I am a JD (Juris Doctor, law degree) candidate at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. I started there this August. It has been an amazing experience. My main “doctrinal” courses (required, no electives in “1L” year) are Civil Procedure, Torts, and Contracts, and I have great professors for each and enjoy class very much. There is a lot of reading, mostly cases (and Legal Eagle’s advice for briefing cases was spot on). Cold calls are not that bad, so long as one is prepared. Outside of doctrinal courses, I have a legal writing course, which has been challenging and useful, and a legal professions course, which has been… present (perhaps more useful for those who have never worked professionally). The 2024 class is amazing; I know way more people than I ever did in undergrad, and they come from diverse locations, backgrounds, and undergraduate studies, and I expect them to make the curve very difficult.
Mostly I don’t expect law school to benefit personally in my struggle to get justice for my son and I, to bring David home, to avoid being harmed by “stbx” (soon-to-be-ex) wife, although the way it’s been dragging out, maybe I’ll have graduated before it’s over.
Big picture, it’s wrong to haul someone into a foreign state with which they have no significant connection; it goes against 14th amendment due process rights. Public policy is against it too. There have been some interesting recent cases with family law judges in WV, for example, judges bringing armed bailiffs to parties’ houses to take property, which eventually made it to federal district court on a 42 U.S.C. ยง 1983 claim, which the court of appeals found was not within judicial immunity.
Purpose and Goal
But the larger picture is that I want to be able to help others finding themselves in this situation. While I admire what Melissa Isaak is doing fighting for fathers and men’s rights in family law and other areas in Alabama, fathers are not the only victims of difficulties like David and I have gone through–unjust separation, withholding, and so forth–and so I wouldn’t restrict my clients to fathers only. I want to fight to help reunite separated parents and children, and contribute in any way I can to justice for those parents and children in the more general sense, i.e., passing presumption of 50/50 custody that has been so wonderful in states where it is in effect, or helping make good case law that makes taking and withholding difficult. Running off and withholding a child from a fit parent ought not to be possible, and if done it ought not to take years to undo (justice delayed is justice denied), and nor reward the doer.
