Law Commons^™

Mercer Law School’S Legacy Of Service To The Profession, Franklin T. Gaddy, Siena Berrios Gaddy, Thomas Alec Chappell, E. Tate Crymes

Mercer Law Review

Hon. William Augustus Bootle, a 1925 graduate of Mercer Law School and 1924 graduate of Mercer University, penned of his alma mater, “[the] school was conceived in professionalism and dedicated to excellence.” Similarly, “Altruism, not the promotion of selfish aims, has been the inspiration of the [Georgia Bar] Association throughout its entire history.” As noted by Judge Bootle, Mercer Law School’s legacy of service to the profession began long before the establishment of the State Bar of Georgia as we know it today.

Today, Mercer Law School remains dedicated to serving the legal profession. This commitment to serve and devote …

Experiential And Public Service Learning At Mercer Law School At The 150th Anniversary And Beyond, Sarah Gerwig

Mercer Law Review

In this, the 150th year since Mercer University opened the doors of its fledgling law school, it is good to reflect. We reflect on who we are, where we came from, where we want to be in 2173, if law school and the law and humankind still exist 150 years from now.

Law school faculty and administration often describe our students’ ethic of public service; 1Ls (as we call them with affection) often arrive eager for opportunities to help others—and help they do. Almost every student-led organization spearheads generous annual volunteer projects, including coordinating backpack donation drives, providing holiday presents …

Critical Race Theory (Crt) In The Legal Academy: Derrick Bell’S Seminal Law Review Articles And Critical Race Theorists Scholarship; Crt Opponents Conflicting Views And Potential Consequences Of Critics’ Cancellation Strategy, Cynthia Elaine Tompkins

Mercer Law Review

This Article discusses Critical Race Theory (CRT), a legal study developed by law professors for law school education. Many, if not most, critical race theorists credit Derrick Bell as the law professor who founded and inspired CRT, and even after he died in 2011, his extensive volume of scholarship remains influential, especially among scholars of critical race and law topics. This Article examines Derrick Bell’s earliest law review articles’ critiques of civil rights laws, his Interest Convergence theory, and his assessment that racism is systemic and permanent in the United States of America.

CRT critics broadly categorize African American history, …

The Path To Coleman Hill: Mercer Law School's 150-Year Journey, Neil Skene

Mercer Law Review

It was a time for entrepreneurs, and Walter B. Hill quickly proved to be one after he finished his studies at the University of Georgia Law School and joined his father’s law practice in Macon, Georgia. Before his first year in Macon ended, he joined Superior Court Judge Carlton B. Cole and Macon’s leading lawyer, Clifford Anderson, to launch a new law school at Mercer, the second in the state. They were the professors. They started with sixteen students.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’:” A Dedication To The Past, Present, And Future Of Mercer Law Review, Cathy Cox

Mercer Law Review

Longtime readers of Mercer Law Review’s Annual Survey of Georgia Law likely know that Mercer Law School is steeped in history. It is the first American Bar Association-accredited law school in the state of Georgia, having earned that distinction in 1925—more than fifty years after the law school was actually founded in 1873. In the same vein, the Mercer Law Review was founded in 1949 and remains the oldest continuously-published law journal in Georgia.

When I became a student at Mercer Law School, I knew little about Mercer Law’s history or heritage, or for that matter, about lawyers or law …

Square Pegs And Round Holes: Differentiated Instruction And The Law Classroom, Karen J. Sneddon

Articles

As the academic semester begins, law students enter the classroom with sharpened pencils and charged laptops. Law professors enter the classroom with prepared notes and tabbed casebooks. But how will law professors ensure that the learning of each individual student is supported? Students do not take one path to law school. From English majors to engineering majors, students enter law school immediately upon graduating from college or years after graduation with various professional experiences. Despite criticism that legal education is resistant to change and over-relies on the Socratic Method, law school educators know that learning is not a one-size-fits-all experience. …

A Virtue Ethics Approach To Professional Identity: Lessons For The First Year And Beyond, Patrick Emery Longan, Daisy Hurst Floyd, Timothy Floyd

Articles

We have been teaching, writing, and speaking about professional identity formation for many years. Over that period, we have arrived by various routes at a virtue ethics approach to professional identity formation. In this article, we will share our approach and include lessons for the first year of law school and beyond.

