So what we're going to be talking about
today is the American legal system. Now that's obviously quite a broad subject.
You'll be studying that for pretty much the next three years in a variety of
different classes. You're going to take 86 credits at a minimum on the American
legal system really so what am I going to tell you in 45 minutes? We're going to
focus here today on some general substantive knowledge about the types of
law that we have here in the United States and their sources -- the types of
law and their sources. I'm going to use the blackboard here for just a little
bit. So let's say our big picture question here is American legal system. Now the fact that I'm using a blackboard
is not a signal to you that you need to write anything down, it's a signal that I
am a visual learner. Some of you might be visual learners as well so I'm going to
write a few things down. But you can allow it to wash over you. You still have
a few more days of summer left before you're really in class. So let's talk
about the American legal system. You're probably aware that we have a federal
system. A federal system is a system wherein there is one overarching
government and -- in our case the United States government -- and state governments.
There's power divided between a central government and smaller governmental
units. So we have in our federal system the United States government and then
the governments of the, of the 50 states. In learning the law in law school you'll
be dealing with both of those types of law -- both the federal system and the
state system. So just to give you an illustration of how this works, it means
that anywhere that you are within the United States you are subject to more
than one system of laws. So you're in -- you're in Charlottesville, Virginia -- and
you notice I said a town and a state right? So when I say there are two
systems of government: federal and state, some of you who are from larger places --
larger cities like New York or LA -- might think, well what are we chopped liver? How
come I'm -- and you know -- how come the city is not in
your description of the system that we have? Cities are units of the state
government. So the city -- cities get their power from the state government. So
although you could -- you have very very substantial city governments like the
government of New York City, it gets its power through delegation from the states.
So we're talking here about the national government and then the state government.
So you're in Charlottesville, Virginia. In Charlottesville, Virginia you are in the
16th Judicial District of the state of Virginia. You're in the 16th Circuit of
the state of Virginia. And the state laws and the -- and the local laws that you're
subject to ultimately are subject to review by the Supreme Court of Virginia.
You are also in the Western District of Virginia within the federal system. The
Western District of Virginia feeds into the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which is one of the courts of appeals within the federal system. And then to
this -- to the US Supreme Court. Here you are subject to laws, from local
ordinances -- for example don't park your car in the grass.
If you're living in the city of Charlottesville that's an ordinance that
you're subject to -- you're subject to state laws and you're subject to federal
laws. So we have concurrent jurisdiction: two different systems of government
working at the same time and within each of those systems of government we have
different types of laws. So when you think of the law and you think of law
school probably the thing you think of the most is the United States
Constitution. That's probably the first thing that comes to mind and that's a
good place to start. The United States Constitution -- well whose birthday by the
way is the 17th of September, so happy almost birthday to the Constitution -- the
Constitution sets out the the system of the federal government and has a lot to
say about it. Basically dictates the relationship between the federal
government and the state governments. So the United States Constitution is the
source of a lot of the rest of all I'm going to be putting up here today.
Underneath the -- the United States Constitution we have
federal statutes: statutes that are -- that are passed by Congress under power that
is given to Congress in the -- in the Constitution. The Constitution tells
Congress what its powers are. We also have -- I'm going to stick this under here
in a little funny way -- we have regulations -- we have various forms of
regulation. In particular in the federal system we might think about federal
agencies, executive agencies like the EPA or the Food and Drug Administration.
Those agencies are part of the executive branch but they get their power through
delegation from Congress. Congress says to the agencies, you're empowered to do X
or Y and the agencies work under a particular statute or other enactment
that gives them their power -- that defines their power -- and they go along and
elaborate on whatever that subject matter is -- say the Clean Water Act, right?
The EPA then passes regulations that flesh out what the Clean Water Act means.
Then we have common law. I'm going to come back to common law in a little bit,
but common law is judge-made law. Law that's made by judges and courts. This is
the structure of our federal system and you have the exact same structure
replicated at the state level. So you have state constitutions and each
state's constitution defines the structure of the government for that
state, defines the powers of the legislature of that state and defines
many other things about that state, including what rights that state
recognizes as a matter of its own constitutional law apart from the law of
the United States Constitution. We then have statutes and regulations with the
same structure as before: state legislators
which then can delegate some of their power to executive agencies or bodies
that use that to implement regulations and we have common law. Yeah there are lots
of different things we can say about this -- and again you'll be talking about
this for the next three years of your life -- but let's -- let's highlight just a
few features. So one is to try to define which one -- define each one of these -- and
let's do it, kind of in terms of their sources. Ok so here I want to start with
the United States Constitution. Again, so the United States Constitution -- you
probably have some sense of how that was -- how that came to pass, right? So we had a --
the founders, who framed the Constitution that was ratified by the states and in
the Constitution itself -- defines what has to happen for there to be amendments to
the Constitution and so forth and so on. We then have statutes which are led -- have
a legislative feature to them, right? Statutes are passed by the legislature.
