Law Commons^™

Defending The Law Review - A Response To Judge Posner & Professor Lindgren, Harvey Gilmore

Harvey Gilmore

I am fairly new to the publication game. I am not a professional writer. I was never a law review editor. My current teaching job does not mandate that I “publish or perish.” On top of that, I do believe that law reviews were invaluable to me in helping me write research papers during my time in law school. I enjoy reading law review articles to this day. In addition, I have enjoyed the privilege of having several of my own pieces accepted for publication as law review articles. Consequently, I have had positive experiences dealing with law review editors …

Misadventures Of A Law School Misfit

Harvey Gilmore

If the brilliant, legendary playwright Rod Serling were still with us, he might have described a law school graduate’s credentials something like this—consider if you will, the law school graduate’s perfect resume: 1) graduated first in his class from “Ivy League University”; 2) graduated first in his class from “Ivy League Law School”; 3) law review editor; and 4) elevation to Big-Firm partnership.

Well, that ain’t me. I was never a law review editor. I did not graduate in the top ten percent of my class. I did not go to an Ivy League college or law school. I never …

Cien Años De Investigación Jurídica En La Escuela Libre De Derecho, Juan Pablo Pampillo Baliño

Juan Pablo Pampillo Baliño

No abstract provided.

Recasting The Llm: Course Design And Pedagogy, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Dharmendra Chatur

Dharmendra Chatur

The introduction of the one-year Master of Laws (LLM) has been touted as a game changer for post-graduate legal education in India. This paper argues that, despite the unclear rationale for the course and the hastily put together course structure, the one-year LLM may transform post-graduate legal education if rigorous intellectual effort is invested in the process of translating the curriculum into active learning materials allowing for a critical pedagogy to emerge in the classroom. Using the Law and Social Transformation course in the two-year LLM as an example, the paper shows that despite a well designed curriculum, the syllabi …

Constructing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Langdell, Ames, And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

This article explains how lawyers like Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames, a disciple of Langdell, employed rhetoric between 1870, when Langdell assumed the deanship at Harvard Law School, and 1920, when law had emerged as a credible academic field in the United States, to construct a persona, that of a scholar, appropriate for the law professor situated within the university. To do so, the article contextualizes the rhetoric with historical background on the law professor and legal education, draws upon rhetorical theory to give an overview of persona theory and persona analysis as a means of conducting the …

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

Nantiya Ruan

Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to “real life” clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important role …

Do Robomemos Dream Of Electric Nouns?: A Search For The Soul Of Legal Writing, Ian Gallacher

Ian Gallacher

This essay considers the possibility that computers might soon be capable of writing many of the documents lawyers typically write, and considers what qualities of writing are uniquely human and whether those qualities are sufficient to render human written work superior to computer generated work. After noting that despite the claims of rhetoricians and narrative theorists, not all legal writing is persuasive writing, and that it is in the non-persuasive area of prosaic, functional documents that computer generated documents might gain a bridgehead into the legal market, the essay tracks the development of computer-generated written work, particularly in the areas …

"When Numbers Get Serious": A Study Of Plain English Usage In Briefs Filed Before The New York Court Of Appeals, Ian Gallacher

Ian Gallacher

This article describes the results of a study of briefs filed in the New York Court of Appeals between 1969 and 2008. In particular, portions of these briefs were analyzed using the Flesch Reading Ease test and the Flesh-Kincaid test. The first of these tests claims to determine how "readable" a piece of text might be, and the second expresses its results in terms of the grade level a hypothetical reader should have attained before the given text becomes "readable." Both of these tests are fallible, especially when used to determine the actual "readability" of a piece of text, but …

Planting People, Growing Justice: The Three Pillars Of New Social Justice Lawyering, Artika Renee Tyner

Artika Renee Tyner

This article explores the tools that lawyers can employ to build and sustain social change. These tools add a new dimension to scholarly research in the field by focusing on the role of lawyers as leaders as they seek to influence processes of social change, transform systems, and empower others to lead. This Article draws upon principles of social justice lawyering, which acknowledge that lawyers have a fiduciary duty to create equal justice under the law. It combines these frameworks with leadership theoretical perspectives since there is a dearth of research available on the role of lawyers as leaders in …