Our commitment to a virtue ethics approach did not emerge overnight. It evolved over the years and comes from our varied experiences. Pat Longan's path emerged from his experience as a teacher and scholar of professional responsibility who was asked in 2002 to develop a stand-alone course on …

To Outgrow A Mockingbird: Confronting Our History—As Well As Our Fictions—About Indigent Defense In The Deep South, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

To Kill a Mockingbird occupies a beloved space in law school classrooms and curricula, especially in its portrayal of Atticus Finch. Frequently held up as the model or “hero-lawyer,” Atticus’s character is powerful in fiction, but problematic in practice. His work is lauded, rather than scrutinized, despite his questionable ability to represent his client in life-or-death circumstances—specifically, a racially charged sexual assault case in the Deep South. Through considering examples of historical lawyers and texts which explore similar themes without the lens of fiction, those engaged in legal education and legal practice can and should look to others to study …

When Your Plate Is Already Full: Efficient And Meaningful Outcomes Assessment For Busy Law Schools, Melissa N. Henke

Mercer Law Review

The American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards involving outcome-based assessment are a game changer for legal education. The standards reaffirm the importance of providing students with formative feedback throughout their course of study to assess and improve student learning. The standards also require law schools to evaluate their effectiveness, and to do so from the perspective of student performance within the institution’s program of study. The relevant question is no longer what are law schools teaching their students, but instead, what are students learning from law schools in terms of the knowledge, skills, and values that are essential for those …

Teaching With Feminist Judgments: A Global Conversation, Pamela A. Wilkins

Articles

The very idea of re-imagining and rewriting judicial opinions from a feminist perspective arises from the sense that the original judicial opinions did not "do justice" in either process or outcome. Nearly a dozen feminist judgments projects around the world have addressed this sense of injustice by demonstrating how a judgment's reasoning or result (or both) would have been different if the decision makers had applied feminist perspectives, theories,and methods. Using the resulting re-imagined feminist judgments in the classroom can help students in a myriad of ways, but especially in developing their own roles in addressing what they perceive to …

What American Legal Education Can Learn From The 'Harry Potter' Series, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

Both legal education and a Hogwarts magical education involve a new way of seeing the world—an immersive and intense process requiring, in many ways, a transformation. Students need a new wardrobe for both law school and wizarding school—and an awful lot of puzzling and expensive textbooks. Both Hogwarts and law school have been accused of operating entirely apart from reality. One of these criticisms may be valid. ...

This lighthearted comparison to the Harry Potter stories can perhaps join other voices to help make a serious and important case for practical legal education. There are few principled reasons for not …

Law School In A Different Voice: Legal Education As A Work Of Mercy, Pamela A. Wilkins

Articles

What might it mean for a law school to share this Mercy charism? More broadly, what would it mean for a law school to share the spiritual DNA of a female order, seeing the world from historically female perspectives and motivated by historically female concerns? More broadly still, in this #metoo era, in which women make up the majority of American law students, should it simply be business as usual at religiously affiliated law schools, or should we seize the opportunity to consider seriously, and in the light of faith, women’s perspectives on legal education, law, and justice?

This article …

Educational Interventions To Cultivate Professional Identity In Law Students: Introduction, Patrick Emery Longan

Mercer Law Review

On October 7, 2016, the Mercer Law Review co-sponsored the 17th Annual Georgia Symposium on Professionalism and Ethics. The Georgia symposia on professionalism and ethics have all been made possible by the Honorable Hugh Lawson, Senior United States District Judge for the Middle District of Georgia. In 1999, Judge Lawson oversaw the settlement of a matter that involved allegations of litigation misconduct, and as part of the settlement four of Georgia's law schools each received an endowment to fund annual symposia dedicated to ethics and professionalism. The symposium series began in 2001 and rotates among Mercer University, Georgia State University, …

17th Annual Georgia Symposium On Ethics And Professionalism: October 6, 2016, Benjamin Grimes

Mercer Law Review

Professional identity is a mercurial thing. It is a combination of skills, values, and ways of thinking that identifies us to others and forms the basis of our understanding of ourselves. But why should we endeavor to affirmatively instill a certain identity-or to provide the seeds of professional identity-in our students and young attorneys? To what end is identity useful, what elements are important, and how do we do it?

Unlike the many participants in this Symposium and contributors to this issue of the Mercer Law Review, I am neither an academic nor a remarkable practitioner. I have taught …

Educational Programs For Professional Identity Formation: The Role Of Social Science Research, Muriel J. Bebeau, Stephen J. Thoma, Clark D. Cunningham

Mercer Law Review

This Article on the use of social science research to design, implement, and assess educational programs for the development of professional identity has its origins in the opening presentation made at the 17th Annual Georgia Symposium on Professionalism and Legal Ethics, held on October 7, 2016 at Mercer Law School on the topic "Educational Interventions to Cultivate Professional Identity in Law Students." The Mercer Symposium invited speakers from a variety of disciplines to address a series of questions regarding the feasibility and worth of establishing an educational intervention and assessment program to facilitate professional identity formation.

