I have just two more days in this apartment, and I'm having a bit of an existential crisis about my time in Ljubljana. Why am I here? What did I hope to accomplish? What is the point of leaving everyone you know to spend two months in a 270,000 person city where you don't speak their language? I guess I assumed that if you do something like this you get something out of it, but I still don't know what that is or will be. We shall see.

Plečnik's Palace

In a few minutes I will be committing mass verbicide, brutally slashing 280 words from an essay to get it under word count. But as a feast before the famine, I come here to blog, to spew out words like there's no limit. Which there isn't. Thank you, internet.

I haven't yet posted pictures of the ridiculously gorgeous building in which I work, so here are a couple of shots taken from the staircase:

It was designed by apparently-super-famous architect Jože Plečnik, Slovenia's pride and joy along with France Prešeren, poet extraordinaire. I haven't seen much devotion to good ol' Slavoj over here. I guess they're all capitalists. Anyway, the building is known as Plečnik's Palace, and it's obscenely attractive. And it even has a coffee maker that spits out €0,30 cappuccinos, sweetened to your specification! Who could ask for anything more?

There were (at least?) two Scarsdalians in the NYT wedding section this week. One was something of a friend in high school (very cool girl), but I haven't spoken to her much since. The other was too old for me to have known (although I knew her sister a bit), but I recognized her name instantly from The List. I know, it's pathetic. But you do something like that, too, don't you? And even if you don't, that's the least of my weird stalking of people I don't/hardly/do know. You should know that by now. But congrats to the now-marrieds! And wish me luck in finishing this thing.

Song of the day, for no other reason than it popped into my head: You'd Be Surprised

This Sweet Stone

If I come back from Slovenia weighing 300 pounds, you can either blame the all-meat/bread/cheese diet (maybe that's not fair...they have mushrooms, too) or these amazing chocolate bars. You can probably get them in the U.S., but I've never had one before, and my God, they are delicious.

Today, in the midst of my Court-structure-summarizing (if my boss ever discovers Wikipedia, it'll put me out of a job), the man in charge came in and said he wants me to start researching the origins of two ideas "that have come from this...sweet stone." Considering the amount of English that is bungled in this country (People use the word "accured" a lot. Anyone want to translate?) I would have been justified in asking for a clarification. Fortunately, I knew what he was talking about, so all was well.

Today marks my grandparents' 60th (count em!) anniversary. That's just amazing. When they got married, World War II was a more recent memory than September 11th is today (although my grandfather was already trying to block out those memories), and Korea was still in the future. WolframAlpha tells me nothing useful about June 11, 1949, because it's completely useless for anything other than graphing. But who needs it. My mom's parents met each other on a blind date...actually, it was a double blind date, and they were each set up with the other person. But they took to each other, and pretty soon my grandfather showed up at my grandmother's doorstep holding a bouquet of flowers. "Are those for me!?" she asked giddily. "Nope, they're for your mother," he replied. What a mensch. Anyway, they've been together ever since. They're a great duo...good senses of humor (sometimes punny, sometimes a little off-color), a lifetime of involvement in the arts (Bucky was acting up until a couple of years ago, and Griz is still sculpting), and tremendous affection for each other after all these years. Sure, their age is starting to show more than a little, but I admire and even envy what they have. So cheers to Griz and Bucky and their sixty years of marriage. Woot!

My Screen Is The Brightest Thing In Cafe Čokl

Which means giant bugs are landing on my screen. Lovely.

I got an assignment today from my boss, which was very exciting. Unfortunately one of the questions I was asked to research ("Could you please find some case law from this court for me?") had a somewhat disappointing answer ("Apparently that court has never actually...heard a case..."). And I have an editing assignment for tomorrow, given to me by two women in the legal advisory department, Tea and Lea (seriously). So it looks like my Slate reading is going to take a hit this week, as is my motivation to work on the non-job-related essay I have to finish for next Monday. Ah, well.

As I was researching for the boss today, Robert the tech guy came in and said he wanted to install software that would require restarting the computer. I had about twenty websites open then and was a little flustered, so he said he could come back later. "Is this afternoon all right?" I asked. "Oh, I have to pick up my wife from the hospital this afternoon, so maybe not." "Oh, ok, sometime later this morning then," I responded. Brilliant response to "I have to pick up my wife from the hospital," I know. Fortunately, when he came in later I was able to try to mend my ways. "So is everything all right with your wife?" I started. "Yeah, it was very all by the book," he responded, using his idioms well but showing very little indication of what had happened. "Did she have an operation...?" I prodded. "No, we had a daughter on Saturday." OH. All good things, then.