International Arbitration Scholarship And The Concept Of Arbitration Law, Stavros Brekoulakis

Stavros Brekoulakis

This article is about the concept of arbitration law and its relationship with international arbitration scholarship. It argues that the field of international arbitration scholarship has developed in isolation and never fully engaged with the crucial movements of international legal scholarship that advanced a more progressive and humanitarian concept of international law. The dearth of interdisciplinary scholarship in arbitration has had two undesirable implications. First, it has had a negative impact on how non-arbitration scholars and the public perceive arbitration. Secondly, and more importantly for the purposes of this article, it has crucially impaired the concept and autonomy of arbitration …

Law Practice Technology: A Law School Course?, Charles H. Oates

Charles H Oates

Technology is transforming the practice of law, but law schools are being left behind. Until relatively recently and only to a very limited extent, law school curricula have not reflected the revolutionary changes in the ways that technology is altering the practice of law. Today’s law students, unlike their predecessors, are comfortable with technology, but anxious about entering a severely competitive profession. For most lawyers, economic survival will depend upon their ability to utilize technology to maximize efficiencies and comply with court-mandated applications of technology. With the pervasiveness of technology in all areas of law practice today, a course in …

Collaborating With Students As Co-Authors, Wendy B. Davis

Wendy B. Davis

The purpose of this article is to describe the process of collaborating with students enrolled in a course to produce a casebook to be published after the conclusion of the course. I have written two published casebooks, with significant portions of each book written by students as contributing authors. Utilization of a variety of teaching methods facilitates learning by our students. While this article only describes one end- result, the creation of a casebook, the process of creating that book involves many different teaching methods, thus many different opportunities to address students’ differing learning styles. Students learn best when they …

Religious Law Schools And Democratic Society, Jennifer Wright

Jennifer Wright

Many believe that, in a democratic society, the law must be approached as a purely secular, neutral system to which all members of society can assent. Discussion of religious foundations of law is condemned as inherently divisive and destructive of democratic process. Many in the legal academy believe that law school education should not involve teaching students to examine the moral foundations of the law and the legal system, and certainly should not invite and challenge law students to examine their professional role in the justice system in light of their own moral commitments and religious faiths. Law students both …

Monopolies And The Constitution: A History Of Crony Capitalism, Steven G. Calabresi

Steven G Calabresi

This article explores the right of the people to be free from government granted monopolies or from what we would today call “Crony Capitalism.” We trace the constitutional history of this right from Tudor England down to present day state and federal constitutional law. We begin with Darcy v. Allen (also known as the Case of Monopolies decided in 1603) and the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, both of which prohibited English Kings and Queens from granting monopolies. We then show how the American colonists relied on English rights to be free from government granted monopolies during the Revolutionary War …

What Do Kim Kardashian And Lance Armstrong Have In Common?: Celebrity Complaints In The Classroom, Amy K. Langenfeld

Amy K Langenfeld

Every day brings a report of a celebrity suing or being sued. The complaints initiating these suits are available online within hours. Regardless of the merits or outcomes of these complaints by or against celebrities, celebrity complaints are a rich source of samples for the law school classroom. As supplements to course materials in civil procedure or legal writing, celebrity complaints are likely to generate discussion for several reasons. First, they show a range of strategies and persuasive writing techniques. Second, they engage students because they are real world documents, and because they have a pop culture setting. Third, they …

Teaching Ethics In Criminal Justice To First Year Law Students: Or Efforts To Dislodge The Csi Effect, Susan Rutberg

Susan Rutberg

Teaching Ethics in Criminal Justice to First Year Law Students:

Or Efforts to Dislodge the CSI Effect[1]

Susan Rutberg[2]

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the implementation of an innovative first year course at Golden Gate University School of Law entitled “Lawyering Skills: Ethics in Criminal Justice.” The course, offered for the first time in the spring of 2011, was the product of curricular reform set in motion by the 2007 Carnegie Foundation Report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. Golden Gate University has had a longtime focus both on practical legal education and ethical training. We devote a substantial …

Deceiving Law Students: Employment Statistics & Tort Liability, Angie D. Roberts-Huckaby