We have regulations which as a general matter, and not entirely -- legislatures can
delegate their power in lots of different ways in keeping
with whatever is permitted by the Constitution -- so they can do a lot of
different ways but often they're delegating through executive agencies.
And the important thing that I want to flag for you here is that the executive
through that process of delegation does have a role to play in defining what the
law is. We think of the executive as mostly enforcing the law, right? If we
think about the three branches of government, we think about the executive
as being the enforcer. But through congressional delegation executive
bodies can also play a role in defining what rules actually govern us. And then
we have the common law and the common law is the creature of the
judiciary. In some ways the common law can be the
hardest thing for people to wrap their minds around. So when I say common law I
mean that there's no statute. There's no written-down enactment by a legislature
or by an executive agency that is the law. The law is itself made by the courts.
So if you, you know -- knock on wood -- I hope this doesn't happen at an interview -- if you
come out of here and you get into a collision on turning onto Arlington
Boulevard you might get sued or you might sue somebody else for damages
arising from that car accident. And if you do that in Virginia courts you will
be bringing a claim of negligence or you will be having a claim of negligence
brought against you. I mean I don't wish either of these things on you but I
certainly hope you weren't negligent coming down the Arlington Boulevard. The
court in deciding that case is not going to be looking at any statute. It is going
to be deciding the case based on a priori cases decided by Virginia courts. The
common law is a creature of adjudication and it predates the founding. When at the
time of the Constitution was ratified all of the now states had their own
systems of common law -- of judge made law that they had developed in colonial
times -- and this is a type of system that was brought over from England. England
and the United States have what are called common law systems because they
have this feature of judge-made law in them. A lot of countries don't have this.
If you go into the continent, in Europe you'll find civil law. Those are systems
that are built on and have their roots in Roman systems actually -- where there's
a code that tries to define everything. Where there are positive enactments of
laws -- statutes essentially -- that define what constitutes negligence. For example
we have a system where some part of the law is made by judges in courts that
have no other sources other than their own decisions. So that's a kind of
interesting feature of our system. And you're going to be spending some
time with the common-law, particularly this semester, so we have the same setup
here the. The Constitution is the Constitution. We have the legislature, the
executive and the judiciary all being actually sources of law in and of
themselves. Now on top of that the judiciary obviously has a different role
to play because the judiciary also interprets these other sources of law --interprets the Constitution, interprets the statutes, interprets the
administrative regulations and decides cases involving all of these. So the
judiciary is -- it wants a source of its own law and the common law and as the
decider for the the other types of law that we have. So that gets us to a kind
of second question. So those -- those are the sources of the law -- and you can see
all three branches of government are represented there -- so like,
but the -- the question about the judiciary gets us to another question which is,
well who can decide what type of question? And the fancy word for that is
jurisdiction. Who has jurisdiction over certain types of questions. Now I have a
colleague: former dean of the law school. When I told him that I was going to be
giving a talk like this I said -- he said "the thing that they were -- the only thing
that you really need to tell them is state courts decide state and federal
cases and federal courts decide state and federal cases."
Yeah, so you know I could I guess just come and say that and drop the mic and
leave and just leave you guys to ponder on that for the next 44 and a half
minutes. I'll try to give it more flesh than that but it is actually something
that's a quite complicated part of our system. If you look at this system there
are only two really easy answers here that would not provide any kinds of
headaches for you guys and that is you could say federal courts decide federal
questions and state courts decide state questions, right? Complete separation. Or
you could say everybody decides everything, have at it.
