One Rule to Rule Them All

There are a lot of myths in law school: I'd always heard that the east coast was so competitive that students actually ripped pages out of the digests to keep everyone else from getting the cases they needed.* One by one, they've mostly been disproved, but there's still one that has staying power: that the rule against perpetuities is one tough son of a bitch.

I know a guy who graduated from Cardozo, and when he heard that I had property this semester, cryptically said "remember me when you get to the rule against perpetuities." It's only worse now; someone asked our property professor what the reading was for next class, and he told us via e-mail to review everything, but "one thing you MUST NOT do: Don’t venture into the Rule Against Perpetuities yet!" And this is from a guy who's on the board of directors at Human Rights Watch and is an advisor on African affairs. So when he tells us to watch out, you know you're heading into the shit.

I feel like I should go do push-ups or something. The "rule" is as close to Full Metal Jacket as I'll ever get, except that at the beginning of the semester, I thought I saw some similarity between Professor Torts and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: "Oh that's right, Private Chadha, don't make any fucking effort to raise your voice to where we all can hear. If God would have wanted you up there he would have miracled your ass up there by now, wouldn't he?"

I am in a world of shit.

*I can neither confirm nor deny, we don't use "books" to do legal research anymore; it's way too 1994