School: Meet the Professors, Second Semester

This semster, we're taking Property, Civil Procedure, Appellate Advocacy, and Constitutional Law. The dreaded second-semester weariness has set in for many of us - where once our nights were spent briefing cases, outlining chapters, and reading ahead, it's fair to say much of this semester has been spent goofing off.

Property is taught by Professor Mark Fenster, who is probably my favorite of the new crop of professors. It's apparent that he's a bit tired of the material (he's teaching two sections this semester, so he teaches the same thing twice a day), but he has the intellectual chops for being a professor (J.D. from Yale, Ph.D. from U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). He offers up the most help and support in my experience, and he uses the Socratic method the most.

Professor Lear handles CivPro. She received her J.D. from the University of Michigan and clerked for Judge Lumbard on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. She's about as fast a talker as any law professor you might have; though her pleasant demeanor and strange turns of phrase might fool you, she's "shockingly" smart (as she might say), though even she can't clarify the badly-written Federal Rules of Civil Procedure into anything approaching common sense. She almost never calls on anyone, which sort of makes for a tedious class sometimes.

Professor Jackson teaches ApAd. I had him last semester, and all the same applies. Still a good professor. He even showed us video of him arguing a case before the FL Supreme Court.

Professor Collier, our ConLaw teacher, is easily the most philosophical of the second batch, and also the most yawn-inducing. He's not a great lecturer, but his hypos are always insightful, and he has an almost ridiculous amount of degrees (PH.D. from Yale, J.D. from Stanford, etc.).