We don't go with either one of those easy answers -- we have something that's in
between where federal courts can under certain circumstances decide questions
of state law and state courts can under many circumstances decide questions of
federal law. So those -- those issues of when is that the case -- who can decide
what those are? Questions of jurisdiction -- and in certain classes, particularly
federal courts, conflict of laws -- a variety of different cases that your
classes -- that you'll get to in your second and third year -- you'll be focused
on that question of who can decide what. So I'll just flag it for you now. State
courts decide state and federal cases, federal courts decide state and federal
cases and when they can decide it is a complicated thing which you'll learn
more about. So another thing that this system brings up is what's -- what's the
the pecking order among these different types of law, which one trumps another
one? So otherwise you know you could -- you could say, if you think of it as a game
of cards, you and people are laying down different types of cards. You don't know
which one trumps the others. You don't know which one is -- is the supreme law. So
we have to have something that settles that because you can -- given particularly
that these sources of law are coming from different types of bodies -- you can
have conflicts between that. So when there's a conflict what type of
law wins out? Now did anyone bring their pocket Constitution today? If you did you
don't want to admit it right? I brought one, it's okay. All right,
the Constitution of the United States Article 6, Section 2: "This constitution
and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and
all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States
shall be the supreme law of the land and the judges in every state shall be bound
thereby and anything in the Constitution" -- I'm sorry -- "the judges in every state
shall be bound there by anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the
contrary notwithstanding." So the framers thought about this question and they
said the federal law -- the law of this constitution and laws may, pursuant to it.
in the federal system is going to be the supreme law of the land. It will carry
the day. "Anything in the state laws" notwithstanding. So that means that this
is -- this is the most important source -- this is the -- this is the definitive
source of law in our system. Anything below this that conflicts with the
United States Constitution will be invalidated. And you recognize that
courts have the ability to do that when they do and what court can do that, right?
Those are questions -- those are questions we're putting to the side. But courts are
going to enforce the Constitution as against all these other sources of law.
Just -- side note -- wasn't totally obvious that courts would be the ones to perform
that function. We take it for granted that courts engage in what we -- what we
call judicial review -- to review the constitutionality of enactment -- some
passed the the federal and state level. You'll see in constitutional law that's
not actually spelled out in the Constitution. One of the most important
early things that the Supreme Court did was to confirm that that was their role.
They're the ones who engage in this -- in this process that we call judicial
review. But let's -- let's -- we know now that the Constitution's at the top but what
does that mean for everything else? I'm actually going to start at the bottom
and work the way back up to the Constitution. So common laws -- we said this
judge-made law and let's imagine that we're in a state -- we're in a -- we're in a
state -- we're in Virginia. We're talking about
the law that governs a collision on Arlington Boulevard. Let's say it's a
matter of state common law. It's just judge-made law. If the General Assembly
of Virginia comes along and passes a statute that relates to that then that
statute is going to displace the common law. It will override the common law and
if there's a regulation that's passed through -- through legislative delegation
that too will displace the common law. So we've got a common law which can be
overwritten by statutes and regulations. And obviously within the state system
all types of law have to conform to the state constitution. If they don't they'll
be struck down under -- under the state's constitutional system of judicial review.
So you've got that. Now you come up here to federal common law. Federal common law
and how much of it there is -- is this kind of interesting question. And there's a
history there. What you're going to learn in civpro. And for my tort students
you're going to get tired of me saying have you gotten to Erie yet? Have you
gotten here yet in Civil Procedure? And you're saying no no no and then one day
you'll say yes, but I'll be able to tell because you'll have this kind of
gobsmacked look on your face after you've come from Civil Procedure. And so
how much federal common law there is has been a question though that was dealt
with by the Supreme Court in the early 20th century but there is certainly
still some federal common law. Admiralty is one example. So if instead of the
collision happening on Arlington Boulevard it happens on seas that are
within the jurisdiction of the United States -- bodies of water within the
jurisdiction of the United States -- that could be a federal common law Admiralty
case -- which don't get me started on boat tours. I love boat tours. I never
want to get on a boat but because boats are -- accidents that happen on boats --
but boat torts are very interesting and that's -- that's kind of federal common law.
That's where we are there then you have the same thing happening, right? The
statutes or regulations can displace the common law and of course everything has
to be consistent with the United States Constitution.
So part of what courts are doing is making sure that the law that they're
dealing with is consistent with each other and getting rid of whatever it is
that doesn't fit that's overcome by -- that's supplanted by the superior form
of law. The more -- the -- the more authoritative form of law. Last thing
that I want to point out. We talked about three things. We're talking about the
sources of the law, of the jurisdiction and the question of supremacy or which
type of law wins. The last thing I want to talk about is where you in the next
year are going to see these different types of law because you're going to
take a set of required classes that all can be plugged into this system. So let's
talk just a little bit about what it is you're going to see and where. So I don't
want to call on the people who -- who are in the front row because they were good
enough to sit in the front row -- so I'm gonna go back here a little bit. Hi
what's your name? Hi Aidan. Nice to meet you.
