Law Commons^™

Will Legal Education Change Post-2020?, Heather K. Gerken

Michigan Law Review

The famed book review issue of the Michigan Law Review feels like a reminder of better days. As this issue goes to print, a shocking 554,103 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States alone, the country seems to have begun a long-overdue national reckoning on race, climate change and economic inequality continue to ravage the country, and our Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists with the encouragement of the president of the United States. In the usual year, a scholar would happily pick up this volume and delight in its contents. This year, one marvels at the scholars who …

Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis Of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” In U.S. Legal Education, Loren M. Lee

Michigan Law Review

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has recognized diversity as a compelling government interest to uphold the use of affirmative action in higher education. Yet the constitutionality of the practice has been challenged many times. In Grutter v. Bollinger, for example, the Court denied its use in perpetuity and suggested a twenty-five-year time limit for its application in law school admissions. Almost two decades have passed, so where do we stand? This Note’s quantitative analysis of the matriculation of and degrees awarded to Black and Latinx students at twenty-nine accredited law schools across the United States illuminates a stark lack of …

Editors' Note, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A reflection on the origins of the Michigan Law Review book review issue.

Letting Go Of Old Ideas, William D. Henderson

Michigan Law Review

Two recently published books make the claim that the legal profession has changed (Steven Harper’s The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis) or is changing (Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future). The books are interesting because they discuss the types of changes that are broad, sweeping, and dramatic. In suitable lawyer fashion, both books are unfailingly analytical. They both also argue that the old order is collapsing. The Lawyer Bubble is backward looking and laments the legacy we have squandered, while Tomorrow’s Lawyers is future oriented and offers fairly specific prescriptive advice, particularly to those lawyers entering …

What Ails The Law Schools?, Paul Horwitz

Michigan Law Review

In January 2012, law professors from across the country arrived in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"). It was an opportune moment. The legal economy was struggling. Graduates were begging for jobs and struggling with unprecedented levels of debt. The smart talk from the experts was that the legal economy was undergoing a fundamental restructuring. For these and other reasons, law schools were under fire, from both inside and outside of the academy. Judges - including the keynote speaker at the AALS conference himself! - derided legal scholarship as useless. Law school …

Reflections (On Law Review, Legal Education, Law Practice, And My Alma Mater), Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

It is an honor for me to offer some reflections in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Michigan Law Review. I have many fond memories of my time at the University of Michigan Law School, both as a law student and a member of the faculty. I was therefore pleased to accept the assignment to present the keynote address at the Centennial Celebration banquet. It is hard for me to believe that it has been almost 40 years since I was invited to serve on the Michigan Law Review. I remember it like it was yesterday, for it was …

The Book Review Issue: An Owner's Guide, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Law reviews have short memories. Other institutions count on long-term managers and well-kept files to preserve the experience of the past. But there is no remembrance of things past in an institution whose officers serve - fileless and frantic - for a single year. I want to use the opportunity this volume's editors have kindly given me to contribute to the Michigan Law Review's institutional memory. Editors past, present, and future may be curious about when and why the book review issue was conceived and born. I will briefly tell that story. More significantly, however, I want to relate the …

The Case For (And Against) Harvard, Robert W. Gordon

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Logic and Experience: The Origin of Modern American Legal Education by William P. LaPiana

Law School: A Survivor's Guide, Benjamin C. Bair

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law School: A Survivor's Guide by James D. Gordon III

The Deprofessionalization Of Legal Teaching And Scholarship, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

The editors have asked me to comment on Judge Edwards' double-barreled blast at legal education and the practice of law. This I am happy to do. It is an important article, stating with refreshing bluntness concerns that are widely felt but have never I think been so forcefully, so arrestingly expressed. Nevertheless I have deep disagreements with it.

Students As Teachers, Teachers As Learners, Derrick Bell, Erin Edmonds

Michigan Law Review

Judge Edwards divides his analysis of the cause of the crisis in ethical lawyering into an overview and three parts. The overview and first two parts deal mainly with the role of law schools and legal curriculum in what he views as the deterioration of responsible, capable practitioners. This article takes issue with some of the assumptions, analyses, and conclusions those sections contain. The third part of Edwards' article analyzes the role of law firms in causing that same deterioration. This article agrees with and will elaborate upon that part of Edwards' treatment.