This Article begins with …

The Case For The Four Component Model Vs. Moral Foundations Theory: A Perspective From Moral Psychology, Elizabeth C. Vozzola

Mercer Law Review

The 2016 Mercer Law Review Symposium asked speakers to address some aspect of three organizing questions about educational interventions designed to cultivate professional identity in law students. The Symposium's first proposed question of whether it is worthwhile to establish such interventions seemed largely rhetorical. The third question asked about appropriate assessment of such interventions and will be addressed in this issue by leaders in the field of legal ethics and professional program assessment. Hence, as a teacher and psychologist whose primary role in the field has been to synthesize theory and research, I chose to question the second guiding question …

Professional Identity Formation Throughout The Curriculum: Lessons From Clergy Education, Larry A. Golemon

Mercer Law Review

Clergy education is undergoing radical transformation in the United States due to changes in the profession, the religious communities served, and the larger landscape of higher education. Many reformers of theological education question whether the education of pastors, priests, and rabbis should be considered "professional" education at all. Some call for less competence training and more formation of theological habits of interpretation and reflection; others advocate for more practical and contextual training of skills and role-formation; and others emphasize the formation of personal character and religious piety. Yet most of these reformers agree that the formation of pastoral and professional …

From Teaching Professionalism To Supporting Professional Identity Formation: Lessons From Medicine, Sylvia R. Cruess, Richard L. Cruess

Mercer Law Review

Profession, professional, and professionalism are generic terms that apply to a limited number of knowledge-based occupations charged with providing essential services to society. While the terms have existed for over 2000 years, until the middle of the nineteenth century the professions served only the upper socioeconomic strata and thus had a limited impact on society. The reasons were not complex. Wealth was limited and only a few could afford the services of the professional until the industrial revolution provided sufficient resources to support their use. The growth in both size and influence of the medical and legal professions occurred at …

Off-The-Shelf Formative Assessments To Help Each Student Develop Toward A Professional Formation/Ethical Professional Identity Learning Outcome Of An Internalized Commitment To The Student's Own Professional Development, Neil Hamilton

Mercer Law Review

With the shift in American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards to emphasize learning outcomes, all law schools will be slowly moving away from structure-and-process based legal education (exposure to specific content for specified periods of time, such as a four credit one semester contracts course) to competency-based legal education (focus on the ultimate competencies needed for excellent service to the clients and the legal system, such as competence in career-long professional development). A large number of law schools are adopting what the next section of this Article defines as competency-based professional-formation or ethical- professional-identity learning outcomes. The specific focus of …

The Art Of Self And Becoming A Professional, Jack L. Sammons

Mercer Law Review

This talk about the self originated in comments made by Joshua Bishop. Josh was executed by the People of the State of Georgia on March 31, 2016. Now I have long puzzled over questions of the self, especially in the context as here of students and practitioners who are in the process of becoming professionals; so the issues were not new to me although I had never gotten very far with them. But Josh's comments, when I first heard them, seemed to me to be a uniquely reliable resource for returning to these issues again. He spent most of his …

Marking The Path From Law Student To Lawyer: Using Field Placement Courses To Facilitate The Deliberate Exploration Of Professional Identity And Purpose, Timothy W. Floyd, Kendall L. Kerew

Mercer Law Review

Legal education is a powerfully transformative experience.' Law students enter law school as non-lawyers guided by the personal attitudes, values, and beliefs that drew them to the law and, within a few short years, leave law school with a new professional identity and purposethat of lawyer. While in law school, students learn about the law, acquire distinctive lawyering skills and habits, and develop an understanding of the many ethical obligations that guide a professional's actions. They develop new ways of thinking, talking, writing, and interacting with others. And throughout this process students take on new values, attitudes, and beliefs. In …

Developing Virtue And Practical Wisdom In The Legal Profession And Beyond, Mark L. Jones

Mercer Law Review

It is a central axiom of this Article that the good lawyer is a virtuous lawyer and that the possession and exercise of virtue is central to the lawyer's professional character and professional identity. The Article is therefore resonant with the school of "virtue jurisprudence" according to which the behavior of legal actors such as judges and lawyers and the ends of law pursued by legislators should be concerned with the development and exercise of virtues such as courage, honesty, integrity, wisdom, temperance, and, of course, justice as central to a life of human flourishing. It is also resonant with …

Practicing Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell, Kenneth Sharpe

Mercer Law Review

Here is what we believe and what we set out to test: Wisdom is not an innate character trait; no one automatically is wise; and wisdom is learned and acquired. More importantly, one can learn and acquire wisdom intentionally and skillfully-one can practice it. And, if the practice is structured in particular ways, the practice will improve one's capacities to act with wisdom. For lawyers, and even more so for law students, that should be heartening. For legal educators, the ability to improve one's capacity to act with wisdom should be a call to action.