Can you tell me the name of a class that you'll be taking either this semester or
a required class for next semester? Civil Procedure. Excellent so you'll be taking
Civil Procedure. You started with the hardest one. So Civil Procedure is a
little bit difficult to put on this map just because it's -- it's um -- it's got a
kind of funny aspect to it. It's -- it's not as straightforward to put on this map as
others are. So let me explain a little bit about Civil Procedure. Civil
Procedure are the rules that govern federal cases -- cases that are filed in
the federal system. What -- what you get in Civil Procedure -- it's federal Civil
Procedure. You could take another class on Virginia Civil Procedure. When you
take the bar in New York or California or Texas or wherever you'll need to
learn their state rules of civil procedure. But Civil Procedure is the
rules that govern the the filing and life of a case -- and the next speaker that
you're going to hear from, Professor Ben Spencer is going to walk you through the
life of a case, he's a Civil Procedure expert -- the reason that Civil Procedure
is a little different is it's -- it's source. So Civil Procedure -- in terms of where it
belongs on this -- belongs up here in this area. So I'm going to write it over here. Congress passed something called the
Rules Enabling Act. So that's -- that's the statute that then delegated the power to
determine the Rules of Civil Procedure. Rather than delegating to an executive
agency they delegated to the courts, to the -- to the Supreme Court -- to say you have
the power to determine the rules of federal Civil Procedure. And the court
actually relies on a rules advisory board that's made of a variety of
different experts: practitioners, professors -- including our own professor
Spencer -- to make recommendations to the Court. The Court then makes
recommendations to Congress. Really, the Court practice committee has an
enormous amount of power of the rules. Congress is highly likely to approve
whatever it is that the court proposes. So Civil Procedure lives up here in this
world within the federal system. It's a -- it's a set of rules that's made under
delegation from Congress. Delegation to the Supreme Court that makes some amount
of sense. All right someone named another class that you're getting ready to take:
torts. Good choice. So torts -- torts is kind of the most straightforward of
these. Torts lives down here. Torts is a matter of state law and it's largely a
creature of state common law. We will see some statutes when we're talking about
torts and we'll see a little bit -- we'll get a little glimpse of the United
States Supreme Court because there are some aspects of state tort
systems that the Supreme Court has decided had constitutional problems and
they needed to get in there and decide them. So again none of these -- none of these
types of law lives in a vacuum. They all relate to each other. And courts are
figuring out how they all relate to each other. But by and large what you learn in
torts is state common law. Now that raises a question which I just want to
flag for you all so you can all be okay with it.
Your professors might mention it to you particularly in torts or contracts -- but
if, you know -- if torts is a creature of state law and we have 50 different
states what is it that you're learning when you learn torts? Here are we going
to focus on Virginia law. Are you going to be responsible for the state law of
50 different states? No. What we learn is the general principles that most states
share in terms of torts and there's a lot of correspondence across the states
on this. Now don't get complacent about it. When you go out and you are barred in
a particular jurisdiction you're going to need to know the specifics of that
state's law but that's not our job in first semester torts. Our job in first
semester torts is to learn the basic concepts that dominate torts across the
50 states and if you need to know the particulars of a particular place you're
going to learn the research tools that you need to do that. There are a lot of --
there are actually 50 state surveys on tort law where you can quite easily look at
the variations among states but we're going to be talking about kind of the
big picture and the -- the common themes. What's another class? Contracts. So
contracts I'm going to put -- contracts here, kind of straddling the common law
and then the next one up -- the kind of statutes and regulations world. That's
because contracts like torts is a matter of state common law -- started as a matter
of state common law. People would have a contractual dispute, they would come into
a court, one of them would allege breach of contract, the court would decide that
question and by and large a lot of contract still works that way. But in
contracts there was something developed called the Uniform Commercial Code which
is the system of rules -- it's a code right -- it's a code governing contracts
related to goods. So now we have and end to that story. The -- the various states
have adopted the UCC as law in the end in the states to govern
contracts related to goods in the states. So because the UCC has been picked up by
so many states I think it's important to recognize that contracts as you will
learn it has both a common-law feature and a a code-based -- a legislative feature.