We approach Judge Edwards' article, we hope, …

The Mind In The Major American Law School, Lee C. Bollinger

Michigan Law Review

Legal scholarship is significantly, even qualitatively, different from what it was some two or three decades ago. As with any major change in intellectual thought, this one is composed of several strands. The inclusion in the legal academic community of women and minorities has produced, not surprisingly, a distinctive and at times quite critical body of thought and writing. The emergence of the school of thought known as critical legal studies has renewed and extended the legal realist critique of law of the first half of the century. But more than anything else it is the interdisciplinary movement in legal …

The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession, Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

This article is my response to Professor Priest and all other legal academicians who disdain law teaching as an endeavor in pursuit of professional education. My view is that if law schools continue to stray from their principal mission of professional scholarship and training, the disjunction between legal education and the legal profession will grow and society will be the worse for it. My arguments are quite straightforward, and probably not wholly original. Nevertheless, they surely merit repetition.

Kevin E. Kennedy, Elizabeth S. Ferguson

Michigan Law Review

A tribute to Kevin E. Kennedy

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 …

All The Right Moves, Charles A. Reich

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Tactics of Legal Reasoning by Pierre Schlag and David Skover

Intergenerationalism And Constitutional Law, Ira C. Lupu

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Constitutional Law by Geoffrey R. Stone, Louis M. Seidman, Cass R. Sunstein and Mark V. Tushnet and Constitutional Law: Cases -- Comments -- Questions by William B. Lockhart, Yale Kamisar, Jesse H. Choper, and Steven H. Shiffrin

Contracts Scholarship In The Age Of Anthology, E. Allan Farnsworth

Michigan Law Review

In the first part of this article, I trace the history of the Age. I observe that for nearly forty years, from 1881 to the time of World War I, there was a significant decline in contracts scholarship and conclude that the principal explanation for these lean years lies in the shift in scholars' focus from an audience of practitioners to one of students that resulted from the introduction of the case method. In the second part of the article, I look at the way in which the anthologists wielded the considerable influence that each had when only a few …

The Costs Of Complexity, Stephen B. Burbank

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Complex Litigation: Cases and Materials on Advanced Civil Procedure by Richard L. Marcus and Edward F. Sherman

Francis A. Allen: Resolution Of The Board Of Regents Of The University Of Michigan, The Board Of Regents Of The University Of Michigan

Michigan Law Review

Francis Allen has had a long and distinguished career, rich with service to his students, to the academic community, and to the nation. In grateful recognition of his many contributions while a member of the University faculty, the Regents salute this distinguished scholar and educator by naming him Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law Emeritus.

What Frank Allen Teaches, Robert A. Burt

Michigan Law Review

A tribute to Francis A. Allen

Being Frank About The Fourth: On Allen's "Process Of 'Factualization' In The Search And Seizure Cases", Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

An invitation to participate in a special issue for such an inestimable personage as Francis Allen is itself a distinct honor - so much so, in fact, that refusal seems out of the question no matter what risks may attend this undertaking. The principal risk, as I see it, is that if one's contribution were to be assessed by a reader who, by virtue of this collection of essays, was also reflecting upon the writings of Allen, one is bound to come out the loser in any comparison. But I assume this risk, as substantial as it doubtless is in …

E.F. Hutton Goes South, Franklin E. Zimring

Michigan Law Review

A tribute to Francis A. Allen

Francis A. Allen, Norval Morris

Michigan Law Review

A tribute to Francis A. Allen

Francis A. Allen --An Appreciation, Sanford H. Kadish

Michigan Law Review

A tribute to Francis A. Allen

A New List Of Recommended Reading For Prospective Law Students, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List Compiled from the Recommendations of the Faculty of the Michigan Law School

The American Law School & The Rise Of Administrative Government, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The American Law School & The Rise of Administrative Government by William C. Chase

Legal Education: Its Causes And Cure, Marc Feldman, Jay M. Feinman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law School: Legal Education in America From the 1850s to the 1980s by Robert Stevens

L. Hart Wright, Allan F. Smith

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to L. Hart Wright

A Tribute To L. Hart Wright From A Friend And Former Student, Warren Elliott

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to L. Hart Wright