Angie D. Roberts-Huckaby

Controversy is rampant in American legal education. In less than a year, an unprecedented fourteen separate class action lawsuits have been filed against fourteen different law schools. The lawsuits each allege that the schools have disseminated postgraduate employment statistics in ways that are fraudulent and misleading. Students’ primary goal, when applying to law school, is to become lawyers. Law school is not an institution students attend merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity. Law school is a grueling three-year endurance race challenging student’s intellectual reasoning, emotional rationale, and financial security. Therefore, it is critical for students to choose the right school7 Law …

Legal Education Of Today’S China:Problems And Suggestions, Qilin Ma

Qilin Ma

China, as a country with a history of more than five thousand years, her legal education is non-independent and non-professional but the government’s conduct. Affected by her political and historical situations, Chinese legal education stresses its political function and theoretical teaching but neglect practicing skills and professional responsibilities training. How to realize the professionalization (not governmentalization) of legal education and how to bridge the gap of theory and practice are the main problems for current legal education in China. Chinese education administration agencies and legal educators are actively making efforts to reform legal education system, but the great progress has …

Law Student Laptop Use In Class For Non-Class Purposes: Temptation V. Incentives, Jeff Sovern

Jeff Sovern

LAW STUDENT LAPTOP USE DURING CLASS FOR NON-CLASS PURPOSES: TEMPTATION v. INCENTIVES Jeff Sovern St. John’s University School of Law This article reports on how law students use laptops, based on observations of 1072 laptop users (though there was considerable overlap among those users from one class to another) during 60 sessions of six law school courses. Some findings: • More than half the upper-year students seen using laptops employed them for non-class purposes more than half the time, raising serious questions about how much they learned from class. By contrast, first-semester Civil Procedure students used laptops for non-class purposes …

The Overlap Of Tax And Financial Aspects Of Real Estate Ventures, Bradley T. Borden

Bradley T. Borden

This article examines the effect partnership tax law has on financial aspects of real estate ventures. It introduces the relevance of the aggregate and entity views of tax partnerships (i.e., LLCs, LPs, and other partnerships) and demonstrates how those views can greatly affect financial projections for each of the members of a real estate venture. It also demonstrates how financial calculations can vary significantly depending upon how closely analysts track a tax partnership’s allocation method. Finally, the article serves as a primer for tax practitioners who are unfamiliar with the financial tools that are so prevalent in real estate analysis, …

The Skepticism Of Critical Legal Studies And Function Of Moral Discourse, Paul J. Gudel

Paul J. Gudel

Paul J. Gudel

California Western School of Law

ABSTRACT

“The Skepticism of Critical Legal Studies and the Function of Moral Discourse”

This article on the philosophy of law aims to expound and evaluate the jurisprudential movement known as Critical Legal Studies – now that the passage of some time allows us to take a less polemical look at what was regarded as a very radical movement. My exposition of CLS organizes its now somewhat familiar concepts (legal indeterminacy, fundamental contradiction, hierarchy, the attack on the public/private distinction) as all directed to one goal: allowing us to see our responsibility for …

Law Student Laptop Use During Class For Non-Class Purposes: Temptation V. Incentives, Jeff Sovern

Jeff Sovern

ABSTRACT LAW STUDENT LAPTOP USE DURING CLASS FOR NON-CLASS PURPOSES: TEMPTATION v. INCENTIVES Jeff Sovern St. John’s University School of Law This article reports on how law students use laptops, based on observations of 1072 laptop users (though there was considerable overlap among those users from one class to another) during 60 sessions of six law school courses. Some findings: • More than half the upper-year students seen using laptops employed them for non-class purposes more than half the time, raising serious questions about how much they learned from class. By contrast, first-semester Civil Procedure students used laptops for non-class …

The Skepticism Of Critical Legal Studies And The Function Of Moral Discourse, Paul J. Gudel

Paul J. Gudel

Paul J. Gudel

California Western School of Law

ABSTRACT

“The Skepticism of Critical Legal Studies and the Function of Moral Discourse”

