You should have seen the look on your face

While it's not a half-hour comedy in primetime television, I have had some creative output broadcast in a form other than this blog. UBC's own Legal Eye recently featured the inaugural "Joel Bakan Constitutional Law Poetry Contest." Two footnotes: yes, that is the same Joel Bakan responsible for the documentary The Corporation (he is a professor at the law school here) and second, the contest was markedly missing both a definitive winner and any sort of prize.

Nonetheless, a little ditty I wrote is featured alongside some other poetical works, which I will reproduce here. In all its iambic pentametry, I present to you, faithful reader, the first (as far as I can tell) constitutional love sonnet:

From John A. to Connie

Whereas, this humble man enacts desire,
To corporeally unite and sire
One dominion with thee. This preamble
Is but a missive, a lonely gamble
From one whose heart has oft been rescinded.
Yet with thine love it may be amended,
For a division of powers cannot
Befall an obsession so justly wrought.
Repeal thy dress, and lay with me, entrenched
In passion substantive and lust unquenched.
Against thy body politic, enshrine
We might, this challenged section sixty-nine.
Interpret without ambiguity
Love codified, to perpetuity.

For its form, I credit Spenser, for its crude content, John Donne, and its nerdiness - that's all me, baby. When these terms are thrown at you constantly in Legal Institutions class, you do the best you can with them. (And for those curious, section 69 of the Constitution is far less lascivious than I have portrayed: it simply mandates that the province of Quebec has a legislature. A steamy legislature no doubt!!)

As for my comment about a TV show in primetime, I'm hoping this is not so far off. My Team Awesome partner (a.k.a. "the Baron") brought to my attention a new addition to our law library, The Screenwriter's Legal Guide. I've skimmed through it, and will certainly purchase it. This is precisely what I need going into the summer as I finish off the screenplay. It would be a shame to send it out and lose ownership, so with this book and the culmination of my first year knowledge (limited though it may be) I will seek to protect it.

Alright, I can't lie. It is April Fool's after all. Section 69 of the Constitution doesn't deal with Quebec's legislature, but Ontario's! Boy I got you good!