As I’ve previously explained, me going into the Army was supposed to have been for only two years to allow me to then use the G.I. Bill to help pay for law school. I would have then entered the family law practice with my grandfather and uncle. As I also mentioned, even though I stayed in the Army 22 years, my two cousins did carry on the family tradition. However, of all the pre-law classes I took, my actual favorite was Constitutional Law. This was back in the day before computers of course so there was a particularly difficult aspect to deal with. Aside from reading the Constitution, the class is devoted to reading and understanding the impact of Supreme Court cases. To do so, you read huge volumes of material and write a subsequent “brief” to answer specific questions about the specific case chosen during the course. I don’t know how they teach it now with the availability of the internet and computers, but at the time the brief was to be typed single space.

If you follow the blog you also know I spent what would have been my senior year of high school in France instead. Now, even though I was on the college track, I had already figured out knowing how to type would be a useful skill and I planned to take the class as a senior. Since that did not occur, here I was in Con Law – that being the time of manual typewriters – with zero typing skills. Reading through and comprehending the legal arguments, opinions – both majority and dissenting – and ultimate rulings was laborious. Typing the briefs was painful. It was, however, the most fascinating of my classes and why I have such respect for the Constitution. The changes within the Court itself is another factor that was important to understand and discussed during the semester.