Legal Commentary

It appears I thought more highly of Hillary Clinton's speech than Paul did. I thought she said pretty much all the right things in the right way; there are some more things I would have liked to have been made more explicit, but overall I thought it did the trick.

But I actually found more meaning and expressive impact in the roll call procedures tonight. Obama agreed to a roll call vote in which some Clinton delegates could vote for her (through New Mexico, about 340 delegates had voted for Clinton, the rest, having been released this afternoon, voted for Obama), then Clinton moved to cut-off the roll call, suspend procedures, and nominate Obama by acclamation. Through the use of procedure, both got some form of what they wanted and it ended in an unequivocal, unanimous endorsement of Obama.

This strikes me as a good object lesson in the power of procedure and in the way it can be used to send messages and form meaning around and about the events it governs. I am trying to figure out how to use this in any or all of my procedure classes.