Law Commons^™

Teaching Cyberlaw, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

Over the past dozen years, Cyberlaw courses have become a staple of the law school curriculum. This Essay explores methodological and pedagogical issues raised by these courses.

The Essay considers the organization of a Cyberlaw curriculum in Part I, some challenges posed by Cyberlaw courses in Part II, some tools to teach Cyberlaw courses in Part III, evaluation methods in Part IV, and teaching materials in Part V.

Teaching Rights Of Publicity: Blending Copyright And Trademark, Common Law And Statutes, And Domestic And Foreign Law, David Welkowitz, Tyler Ochoa

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this Article is to explain why we believe that rights of publicity should be taught as a stand-alone course, why we believe that a course in comparative rights of publicity is worthwhile as a stand-alone course, and to explain some of the challenges and opportunities that the course presents. Ultimately, we hope to encourage and persuade more of our colleagues at other schools to begin to offer rights of publicity as a separate course.

Educating Law Students For Leadership And Responsibilities, Donald J. Polden

Faculty Publications

This essay articulates the case for educating law students for leadership roles and responsibilities they will assume throughout their careers. While leadership education is relatively commonplace in American business schools, it is not a familiar part of the law school curriculum at American law schools. This essay describes this new educational initiative and the fundamental reasons for this approach to preparing law students for the roles and responsibilities they will assume in their communities and in the legal profession.

In particular, this essay discusses the components and purposes of the program and defines what is meant by education for leadership …

Teaching Race/Teaching Whiteness: Transforming Colorblindness To Color Insight, Margalynne J. Armstrong, Stephanie Wildman

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that whiteness operates as the normative foundation of most discussions of race. Legal educators often overlook the role of whiteness in the law school setting and in law more generally. Identifying and understanding whiteness should be an essential component of legal education. This Article considers reasons why legal education rarely addresses this normative role played by whiteness. An incomplete understanding of the nature of white privilege and the modern move toward "colorblindness" conceal the raced nature of much law. To draw the harmful operation of colorblindness into relief, this Article proposes adopting "color insight, " which would …

Increasing Law Students' Effectiveness When Representing Traumatized Clients: A Case Study Of The Katherine & George Alexander Community Law Center, Lynette Parker

Faculty Publications

This article contributes to the discussion of representation of traumatized clients through a detailed case study of the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center (KGACLC). First, it will discuss the issues that arise when students represent traumatized clients. This section will focus on the goals for training effective representation, the importance of such training, and the issues of duty of care and professional responsibility. Second, it will review the mechanics of training and mentoring law students who work with traumatized clients. This section will include a brief introduction to KGACLC and outline KGACLC's case acceptance policy, its early attempts …

Non-Analytical Thinking In Law Practice: Blinking In The Forest, Kandis Scott

Faculty Publications

Non-analytical thinking is indispensable to good legal representation .Despite its importance in law practice, it is devalued and neglected in the conventional law school curriculum. Even in clinical legal education, where the potential to teach students to use this mode of thinking is most obvious, the elevation of theory and analysis has stifled the impulse of clinical professors to teach students to "blink." One way law schools can counteract this trend, and thereby better train law students for practice, is to enhance clinical teachers' nonanalytical skills through more practice opportunities.

Integrating Contract Drafting Skills And Doctrine, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

In February 2006, I participated in the Symposium, Teaching Writing and Teaching Doctrine: A Symbiotic Relationship?, at Brooklyn Law School. I prepared some personal and unscientific observations about the challenges of concurrently teaching legal doctrine and contract drafting. Obviously, there is a rich literature on these topics that I did not try to address; instead, my goal was simply to acknowledge my first-hand experiences wrestling with these challenges and discuss some specific solutions I have tried. This brief Essay recaps my presentation.

Can Legal Writing Programs Benefit From Evaluating Student Writing Using Single-Submission, Semester-Ending, Standardized, Performance-Type Assignments?, John Schunk

Faculty Publications

Many legal writing programs evaluate a student's performance based on a series of assignments that students write and then rewrite after receiving comments from their legal writing teacher. Over the last decade, some have proposed altering this model by introducing the Multistate Performance Test into the legal writing curriculum or by using traditional objective examinations in first-year legal writing courses.

Based on a three-year experience at Santa Clara University School of Law, this essay suggests that using these principles, those of performance testing and traditional examinations, in a slightly modified form can reap significant benefits for legal writing programs. In …

A Tribute To Professor Herman M. Levy, Margaret M. Russell

Faculty Publications

On April 5, 2004, the Santa Clara University School of Law lost a beloved and exceptional professor, mentor, colleague, and friend. Professor Herman M. Levy passed away in Oroville, California, the day before his seventy-fifth birthday. Herman had taken a quick trip to Oroville to conduct a labor arbitration; he had served for many years as an arbitrator throughout California and other western states. Every year, I invited him to visit my first-year civil procedure class to talk about arbitration as a form of dispute resolution; he always delighted the class with his combination of wry humor and practical wisdom. …

Employment Discrimination Law, Cynthia Mertens

Faculty Publications

Employment Discrimination Law must be on the desk of every practitioner in this field and in all law libraries. The volume is also an excellent teaching tool. There is no question that the authors' two primary objectives have been met; the book is of "significant and equal value to practitioner and student and of substantial value to the sophisticated non-lawyer," and is "balanced and non-partisan.