Garrett Coleman '25
Managing Editor
For many 1Ls, this spooky season will be one to remember. As midterms and practice exams come to a close, many people realize just how unprepared they are and how much work lies ahead. I was in the same boat, and everything turned out fine, but that does not mean October was at all pleasant. In respect to that gut wrenching dread to which all of us can relate, I decided to analogize each 1L doctrinal to a horror movie or October favorite.
Torts: Hocus Pocus
Torts is the quirkiest of all the doctrinal classes. In my view, the whole field is an exercise in remedying stupid behavior and preventing it in the future. 1Ls have the privilege of reading a series of short stories about young men diving head first into shallow lakes, friends casually driving around town while another is internally bleeding in the backseat, and fireworks being set off in train stations. And, unlike Crim Law, it has an air of humor to it. Learning about stevedores who blow up an entire ship by dropping a single plank makes some of us laugh. This is where Hocus Pocus comes in, since it is the quintessential cult spooky movie. Like Torts, it has a devoted fanbase, and its value comes from its self-effacing nature. It is always pleasant to rewatch and leaves you feeling good.
Civil Procedure: Scream
By this point in the semester, some of you future litigators are coming to the realization that this is the most important class you will take. Its lessons will crop up in every one of your cases and can often be (outcome) determinative. Like Scream, you will appreciate it with age. Civil Procedure also has a touch of self-awareness. When you are not dealing with substantive law but the procedural accompaniments, the law seems a bit more silly. The same can be said of Scream.
Contracts: Midsommar
This is certainly a class I thought I could get through with common sense. Many of the early cases seem pretty basic and nonthreatening. Those days feel like you’re arriving at a nice festival with a group of friends. But then you start to realize that much more was going on in the community of Contracts nerds. All of a sudden, those simple agreements are morphed by fraud, duress, or incapacity. Before you know it, you’ll be bogged down with questions of admissibility of oral modifications. Your arrival in those simple days of consideration and assent will be lost and you will have to live out your days in a realm of uncertainty (maybe I was just bad at Contracts).
Criminal Law: Zombieland
It is the goriest of classes, but you’re not scared or supposed to be. One minute, you will read a case about an incel murderer or a homeless person trying to stick someone with an unsanitary needle. The next, you’ll be evaluating his mental state to determine if he meant it in the worst way or a more acceptable way... This class has so much depraved behavior that you achieve a Buddhist level of desensitization. When I watch Zombieland, I similarly tune out the violence so I can watch a great story of love, nontraditional family dynamics, and the human spirit.
Property: Hereditary
This will be the most unfamiliar to current 1Ls, so here’s a synopsis. Our law comes from England, a country with many archaic rules and extra sons willing to risk it all. So, we have to shoehorn those rules into a modern economy and decide who owns what, how much they own it, when they can take someone else’s stuff, and what happens when they give it to someone else. While some of the cases have a tort-like flair, much of it is a memorization slog. And this is how I feel about Hereditary. It comes from a successful writer and director, is well made, but also terribly uncomfortable to watch. When you prep your outline, you will feel like the girl who has her head ripped off.
Constitutional Law: The Shining
It’s a classic, the only doctrinal that every 1L comes into with some background knowledge of. It is also a great suspense story. Things start off slow with the Commerce Clause and congressional delegation, like how the Torrances take their long drive through the Rockies. But as soon as you reach Loving v. Virginia and Griswold v. Connecticut, you have entered Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process land. That path only ends when Obergefell, Dobbs, and Bruen come bursting through the bathroom door to incite the most heated law school debates. Many of the opinions also have an artistic side that encourages general readership, similar to how The Shining is appreciated by many. The only difference, though, is that many students do not think Con Law has a happy ending with this current Supreme Court. Think of an alternative ending to The Shining where Jack finds his family in the maze.
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jxu6ad@virginia.edu