My law school’s air conditioning is broken, and we are smack dab in the middle of that neon-pink slice of the weather map displaying mid-America’s record-melting heatwave. Today’s heat index is 115.
I’m getting close to nothing done.
I do feel slightly guilty that I’m not getting work done without air conditioning when, for so many years, everyone worked without air conditioning. But was their legal work really all that good? I know the delegates to the Constitutional Convention worked in sweltering heat from mid-May through mid-September in Philadelphia. But, let’s face it. It shows. The Constitution is in many ways a baffling, ambiguous, error-plagued mess. It didn’t hit me until now, but the lack of air conditioning may be the explanation.
I’ll bet that if you did an empirical study of statutes, you would find that in the pre-A/C era, the higher the outdoor temperature, the more convoluted and obnoxious the legislation was.
I personally am not interested in conducting this research, but I throw the question out there. Frankly, I’m not interested in doing anything right now. Because it’s hot. It’s like dormant-commerce-clause hot in here. Ugh!
Posted by Eric E. Johnson on July 19, 2011 at 11:21 AM
Comments
Long ago, before even I was a lawyer, the courts here in Birmingham AL generally were closed in the summer months. There was a judge named J. Russell McElroy (who was still on the bench when I started practicing in 1971). McElroy wrote THE Alabama treatise on evidence. I am told that, during those summer doldrums, he would assign young lawyers an area of evidence law to research and then use the research for the book. Thus, many lawyers in those hot months got some more legal education and Judge McElroy turned out a pretty good book.
Heat didn’t seem to stop those guys from thinking.
Posted by: Ed Still | Jul 19, 2011 9:43:05 PM
How ’bout that? That seems to confirm my hypothesis! (Albeit in a backward sort of way.) It really makes ya think, what if they had gotten a move on and drafted the Constitution six months earlier?
Posted by: Eric E. Johnson | Jul 19, 2011 9:41:53 PM
I believe it was Sen. Howard Baker who said something to the effect that the federal government became completely hopeless after they put in air conditioning in the Capitol. Before that, Congress went home for the summer and stopped causing harm.
Posted by: Howard Baker | Jul 19, 2011 3:37:11 PM