I’m now sitting in the second Constitutional Law II session to focus on abortion.  I’m willing to bet that not a single person in this entire class will ever have occasion to litigate an abortion case.  Reading the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on abortion is at least slightly interesting, but adds absolutely no value at all to my legal education. 

The professor spent literally two minutes discussing constitutional limits on punitive damages, and literally two hours discussing abortion.  I bet at least 10% of the people in this class will eventually seek or oppose punitive damages.  State Farm v. Campbell has so much more relevance to the practice of law than the abortion cases, yet it hasn’t even been mentioned by name!

There’s no reason the abortion jurisprudence couldn’t be covered in a five or ten minute lecture.  For all of the concurring and dissenting opinions, it’s patently obvious that each justice is just coming up with legal reasons to support his or her personal preference.  These cases have next to no value for learning constitutional interpretation or other useful legal skills.

Here’s hoping that we finish these cases up before the next class.