Re: sidebar for Joe Ramirez

On Jul 16, 1:00 am, "David W" <n...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Joe Ramirez" <josephmrami...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1184558342.479213.283250@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





On Jul 15, 8:00 pm, mimus <tinmimu...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:37:57 +1000, David W wrote:
"John P" <JT...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
Joe,

did you hear about this:

Boston man sues over gay marraige question on bar exam

BOSTON (AP) - A man who claims he failed the Massachusetts bar exam
because he refused to answer a question about gay marriage has filed a
federal lawsuit, saying the test violated his riights and that his
religious beliefs were targeted. Stephen Dunne, 30, of Boston, is
seeking $9.75 million in the suit against the Massachusetts Board of Bar
Examiners and the Massachusetts Supreme Court. He was denied a license
to practice law in May after scoring 268.866 on the exam, just shy of
the 270 passing grade. In the suit, Dunne called the same-sex marriage
question "morally repugnant and patently offensive."

Crazy. It would have just been a simple question about the law on the books
wouldn't it?

And was that the only question he missed?

Apparently not -- missing one question alone would never cause you to
fail. A perfect or near-perfect score on a bar exam is a rarity
(particularly for someone as dumb as this guy appears to be :)), since
there's no reason to try for it. As long as you know enough to be
confident of passing comfortably, you're fine. No bonuses for higher
scores. Also, I think I read somewhere that this individual had
previously failed the exam, so he's no Learned Hand.

He could be slightly smarter than you think. Having failed it before he might
have done better this time, and had a good idea how well he did

I think that's unlikely; it's just too hard to calibrate one's results
that precisely. I think most people who do well on the bar exam come
out of it feeling vaguely reassured but still a bit anxious. Law is
just too messy and subjective for examinees to "know" exactly what
they got right and wrong.

but decided
during the exam that his ticket to success was the either the lawsuit or the
publicity it would generate, rather than a career in law. Since the lawsuit
depends on the gay question having been the difference between success and
failure, he might have have deliberately done badly on some other questions to
make sure it was.

Well, he could become a sort of hero to the far right temporarily, but
I'm not sure where publicity would get him in the long run. There are
right-wing/fundamentalist think tanks and activist law firms in the
U.S., but even they typically require properly credentialed, more or
less respectable people. This guy has too much of the odor of loon
about him -- adding a couple members of the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court as defendants to his suit is a clear marker for
paranoia. My nutdar in litigation contexts is pretty accurate; I once
worked for the chief judge of a U.S. court of appeals, and one of my
jobs was reviewing all the judicial complaints. The ones that were
truly crazy, and not just meritless, were a lot like the plaintiff's
complaint in this case.

Joe Ramirez

.

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