Photo: Evidence sorting in the Casey decision

 

Posted by: Alfred Snider

 

It is all going on at once. Theory, practice, debating, researching and everything in-between.

 

People are now pretty well grounded in this topic, a unique legal topic about overruling Supreme Court decisions, and now a wide variety of things are going on.

 

Theory and practice instruction continues. Today is counterplan day, and this morning the college students learned about counterplan theory and technique and also had a basic counterplan practicum. This afternoon each student will be in two counterplan mini-debates, with further counterplan follow-up tonight.

 

Research is in full swing. Students have assignments, faculty talk excitedly among themselves at lunch about new ideas and reports on their work, and the big tables in a few of the rooms are full of categories as students sort the evidence that they have produced. I know that I finished my judicial activism disadvantage today and it is being printed. Chris Langone is now doing a critique based on the legal reasoning of Stanley Fish, and some revolutionary argument approaches are also beginning to percolate up.

 

As I have written earlier in the blog, Vermont has less heat than the rest of the country but it has still been hot. About a day more of above 85 degrees and it should be back to the 70s for a while. Even though most classrooms at the University of Vermont are not air conditioned (you would need it about six days a year) we have been able to find enough classrooms so that all sessions for the rest of the programs this summer will be in air conditioned comfort.

 

Thanks to Ciara McCormick who took some photos today. I will add them to the photo page.