Friday, July 20, 2007
Model answers are excessively complete
Continuing on in the theme of getting annoyed with exam prep, the model answers for the essay questions are too complete without enough guidelines. I understand that they need to put everything into the model answer so that they can tell everyone whether what they thought of is right or not. But there should be astrixes or something to say which are the really important points. Clearly in a question that regards adverse possession, I would need to discuss the elements of adverse possession and how Ned Neighbor really did or did not fulfill all the requirements to adversely possess that three foot wide strip of land that his vegetable garden is planted on. But do I really need to have a complete discussion of whether he now has marketable title to that land. It's just a simple statement of law - "Maryland recognizes adversely possessed title as marketable." Why are they trying to make me think that I need a full discussion of that point when it seems to me that that one sentence covers what I need to say so I can move on in the 25 minutes I have to write each essay.
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This is a very common problem.
On a related note, I just did a wills question wherein there was a devise "To A and the heirs of his body." There were three follow up questions about what interests various parties related to the grantor and A had. The actual answer, in each case, was "nothing, because this was an attempt to create a fee tail, and fee tails are no longer allowed, so A owns the property in fee simple absolute." The model answer, however, added to this assessment multiple paragraph-long discussions of what the parties would have had IF the fee tail were still in effect. What the hell?
Am I supposed to answer every question with various ways that it would have come out under law that no longer exists? "Currently, A holds fee simple absolute. However, prior to the development of a system of laws, A would have had only that interest in the land which he could acquire and keep through physical force. In addition, if A were a married woman in 18th century America, the interest would have been owned by her husband and not her."
Arrggh.
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