You're going to be starting with common law but you're also going to be exposed
to the UCC. Give me another one. Criminal law. So you know, the thing about criminal
law first of all -- is just the first thing you know is -- it's not Law and Order. I'm
sorry to say you do not know criminal law from having watch Law and Order and
it may feel at the beginning a little bit less exciting than Law and Order. I think that's probably safe to say. And part of what you're getting out of
criminal law -- I think this is important to recognize -- part of what you're getting
out of criminal law is the transition between common law and codes. So when
what you learn in first semester criminal law is going to be state
criminal law. And you're going to learn that states started out with the common
law approach to criminal law and they have uniformly moved to statutes. And
primarily you'll be focused on the model Penal Code which has not been adopted
outright in a bunch of states the way that the UCC has but informs the state
enactments of all the different states. And all states have criminal law that's
a product of statute. Okay so part of what you're actually learning about in
criminal law is not the substance of the criminal law itself it's the difference
between common law and codes. And you're thinking of
as a matter in the criminal system of giving people notice of what's criminal
and what isn't -- maybe codes are the better way to go
when that's what's at stake because writing down the law gives people notice
of what law they have to conform to. But then that raises all sorts of questions
of interpretation -- trying to anticipate all of the different things that people
could do and what their status is under the criminal law. That's something that
writing down the code makes you have to do and you have to be good at drafting
and you have to think about how the words are going to be interpreted. So
part of what you're doing in criminal law is thinking about the difference
between common law and a code-based system. And if you want to do more
criminal law we have classes -- they're still not Law & Order but they might
resemble that a little bit more -- that are about kind of the procedure of criminal
law. About criminal investigation and criminal adjudications. So there are
additional classes you can take. They get you even further into the criminal
system in the spring of your 1l year and beyond. All right
another class that you're going to take this -- this is where you're going to take
this semester. Does anyone look far enough ahead to think what you're going
to be taking next semester? Property, ok. Great.
So property is another one of these classes -- property is a state common law
system. Again you're going to see some statutes and -- property -- you're going to
get a little involvement from the Supreme Court when it comes to takings
but by and large you're going to be operating in the state common law world.
And what's the last one you're going to take: constitutional law, which obviously
lives up here. So that's what you're going to be taking and kind of where it
fits, right. So I think it's nice they have a map to know this is where I am in
the American legal system, this is the type of stuff I should expect to see in
torts: the courts are making this up as they go along based on their prior cases.
They're using precedent to determine this in in criminal law. I've seen what
it looks like to have a common law determination of what's criminal, now I'm
engaging with the model Penal Code and thinking about how to draft a statute to
address this same issue. All right, so you can have a sense that
this is -- this is why I'm doing this for I am -- and I've already
forgotten your name -- that I called on -- Aiden, that's what I thought, but I'm never
sure. So, Aiden congrats on doing the first
cold-call of your guys law school tenure. Very good, any questions? Yeah, yeah so I'm
going to go back to this Primacy Clause, right, Constitution, in the law of United
States shall be the supreme law of the land and the judges in every state shall
be bound there by anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the
contrary notwithstanding. So this is sitting on top of this and there's a lot
of -- there's a lot of jurisprudence about that because the -- the issue with that
question is to determine whether there actually is a conflict between the state
system and the federal system and sometimes the word federalism gets used
not just to describe that we have a federal system but to kind of suggest, as
a value, that part of what federalism means is giving states the authority to
go off and do their own thing and that it's important for the federal system
not to override the states when that's not necessary. So in keeping with those
values of federalism courts that look at these types of issues are going to be
looking very carefully so the the legal language for the type of question this
is -- if it's a question of preemption -- does the federal law preempt
whatever the state law issue is -- and there are different types of preemption -- but
you know one of them is conflict preemption and that kind of encapsulates
what -- you know more broadly speaking what it is that the courts are trying to do
which is to figure out: is there a direct conflict here and if so
the federal law overrides. But if there isn't that they need to live in -- in
peaceful coexistence right. So that's part of what the courts are trying to do:
figure out whether there actually is a conflict that would invoke the Supremacy
Clause or not. So let me give you a little talk on a different subject.
