Law Commons^™

A Tale Of Two Clients: Thinking About Law As Language, Clark D. Cunningham

Michigan Law Review

This is a true story. It is actually three true stories. The article taken as a whole tells a story of my personal search for a new way of talking about the experience of being a lawyer, a quest which is leading me to think more and more about law as a kind of language and lawyering as a form of translation. Rather like a medieval romance, embedded within this story of a quest are two tales, about clients I have represented in the course of my clinical teaching.

As much as possible, both levels of narrative are presented in …

Foreword: Telling Stories, Kim Lane Schepple

Michigan Law Review

Why is there such a rush to storytelling? Why has narrative become such an important and recurring theme in legal scholarship these days?

This issue testifies to the attractiveness of, and limits to, storytelling as a force in law. But whose stories are told? Who listens? And who responds? This symposium explores these questions, challenging traditional practices and exploring new ones in the telling of stories in the law. One important lesson that can be learned from this issue is that narrative is a way of organizing, coping with, even acting on the world. Stories carry power because they have …

The Cognitive Dimension Of The Agon Between Legal Power And Narrative Meaning, Steven L. Winter

Michigan Law Review

In Part II, I first provide a brief description of what we are learning about the grounded and imaginative nature of the cognitive process. I then elaborate the cognitive structure of the concept narrative and consider the manner in which we employ that concept in recognizing, understanding, and constructing narratives of all types - from folktales like the midrash to avant-garde literature like Waiting for Godot. In Part III, I employ this information about the cognitive and narrative processes to explore the secondary role of narrative in the institutionalization of legal and social meaning. I will identify the cognitive …

Empathy, Legal Storytelling, And The Rule Of Law: New Words, Old Wounds?, Toni M. Massaro

Michigan Law Review

The legal storytelling theme that is the focus of this symposium is part of a larger, ongoing intellectual movement. American legal scholarship of the past several decades has revealed deep dissatisfaction with the abstract and collective focus of law and legal discourse. The rebellion against abstraction has, of late, been characterized by a "call to context." One strand of this complex body of thought argues that law should concern itself more with the concrete lives of persons affected by it. One key word in the dialogue is the term "empathy," which appears frequently in the work of critical legal studies, …

Storytelling For Oppositionists And Others: A Plea For Narrative, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

This essay examines the use of stories in the struggle for racial reform. Part I shows how we construct social reality by devising and passing on stories - interpretive structures by which we impose order on experience and it on us. To illustrate how stories structure reality, I choose a single race-tinged event and tell it in the form of five stories or narratives. Each account is followed by analysis, showing what the story includes and leaves out and how it perpetuates one version of social reality rather than another. Part II deals with counterstories, competing versions that can be …

Persuasion, Joseph William Singer

Michigan Law Review

Lawyers spend a lot of time attempting to persuade other people. They persuade judges to promulgate rules of law that favor their clients. They persuade their law partners to adopt their interpretation of existing law or to adopt their strategy for litigation. They persuade clients to accept the dictates of the law. They persuade adversaries in settlement negotiations and their clients' business associates in contract negotiations. They persuade legislatures to fund legal services for the poor, to adopt or to reject law reforms.

Law professors spend most of their time teaching - or at least practicing - the art of …

Front Cover

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

No abstract provided.

A Message From The Dean

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Dean Lee C. Bollinger announces international receptions, programs, and reunion

Faculty Notes

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Estep, Pierce achieve emeritus status; faculty news notes; visitors enrich Law School community.

Front Matter

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

No abstract provided.

Briefs

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Strengthening the Law School's international ties; Nippon Life Insurance Co. bestows major gift; new scope for a Law School publication.

Back Cover

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

No abstract provided.

Events

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Senior Day: fond farewells; Law Review sponsors symposium on legal storytelling; Campbell Competition tackles right to counsel; first William W. Bishop Lecture looks at Single European Market.

Alumni Notes

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

First European alumni reunion honors Stein; news about our graduates; Class Notes

Class Of 1989 Five Year Report Dean's Letter, Jeffrey S. Lehman

UMLS Alumni Survey Class Reports

This letter was sent to alumni with the report.

Class Of 1989 Five Year Report, University Of Michigan Law School

UMLS Alumni Survey Class Reports

This report summarizes the findings of a questionnaire sent to University of Michigan Law School alumni five years after graduation.

Class Of 1989 Five Year Report Alumni Comments, University Of Michigan Law School

UMLS Alumni Survey Class Reports

This addendum is a compilation of alumni responses to the open-ended comments sections.

What Can A Lawyer Learn From Literature?, James Boyd White

Reviews

Judge Posner's recent book, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, has already attracted considerable attention and it is likely to attract even more. The author is a well-known judge, famous for his work in law and economics; in this book he takes the bold step of entering a field very different from that in which he established his reputation; and the book itself both reflects a wide range of reading and contains an enormous number of bibliographical references, all in support of its claim, made in the preface, to be the "first to attempt a general survey and evaluation …

The University And The Aims Of Professional Education, Terrance Sandalow

Book Chapters

The graduate schools of elite American universities, Daniel Bell wrote not many years ago (though before "elite" had become a term of opprobrium), stand at the center of their parent institutions, a position from which they dominate not only American higher education but, increasingly, the intellectual life of the nation. Michigan was, of course, high on Bell's list of elite universities, and it is, therefore, fitting that we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of its graduate school as an occasion worthy of celebration.

Legal Affinities, Joseph Vining

Articles

Not long ago, any question of the kind "How may theology serve as a resource in understanding law?" would have been hardly conceivable among lawyers. When Lon Fuller brought out his first book in 1940, The Law in Quest of Itself, he could think of no better way of tagging his adversary the legal positivist than to note a "parallel between theoretical theology and analytical jurisprudence." Two decades later, in the name of realism, Thurman Arnold dismissed Henry Hart's non-positivist jurisprudence in harsh terms. A master of the cutting phrase, he confidently entitled his attack "Professor Hart's Theology." Two decades …

First Person Singular, John W. Reed

Articles

The hot topic in legal circles is the decline of professionalism. In this often negative age, it ranks right up there with "What's wrong with American schools?" and "Where will we live when the ozone is gone?" and "How can we get a handle on drugs?"-all those terrible things.

Educational Debts And The Worsening Position Of Small-Firm, Government, And Legal-Services Lawyers, David L. Chambers

Articles

Law school operating costs are up. Tuitions are up. The debts of law students are up. What is happening to the students who have borrowed large sums? Are their debts affecting their decisions about the jobs to seek? Once in practice, are they significantly affecting the standard of living they can afford to maintain? What, in particular, is the effect of debts on those who enter-or contemplate entering-small firms, government, legal services, and "public interest" work where salaries are lower than in most other settings in which lawyers work? In the preceding essay, Jack Kramer has performed another extremely valuable …

Accommodation And Satisfaction: Women And Men Lawyers And The Balance Of Work And Family, David L. Chambers

Articles

This study of graduates of the University of Michigan Law School from the late 1970s reports on the differing ways that women and men have responded to the conflicting claims of work and family. It finds that women with children who have entered the profession have indeed continued to bear the principalr esponsibilitiesf or the care of children, but it alsof inds that these women, with all their burdens, are more satisfied with their careers and with the balance of their family and professional lives than other women and than men.