Digital Commons Network^™

Passionate Advocate, Laura Mcnally-Levine

Faculty Publications

Tribute to Judy Lipton

Tribute To Judy Lipton, Ayesha B. Hardaway

Faculty Publications

Tribute to Judy Lipton

Incorporating Social Justice Into The Law School Curriculum With A Hybrid Doctrinal/Writing Course, Rosa Castello

Faculty Publications

Educating future lawyers is about more than just teaching them substantive law. We are preparing professionals who will go out into our world and shape and affect it in deep and impacting ways. They will make law, enforce law, determine policy, defend people, advocate, and influence lives and businesses. Therefore, any thorough law school education should teach social justice and encourage students to become more engaged in activism.

One way to incorporate social justice into the law school curriculum is to offer specific courses focused on social justice. However, administrators may be concerned about demand for such classes or ability …

Using Principles From Cognitive Behavioral Therapy To Reduce Nervousness In Oral Argument Or Moot Court, Larry Cunningham

Faculty Publications

Sarah, a new attorney at a public defender’s office, is assigned to the appeals bureau. Ordinarily, Sarah spends her days researching and writing briefs, talking with clients, and brainstorming legal issues with colleagues. Today, however, she opened the mail to find a notice from the court setting a date for her first oral argument. She suffers the first of several anxiety attacks: rapid heart rate, racing thoughts, shortness of breath, sweaty palms, nausea, and feelings of panic and tension. As she reads the form letter, her hands tremble. This is the day she has dreaded. She loves to write and …

Intergrating Skills And Collaborating Across Law Schools: An Example From Immigration Law, Anna R. Welch

Faculty Publications

This Essay discusses the design and implementation of introductory Immigration Law courses taught at two different law schools, Western State College of Law in Orange County, California and the University of Maine Law School in Portland, Maine. Although the courses took place on opposite coasts and did not engage in a formal partnership that was visible to students, the authors deliberately planned the courses in close collaboration with one another behind the scenes. In doing so, the courses shared the explicit goal of increasing students’ exposure to practical lawyering skills while reinforcing students’ understanding of the substantive immigration laws. This …

The Wire As A Gap-Filling Class On Criminal Law And Procedure, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From "War On Poverty" To Pro Bono: Access To Justice Remains Elusive For Too Many, Including Our Veterans, Patricia E. Roberts

Faculty Publications

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty. The Legal Services Program of 1965, along with the Legal Services Corporation formed in 1974, considerably increased civil legal aid to America’s poor. Yet today, there is only one legal aid attorney for every 6,415 people living in poverty. Veterans, comprising 4.6%of those living in poverty, often suffer additional obstacles and extensive legal needs, including assistance in obtaining benefits to which they are entitled. While encouraging additional pro bono service among attorneys incrementally increases the availability of legal services to the poor, law school clinics across the country …

The First Day Of Criminal Law: Forgetting Everything You Thought You Already Knew, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Whether from the media or the seemingly endless rotation of Law and Order episodes, many students enter law school with a great deal of knowledge about important concepts that dominate Criminal Law, including murder, manslaughter, conspiracy, self-defense, or insanity. This familiarity with criminal law presents a dual challenge for students and professors alike. First, as future lawyers, they must force themselves to think critically about these familiar topics, and despite their basic knowledge of the criminal justice system, students quickly learn that there is much more to criminal law than meets the eye. Second, part of this critical analysis requires …

The Excitement Of Interdictory Ideas: A Response To Professor Anders Walker, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The very first time that I taught criminal law, I would occasionally tell my six-year-old son, Thomas, about selected cases and situations that I had come across. Thomas enjoyed these discussions—more than I would have guessed: he was captivated by the horror of Dudley & Stephens, he was uncomfortably intrigued by shaming punishments, he was appropriately outraged at all manner of outcomes that seemed to him too harsh or too lenient. But most of all, he wanted to test his own burgeoning intuitions about right and wrong, good and evil, the permitted and the forbidden, against my "criminal law stories." …

Reflections On Law Schools And The Idea Of The University, Thomas E. Baker

Faculty Publications

Thomas Baker is one of the founding faculty members of the Florida International University College of Law and this article is based on a speech delivered in October of 2002 during the university's Annual Faculty Convocation. It details the composition of both the entering classes and the law faculty and discusses the law school's mission to provide opportunities for minorities to attain representation in the legal profession that is proportionate to their representation in the population. It explores the role of law schools in higher education and notes the FIU College of Law's efforts to incorporate important developments in the …

Culture Clash: Teaching Cultural Defenses In The Criminal Law Classroom, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

In the law school classroom, the Socratic method of legal analysis removes a dispute at issue in a given case from its sociocultural context and takes the cultural backgrounds of the parties into account only when they serve the legal argument. The language of the law commands law students to siphon off the emotional and cultural content because of the enduring belief that the law is neutral and impartial. Accordingly, cultural conflicts are deemed irrelevant to legal analysis because laws are unbiased and culture-blind. This detached outlook has been termed perpectivelessness to denote a neutral, odorless, colorless non-perspective.

This essay …

A Statutory Approach To Criminal Law, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

Article suggests that learning about criminal statutes should be incorporated into teaching criminal law.

Preparing The New Law Graduate To Practice Law: A View From The Trenches, Rodney J. Uphoff, James J. Clark, Edward C. Monahan

Faculty Publications

Most legal educators reject the premise that the primary mission of the law school is to train law students to practice law. Rather, most law professors claim that their primary function is to teach students to think like lawyers. To many commentators, however, the academic community's antipractice attitude has spawned an unhealthy dichotomy between theory and practice, a division within the academic community, and a chasm between law schools and the practicing bar. Moreover, this dissonance or gap between law school and practice significantly contributes to the fact that most law graduates are substantially unprepared to function as lawyers when …

The Criminal Defense Lawyer As Effective Negotiator: A Systemic Approach, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

In the first issue of the Clinical Law Review, Peter Hoffman challenged clinical legal educators to produce clinical scholarship that is “practical in its orientation and design” and written so as to enhance the ability of lawyers to represent their clients and to help law students prepare for law practice. This article takes up Hoffman's challenge in the context of examining the skill of negotiating or plea bargaining from the perspective of the criminal defense lawyer. Before discussing the methods, approach or techniques that lawyers can use to enhance their ability to bargain effectively, it is critical to understand what …