While the software was installing its slow self, we chatted a bit about maternity leave in Slovenia. Apparently women get a full year of paid maternity leave, and new fathers get eleven paid days and fifty-two days unpaid but with all of their taxes and social security comped. I feel like I've always thought of paid maternity leave as something of a women's equality issue, but he said that the entire purpose of the Slovenian legislation was to encourage families to have more children. According to Robert, when he was born, there were 30,000 babies born in Slovenia every year, but now that number's down to 18,000. Of the women that do have children, half have only one, and a fair number of married couples decide not to have children. He implied that these couples were choosing a more lavish lifestyle over kids (and his implication was that this choice was about money, not time). I'm not sure if I buy it, but it does seem like countries with solid economies tend to decline in population.

So, speaking of choices related to having kids, I was viscerally annoyed by this Douthat op-ed in the Times today. Part of this annoyance comes from him placing himself in the ideological group that irritates me the most: self-righteous moderates. ("Guys, guys, stop your blind extremism! Let's inject some common sense into this debate and acknowledge that both sides have a point. Let's add a little nuance to our thinking, ok?" Ugh, I could spit.) But part of it is the content. I don't think there's any actual contradiction in saying "abortion is a moral wrong that can be the right choice in extreme cases, where there is an extraordinary wrong avoided through abortion, but it's the wrong choice in all other cases." In theory that's fine. It's just the smell test...every time someone makes this kind of argument, all I can hear is, "Ladies: you break it, you buy it." It's this attitude that is entirely a comment on the moral character of the woman involved and completely divorced from the outcome of her action. There's no feeling of "I'm sorry: I know this isn't what you want for yourself, but we just can't take this life without an extraordinarily compelling reason." It's all about these selfish women willing to toss away their kid for the sake of convenience. It's just creepy.

Oh, and someone (Chayes?) needs to create a play based on the foie gras workers in today's Herbert column. There's something awesomely dramatic about the twenty-two day period of constant, extremely personal force-feeding. (The combination of "ducks" and "extremely personal" has recently taken on a whole new meaning.) And there's something horrifically dramatic about the Depression-era labor conditions. But I think Herbert's got that one covered.

American Law: Let Me Research It For You

Today: A miracle.

I was getting ready for another day of background reading, when I heard a knock on my door. A woman I didn't recognize came in, looked at the other desk, and said (as I'm used to hearing by now), "Oh, Urška's not here?" Nope, she's out taking finals. "Well, I was coming in to see you anyway?" MOI!? (I didn't actually say that.) "I just found out about you! My name is Tjaša. I'm currently researching a pending case on Topic X." (where X is a topic I'm super-interested in. I won't say what it is exactly, because I assume this blog is the foremost source of inside information for litigants in pending US-RS cases.) She explained the case and told me that it looked like German, French, and British courts hadn't spoken directly to her question, so could I think of a relevant U.S. case? I couldn't. But! I could tell her basically what the landscape of cases would look like, and I told her I'd do some research and send her what I found. "Don't spend too long on it," she said. Oh, I would be so happy to spend too long on it.

Actually, it only took around four hours, especially since it wasn't a formal memo and the cases that were most likely to help her weren't really going to hide themselves. I also got to explain some basic stuff about American law, which made me feel very knowledgeable. (I wrote to my boss about our admittedly ridiculous Supreme Court cert system a few days ago. "It is all very...mysterious," he said, appropriately.) Above all, it was real work. I got to research and analyze and summarize and generally obtain and communicate knowledge. I'm hoping I will now be the go-to person for all legal advisory department questions about American law.

And I did finally get to meet the infamous Urška. Who is awesome. First, and not to be underestimated, she speaks English fluently. Almost everyone here speaks English proficiently, but that is not to be confused with fluently. And she has a British (with a touch of Scandinavian/Australian?) accent, although she's only lived in Slovenia and Luxembourg. She's also a little funkier than most of the office...hair dyed that sort of slightly purple red and thick-framed glasses. And she's energetic. Overall, I'm excited to have her as my office-mate-to-be.

Tonight, I missed my bus to the movie theater (I actually got there about 5 seconds before it, but it was at the back of a bus line and I didn't see it until it pulled away), so no Star Trek for me. Instead I'm back at England (have I mentioned that it's great to have a pub with wireless next door?) drinking Laško, blogging, gchatting it up with a newly married old friend just back from his honeymoon, and going through Nerve.com's "Twenty Sexiest Ugly People." (Danny Trejo is the perfect choice. Sandra Bernhard's pretty good too.)

I can use a little low brow. I finished up the (middle brow) Middlesex last night, which I highly recommend for anyone with some extra time feeling a little generous with their disbelief suspension. It's one of those books that you either buy into or you don't, and if you don't, you think it's self-indulgent and ridiculous, and if you do, you think it's beautiful and engrossing. I was feeling it, so I really enjoyed the experience and would recommend it. And last night Alexandria and I had a good (highish brow) gchat about how cancer does what it does. It's a really interesting disease...it pretty much operates entirely on the principle of "If I can replicate quickly enough, I can evolve my way out of anything!" My feelings would be a trifle more positive, however, if it weren't going to kill the majority of people I care about (and hadn't already killed a few). Right. (Speaking of otherwise exciting things that kill people...cars! There was a red Aston Martin DB6 on Šubičeva ulica yesterday. Too hot.)