We set out to discern …

The Course Source: The Casebook Evolved, Stephen Johnson

Articles

Law students are changing, law practice is changing, law schools are criticized for failing to prepare practice-ready lawyers, and there is nearly universal consensus that legal education must transform. However, the principal tool that many faculty members rely on to prepare their courses, the Langdellian casebook, is ill-suited for such transformation. This prototypical casebook, which is still the standard for many courses today, was designed for the Socratic dialogue and the case method mode of instruction. Although there is still a place for that method in legal education, other methods of instruction—the carriage bolts and lag screws of modern legal …

Hearing Voices: Reading As Listening In Literature, Law, And Theology, James Boyd White

Mercer Law Review

Jack Sammons has always written from the center. Whether he is writing about teaching, or the legal profession, or law, or religion, or music, or baseball, or manners, everything he says comes from the same mysterious and powerful place: coherent, honest, generous, and sincere, not at all aggressive, but insistent upon the value and importance of the inquiry at hand. Jack writes as the whole person he is, with a constant and deep integrity.

As we all know, an important part of what Jack has written about is the world of sound and music, to which he is richly alive. …

Jack Sammons As Therapist, Joseph Vining

Mercer Law Review

This has been one of my deep fears-that people around me might put simple pleasure as enough reason for living, and that I might be unable to persuade them otherwise and would have to believe they were ultimately serious in saying so.

"There is only pleasure out there to seek," people often say. As for accepting pleasure as "enough," I can imagine them telling me that it is always easier to accept something as enough if there is nothing more. They would remind me how rich the basic pleasures are if sought and achieved, of consciousness itself, of sex, of …

Justice, Play, And Politics, Eugene Garver

Mercer Law Review

Justice as Play is a highly illuminating gloss on Coke's idea of the law as "artificial reason," and one of its merits is that it is equally about the law as artificial and as reason. While he leans on Huizinga to talk about justice as play, Jack Sammons deepens the analogy by another meaning of play, celebrating the venerable connections between the trial and the drama as relatively insulated arenas for developing alternatives to the existing political order. According to Jack, legal argument can be regarded as play because of that relative insulation. So I want to turn from judicial …

Mercer Law Review Symposium Luncheon Remarks: Conversations With Jack Sammons, Daisy Hurst Floyd

Mercer Law Review

While this Symposium is about Jack Sammons's teaching and scholarship, I am going to exercise a speaker's privilege to focus on the personal. However, I am going to do so by borrowing from Jack's scholarly work because I, too, am going to talk about conversation. Not in the way that Jack and others have so provocatively used the word to characterize lawyers' work. But, rather I use it in a more literal way. When I think of memories of Jack, many of them are around significant conversations.

I first met Jack in 1996, when my husband Tim Floyd was invited …

Mercer Law Review Luncheon Symposium Remarks For Jack Sammons, Harold S. Lewis Jr.

Mercer Law Review

Jack's career has been conventional only in his continuity at a single law school for almost thirty-five years. (As for his time at Antioch School of Law, Tim Floyd reminded us at the Symposium dinner last night that while at Antioch, Jack did pioneering and influential work on lawyer competency. It would be surprising if even Jack remembers he was there before arriving at Mercer Law School, determined to shake it up.).

Institutional longevity aside, Jack's career has been exceptional, marked by a multitude of concerns that he somehow wove together. Whatever the coursework or scholarly task at hand, his …

Transcendental Sense And A Playful Approach: The Treaty Of Waitangi, Richard Dawson

Mercer Law Review

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My experience of reading Jack Sammons has resembled an OE [overseas experience]. In particular, I became aware of some taken-for-granted language that can conceal important dynamics in our engagement with language. I had explicitly identified some virtues relating to exercising "control" over language but had, as Sammons suggested, neglected possible vices. In order to avoid these vices, I could alter attention from "control" to "play," in the sense of a movement that can combine control with the out-of-control. (There are some virtues associated with the out-of-control, such as openness and receptivity.). Such play does not lend itself well to …