LAW 101: Loving Your LAW Jobs

I love cases. 

I can't say enough how I LOVE observing people's story in cases: the more heartbreaking it is, the more interesting it is. Like one of the complicated case about defining "wetlands" in Rapanos v. United States, decided in a rare 4-1-4 split decision by the US Supreme Court. The case, and the judges opinion, is just about "water of the US" and CWA jurisdiction -- and I was not that interested to the case until I found out the story behind the case,

"After seventeen years of protracted civil and criminal litigation and a denial of certiorari in the criminal trial, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear Rapanos' civil case." (68 La. L. Rev. 983)

There you go. A single definition of a single WORD has ruined someone's life for seventeen years, and a small (or huge, depends on your perspective in seeing that) shift on interpreting that word can affect everything from a huge sum of penalty to criminal conviction.

The way law dramatize people's stories is simply fascinating.