In the Peanut Gallery

I have an externship this semester in the San Francisco federal courthouse. My three co-externs are all from Hastings. When I got in this morning, the guy who sits across from me said that there was an interesting-looking case being argued at the state Supreme Court across the street. The reason he knew this brings me to my first point: Hastings maintains a terrific informal listing of interesting stuff going on in San Francisco and Oakland courts.

One reason they do this, and one reason they are able to, brings me to my second observation: Hastings students spend a lot of time at the local courts. Civil procedure and advocacy courses seemingly all require them to go and observe, and a great many of them do externships both in the summer and (especially, I think) during the school term. The list is compiled at least in part based on the suggestions provided by students working for various judges. David and I did walk across the street to see oral argument in Barrett v. Rosenthal, and the place was packed with Hastings kids. In fact, we had to watch on closed-circuit TV in the "overflow room" down on the first floor.

What we saw in the argument brings me to my third point. The case concerned the scope of immunity against defamation claims provided by the Communications Decency Act (that part of it which is still constitutional, that is). Appellants (defendants below) maintained an Internet message board upon which some allegedly defamatory statements were posted, and they were claiming that the Act protected them since they had not actually authored (or meaningfully edited) any of the content in question. Appellees contended that once defendants had notice of the content in question they were liable for its content along with the author(s). Boalt's own Samuelson Clinic wrote an amicus brief which was referred to repeatedly by several of the justices, so my third point is this: Congratulations, guys! I don't know who worked on this project, but you evidently got the Court's attention.

Watching the argument was a lot of fun. I was disappointed at first not to be able to sit in the courtroom itself, but watching in a big room with a whole bunch of other law students (as well as interested lawyers and members of the public) turned out to be great: we could kibbitz and opine about the advocates as they did their thing. Only one person stood up when the clerk said "all rise."

Here's my last point: 1Ls should consider going to spectate at a courtroom. It's totally fun. Even with just a couple of weeks of civil procedure under your belt you'll have some insight into what's going on, and watching lawyers in action is a huge kick--at least if you're anything like me. But get some information before you go. Most courtrooms are boring most of the time--they're either empty or engaged in something like checking off a list of unserved warrants or something. Go to the Hastings site listed above or to the online calendar of the individual courts or look in the daily legal journals (ask at the reference desk in the library). The Alameda County courts in Oakland are probably the easiest to get to, and lots of great stuff goes on there. Lots of felony trials at the Rene Davidson courthouse, and good civil stuff at the Administration Building across the street. A lot of more high-profile stuff happens at the federal courthouse in SF. Don't be shy. Find something that looks like it might be good and go. You can always ask court staff if you want to know whether something else interesting is going on. In state courts the bailiffs often are good people to ask, as are "court-watchers," citizens who just watch the proceedings for the sake of entertainment. A lot of them are old, and some are crazy, but they often have the best information.