re: LSU Law Baws — RIP Professor Maraist

I took him for Admiralty. He talked fast alright, but was a good teacher. We ended up being neighbors for years. Good guy.

Maraist, along with Litvinoff, Crawford, Bockrath, Mengis and Pugh were my favorite professors.

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In my 3 years there, Bowers is the only professor I had who made his class think abstractly to derive the correct argument.

If he had a warning sign/meme, it would start Memorization gunners HATE him

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I don't know when you were there, but when I had him for contracts, he just fricking rambled. And anyone who graduated with me can tell you I was anything but a memorization gunner. Or a gunner of any stripe whatsoever

Kalinka was awesome. (I say that doing well in her Tax 1 and not so hot in International Tax)

When I first graduated, her husband and I worked at the same place.

She'd always have him come check and make sure I was doing ok.

Her and Mr David would pay for students applications fees when they'd apply for admission to get their tax LLMs. That's next level in today's world.

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Baier was a narcissistic, liberal douchebag who thought the ground he walked on should be worshipped. Ended up getting the second highest grade in his Con Law 2 class, one of my proudest law school accomplishments.

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Baier once told our class he pulled over to the side of the road once to interact/pet some cows in the side of (I think) River Road. Says the cows saw him and started walking away so MF’er screams at them with his fist in the air “hamburgers.” I still yell “hamburgers” at cows all these years later.

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I wrote a paper in one of his seminars lambasting a SCOTUS opinion holding that school student organizations, particularly religious organizations, had to accept people who not only diametrically opposed their goals, but actively wanted to subvert the goals of the organization. Baier fricking loved it. Spent many an hour discussing it with me. Even described it glowingly to then Chancellor Weiss, who fricking hated it

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He loved my final discussing the legal holes in Kennedy’s reasoning in Obergefell, but doesn’t negate the other bullshite.

Still remember the 2 week period of him calling me an idiot for siding with the majority in Burns Baking v Bryan case.

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I hated damn near every minute at the place, they were mostly pricks the minute we got there until the day we left.

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Same here. With a few exceptions, yes.

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Katherine Spath got hate mail after she had a heart attack. She was a terrible bitch the whole damn time.

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Yep. She was the worst.

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Litvinoff

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Had him for Obligations and made the mistake of sitting in his direct line of sight on the first day of class. Needless to say, I was called upon frequently for the rest of the class, no matter where I sat.

Alright, discussions of other professors aside, I'm going to tell my all time favorite Maraist anecdote, because I want the story to outlive me:

There was a girl in our class that routinely would come in late, fall asleep, etc. When she would walk in, he would stop mid-sentence and watch her walk to her seat before continuing his thought. At some point, he decided this wasn't having the desired effect, so one day when she walked in late, he stopped mid-sentence and said, to the best of my recollection now many years later:

"There was once an old cajun farmer who was riding into town on a horse drawn wagon with his wife sitting next to him on the bench. While they were traveling, the horse saw something that caused it to rear up. The old man got out of his seat without saying a word, walked in front of the horse, looked it straight in the eye and said 'that's one'. The old man climbed back up into his seat, snapped the reins, and they continued on. A bit later, the horse reared up again. Old man got down, looked the horse in the eye and said 'that's two'. Got back up, continued along. Horse reared up a third time. Old man got down, pulled out his revolver and shot the horse in the head, dropping it dead where he stood.

As soon as the echo of the shot ended, his wife started screaming at him, asking what the hell was wrong with him, and what on earth they were going to do out in the middle of nowhere with no horse to pull the wagon. The old man climbed back into his seat, looked his wife in the eye and said 'that's one'".

Maraist paused for a second, looked her straight in the eye and said "young lady, that's one".

A little later in the semester, she fell asleep (again). Maraist walked up to her, nudged her awake, and said "young lady, that's two."

Unfortunately, the semester ended before we ever had the privilege of hearing Maraist get to three, but I will never in my life forget the look on that girl's face when, at the end of this meandering story, he looked her in the eye and said "that's one"

I scheduled a tax class once. Bought the book, showed up to the first day... and dropped the class while sitting in there. I could tell in the first five minutes that shite wasn't going to be for me

Yeah international tax was not one of my finer moments (tied for my lowest grade in law school).

My favorite Baier moment has to be when he took us to watch an argument before the La. supreme Court for his Advanced Appellate Advocacy seminar. After the arguments, he took us to Napoleon House and bought us all a round of pims cups.