Saturday, May 24, 2008

Long Time, No Blog

Hello Loyal Readers! :)

I have not been able to blog recently due to the underwhelming performance of the internet in this developing country. Such is life.

Also, I have forgotten to bring my camera into work today, so I can't share the tons of photos I've taken recently. Soon, though!

I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain the work I'm doing here. Right now, I'm creating a subject matter index for volumes of the law reports from 1992-2002 (hopefully we will go back to 1963 (a little before the country's independence, which occurred in 1975) and (eventually) forward to 2008). Apparently Tess and I are the first people to put together such a comprehensive database for the entire country. Not having the official court decisions for the country published and accessible to all clearly poses some problems, so I really believe in the work we are doing and hope that it will transform and streamline the justice system in this country.

So, I generally spend my days at my desk. Later in June, though, we will be hosting a training session to teach judges, magistrates, professors, everyone! how to use the database. sit at my desk working on the computer.

I've also been taking breaks from the index in order to edit some supreme court opinions. It's pretty awesome that I have access to such important material at this stage in my legal career. It's also appalling to see the judges' punctuation and grammar!! It's very fascinating to see the kinds of cases that are tried here, though, and I will try to post some of the more interesting ones. Unfortunately, it is a lot of corruption, fraud, and rape.

So that's the work in a nutshell. Let me know if you have questions!

2 comments:

Colin said...

Reagan, you are awesome. Keep up the good work. It looks like PNG must be a beautiful place to spend the summer. I'm jealous :)

Randy said...

Wow...sounds FASCINATING. What a great opportunity for you. Okay, and fill us in--did I miss this post??--who is Tess? Does she go to school with you back in the US? Keep up the fabulous blogging--I feel like I'm right there with ya!