Washburn Law Journal
Editor's Note
Volume 47, No. 2 (Winter 2008)
Studies have shown that law students enter law school with the same levels of depression and substance abuse as other graduate students. Law students, however, end their first year with much higher levels. These studies validate what law students already know about the causes behind this increase. Law students face extreme anxiety in their attempt to obtain the class rank that will land them that highly prestigious job with the law firm that hires from the top 10% of the class-the job that law students are "supposed" to get. High debt loads, the all-important one exam at the end of a law school class, peer bullies, and hard-core Socratic Method professors can compound the strain.
In October 2007, the Washburn University School of Law and the Washburn Law Journal hosted a Humanizing Legal Education Symposium to explore the problems of law student anxiety and offer potential solutions. This issue is dedicated to the writings that the symposium inspired. Washburn law professor Michael Hunter Schwartz organized the symposium; more than ninety legal education professionals representing thirty seven law schools attended. Professor Schwartz also participated as a speaker at the symposium and has written an introduction to this issue that describes the humanizing legal education movement. His introduction also outlines the featured articles in this issue.
This issue concludes with several student-written articles discussing a variety of topics. In her note, The Adam Walsh Act: The Scarlet Letter of the Twenty-First Century, Lara Geer Farley advocates for reform of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which expands upon previous federal sex offender statutes and requires more explicit sex offender registration. She argues that the Act's requirements are over-inclusive and place an undue burden on state governments, law enforcement, tax payers, and non-violent sex offenders. Dan E. Lawrence, in It Really Is Just a Game: The Impracticability of Common Law Property Rights in Virtual Property, argues that "recognition of independent property rights in virtual property is incompatible with the realities of the very medium that makes the creation of virtual property possible: that of retail software." In her case comment, Heather R. Klaassen contends that the United States Supreme Court's current punitive damages framework is contradictory and unworkable. She advocates leaving regulation of punitive damages to the state legislatures and courts. In his case comment, Aaron O. Martin, maintains that the case that overruled 100 years of Supreme Court antitrust precedent will harm the American consumer. He argues that the law will no longer forbid manufacturers and retailers from entering into agreements to fix prices, a result which could have broad economic effects to consumers. Finally, Jonathan A. Rhodes contends that the Supreme Court has stripped pro se litigants of their due process rights when they rely to their detriment on a judge's deadline to appeal instead of adhering strictly to the intricacies of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
T.R.H.