This article on the philosophy of law aims to expound and evaluate the jurisprudential movement known as Critical Legal Studies – now that the passage of some time allows us to take a less polemical look at what was regarded as a very radical movement. My exposition of CLS organizes its now somewhat familiar concepts (legal indeterminacy, fundamental contradiction, hierarchy, the attack on the public/private distinction) as all directed to one goal: allowing us to see our responsibility for …

A Way Forward: Transparency At American Law Schools, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch

Kyle P McEntee

Law school has long been thought of as an investment in human capital inherently worth consuming. This is a dated view. Today, entering the legal profession through law school requires an increasingly significant financial investment. Yet very little information about the value of a legal education is available for prospective law students. In fact, much of the information tends to mislead rather than inform aspiring lawyers.

This Article surveys the available information with respect to one important segment of the value analysis: post-graduation employment outcomes. It then proposes a new standard for the presentation of post-graduation outcomes, "The LST Proposal." …

Team-Based Learning In Law, Margaret Sova Mccabe, Sophie Sparrow

Margaret Sova McCabe

Used for over thirty years in a wide variety of fields, Team-Based Learning is a powerful teaching strategy that improves student learning. Used effectively, it enables students to actively engage in applying legal concepts in every class -- without sacrificing coverage. Because this teaching strategy has been used in classes with over 200 students, it also provides an efficient and affordable way to provide significant learning. Based on the principles of instructional design, Team-Based Learning has built-in student accountability, promotes independent student preparation, and fosters professional skills. This article provides an overview of Team-Based Learning, reasons to adopt this teaching …

Alternative Justifications For Academic Support Iii: An Empirical Analysis Of The Impact Of Academic Support On Perceived Autonomy Support And Humanizing Law Schools, Louis N. Schulze Jr., Aidong Adam Ding

Louis N. Schulze Jr.

This article details the findings of a two-year empirical study on the impact of a law school academic support program (ASP) on law students. The hypothesis of the study was that as students' participation in a well-resourced, open-access ASP increases, students' perception of "autonomy support" and "humanizing" grows as well. The study concludes, based upon statistically significant data, that law school ASPs impact students in positive ways and therefore are worth the investment. This article is the third in a series designed to show that law school academic support measures positively impact students' well-being and lead to a more robust …

The Crucible And The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Martin Pritikin

Martin Pritikin

Counter-intuitively, one of the best ways to learn the practice-oriented topic of evidence may be by studying a work of fiction—specifically, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which dramatizes the Salem witch trials. The play puts the reader in the position of legal advocate, and invites strategic analysis of evidentiary issues. A close analysis of the dialogue presents an opportunity to explore both the doctrinal nuances of and policy considerations underlying the most important topics covered by the Federal Rules of Evidence, including relevance, character evidence and impeachment, opinion testimony, hearsay, and the mode and order of interrogation.

Screaming To Be Heard: Black Feminism And The Fight For A Voice From The 1950s - 1970s, Preston D. Mitchum

Preston D. Mitchum

No abstract provided.

Altruists In The Holocaust: Teaching Public Service Values Through A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Lens, Christina A. Zawisza

Christina A. Zawisza

My cherished Polish ethnic roots have motivated my exploration of the Holocaust, its lessons, and their effect on me as I teach a children’s legal clinic and also advise students on pro bono and public service projects and careers. I attended the 2004 Global Alliance for Justice Education conference in Krakow, Poland (Krakow Conference), and since then, I have been reflecting on its Holocaust theme of “Using the Example of Lawlessness to Teach Justice.” I am convinced that, in addition to the theme that conference conveyed, there are more lessons to be learned from that horrific era. Holocaust Studies never …

Changing The Modal Law School: Rethinking U.S. Legal Education In (Most) Schools, Nancy Rapoport

Nancy B. Rapoport

This essay argues that discussions of educational reform in U.S. law schools have suffered from a fundamental misconception: that the education provided in all of the American Bar Association-accredited schools is roughly the same. A better description of the educational opportunities provided by ABA-accredited law schools would group the schools into three rough clusters: the “elite” law schools, the modal (most frequently occurring) law schools, and the precarious law schools. Because the elite law schools do not need much “reforming,” the better focus of reform would concentrate on the modal and precarious schools; however, both elite and modal law schools …