Got a couple minutes here. So we've already had our first cold-call -- well
done. And I I think some of you could be
approaching the next few days in the next year with some amount of anxiety
and some of you aren't and all of that is okay. So you're going to get a lot of
advice in the next few days and I think one thing about that advice -- if there's
one piece of advice I could -- I could give it would be know yourself and think
about which parts of this advice really speak to you and which ones you can
leave behind because some of you guys are going to get pep talks of: you can do
it, you can do it and your -- and what you actually need is something more like: you
know, don't blow this off. Or some of you are going to get: don't blow this off and
what you need is: you're taking this too seriously -- you need to give yourself a
break, right? And only you can kind of know where you are. I think probably most
of you are in this space where if I say you can do it, that's them -- that's the
message you need to hear. So I'm going to spend a little bit of time on that
message -- just a little bit so, um -- I am a graduate of this law school. I literally
sat where you're sitting when I started law school and I think there's something
that I wish that I had known which is this is what you're about to embark on.
It is an engagement in learning a new language and I want you to think back to
other times that you've learned a new language including one you can't
remember: when you actually learn to speak for the first time -- where you
didn't know what you were doing. And you couldn't read guide books to tell you
how to do it and what you did was babble and play and figure it out by going
along and I think a lot of you who've had foreign language experience know
that getting in there and doing it is a much better way of learning than trying
to learn kind of the theory of it or reading textbooks that tell you how. To
learn a foreign language you got to go in there and do it. It's the type of
fluency and if the -- if the language -- if the language analogies don't work for
you I also think it has analogies in on the physical side of things where when
you learn to walk, when you learn to ride a bike, when you learn to play a sport
you got in there and did it and you didn't beat yourself up that you didn't
already know how to do it because the whole point is you're learning how to do
it. If you went to a personal trainer and they asked you to do something, you said
"I'm done, I didn't even break a sweat," you wouldn't then say good workout. You'd
think I need something more challenging, right? I need to sweat at this. The whole
point of being here is to sweat -- is to -- is to break new ground, is to work hard in
the development of new skills that can be very hard because you're all coming
from places where you've accomplished very much and you have a certain level
of expertise and things that you've done before -- that de-skilling process of I'm
not sure that I know how to do this -- I'm worried that I won't look good when I do
this -- I'm worried that I won't look like I already have it figured out -- guess what,
you're not supposed to have already had it figured out. It would be a waste of
your time and money if you already knew everything there was to know about the
law and you came here and said "Yep, know it already." So what I'm asking for you
guys is to give yourself a break in this learning process and recognize it for
what it is. It's the same as going to the personal trainer, going to the gym and
breaking a sweat. It's the same as getting in there and messing around when
you're learning a new language. Sometimes you just have to learn by doing it and I
think particularly in this first semester when there's a lot of anxiety
about -- "I don't know what I'm doing" -- it can kind of shut down that experimental side
of you. You feel like "I want to do it the most efficiently.
I want to already be there. I want to know what it is." It's a process and
partly it's a process that you -- that you learn by not doing it the most
efficiently. By figuring out for yourself how it is you want to read your
assignments and how it is you want to prepare for exams. You just got to get in
there and do it and I think it can also be really helpful if -- if you talk to each
other about that -- if you're not quiet about the process you're going through --
if you're just open about this is where I am in my process -- because you guys can
be a great support to each other. Last thing I want to say: a few years ago we
were out with my husband and kids. We got together with some friends at a pool and
they have little kids, we have little kids -- and they said, "look our son learned
to swim this summer" and he was in the pool and he was kind of suspended in mid
water, you know, sort of paddling, but he was just like in the water right like in
the water. I thought well you know he's not sinking but he's not really swimming
either because if he keeps doing this he's gonna drown, right? He couldn't get
his head up enough to breathe. And I thought you know there's a metaphor in
there if you can feel like you're going through the motions and you can feel
like I'm not sinking but if you're not giving yourself enough space to be able
to breathe you're still going to wind up at the bottom of the pool so you got to
take care of yourself during this. You've got to take breaths, you got to be able
to come up for air. if you think I've figured it out but your system does not
allow you to breathe then you've still got some more figuring out to do because
it's got to be sustainable. You're going into a career that can put a lot of
demands on you and it's up to you to figure out how to do that in a way that
still gives you air, that still gives you what you need in life. Because I think
all of you can come out of here, you know doing the strokes and breathing at the
same time and if you need help with that talk to each other and talk to us about
that. Very best of luck. Glad that you're here and I'll see you again soon.