Oh, and I just have to get this on the record: While some of you know I'm, er, intrigued by a certain YLS professor, this sudden Wikipedic transformation is not my handiwork. But I must say, I'm impressed.

Later, dudes.

There Are Giants In The Sky

Before I came to Ljubljana, I looked at a picture of the city, and in the background were the Alps. I had thought Ljubljana was decidedly south of the Alps, but I said to my mother, "Mom, I think Ljubljana might be kind-of-sort-of in the Alps." She confirmed my original thought that it was South. Here is proof (shot along Slovenska cesta, Ljubljana's main drag) that (a) Ljubljana is indeed south of the Alps, and (b) I wasn't crazy for thinking it was kind-of-sort-of in the Alps:

I understand that distant mountains can sometimes look like clouds, so I've drawn this helpful diagram:

I'm not sure how well it comes across in those snapshots (I'm still using the PowerShot that I keep in my messenger bag; I'll break out the SLR at some point), but those mountains are...rather large. I'm not sure whether they're the Julien Alps or the Kamnik Alps, but either way, they look almost surreal at the end of a city street. I've always had a sort of visceral reaction to enormity—things that are very tall but even wider, like cruise ships—so these mountains sort of stop my heart.

More reading today at work. I think I'm going to view this as an educational experience for now. I get to learn about European Constitutional Courts—how they operate, what issues they face—and maybe I'll get to help one out while I'm here. By the way, the Slovenian Constitutional Court would never let this happen. The oath the judges take is: "I swear that I shall judge according to the Constitution, the law, and my conscience and that I shall strive with all my power for constitutionality, legality, and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms." Yes, the judge's conscience and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms is put on the same plane as the Constitution itself (although some might say that the order matters here). Our judges say: "I, ------, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ------ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God." (23 U.S.C. § 453) Ok, so our oath isn't so bad (although how the 'so help me God' would fly in a town that's one-fifth atheist is anyone's guess). Still, there's something awfully appealing about a human rights override.

Robert the Tech Guy asked me today how Ljubljana is different from what I expected. I think he was surprised by my answer ("Fewer chain stores"); he'd expected me to say it was more modern or cosmopolitan or something. I told him I'd browsed around before I came and realized that most bars and cafes had decently-designed websites, which I found to be a pretty strong indicator of a city's modernity. As a tech guy, he appreciated that.

Until tomorrow, friends.

And So It Begins

My short holiday is over, and now it is time to work.

God willing.

I had my first day, today, in beautiful Plečnik's Palace. I thought I was getting there before the crowd to meet the boss at 8:30, but apparently he works the 6:00 - 3:30 shift. I will not be getting in at six. Eight thirty I can do. Six is ridiculous. And when I tried to leave at 5:30, I realized I was locked in. (A visibly irritated guard who was leaving let me out.) So 8:30 to 4:30 it is...I guess?

My boss seems like a great guy; talkative, knowledgeable, helpful, and generally sunnily disposed. He's the only man in the entire division (and, by my count, one of three on the entire floor). I'm slightly weirded out by that; I tend to get along much better with young men than young women, but hopefully I'll get to know the gals on the floor and like them. Although one of them did describe the Court as "lonely." Right-o. My office mate is out for the month, finishing up her master's degree, so I have a fairly large office to myself. It's a great space, but now I have to fill it with work. Work!

I spent today getting oriented, which will probably be my task for tomorrow (and the rest of the week?), reading random things about Slovenian government, the Slovenian Constitutional Court, Slovenian human rights legislation, and the Slovenian National Anthem. Yup, their national anthem and coat of arms are proscribed in the Constitution itself. (Shout out to the city of Ljubljana's awesome coat of arms.) Also in the Constitution are such guarantees of rights as "Everyone shall be free to decide whether to bear children." I haven't yet asked whether that just means "To hell with you, Oliver Wendell Holmes: The state can't sterilize people," or whether "whether" is actually "whether or not." Still, it's kind of crazy.

In any case, that was all fine, and I'm good with doing that for another day or two...but I really hope there's work after that. Apparently a LOT of the stuff they do is in Slovene. When they need to do comparative con law, I'll be all over that, but I'm not entirely sure how frequently that happens. Well, worse comes to worse, I'll just tell my boss I want to prepare comparative reports on issues that we think are likely to come before the court. Like gay marriage (they already have civil union-type things) or transgender rights or something else with that Mosque that still hasn't gone up. Ideally, however, there will be real work relevant to pending cases. Wish me luck.