Law Commons^™

Critical Collections: Bringing A Critical Eye To Law Library Collection Development, Nicholas Norton

Cornell Law Librarians' Publications

Law schools throughout the United States are considering strategies to embed the concepts of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion into legal education. How does the work of their law libraries intersect with this effort? One potential point of intersection is through law library collection develpment. This article offers an overview of strategies to both curate and bolster representation of diverse voices in an academic law library collection using the theories of critical legal information literacy and epistemic injustice.

Transnational Law As A Framework For Law Clinics, Sital Kalantry, Rachael E. Hancock

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

As the law becomes increasingly globalised and online education is increasingly emphasised, clinical legal education presents new opportunities for transnational collaboration. With more law schools introducing global clinical experiences into their curriculum, clinicians, students, clients, and practitioners are facing a host of new questions, challenges, and obstacles. These challenges are practical, logistical, ethical, and cultural. As research has found, finding a means of addressing these issues in ways that advance social justice has proven difficult. Striking a balance between client service and student learning, navigating relationships between different learning institutions, and setting ambitious but attainable goals are important elements of …

Teaching Students To Use Feedback To Improve Their Legal-Writing Skills, Lara Gelbwasser Freed, Joel Atlas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In an age in which writing-software programs tout formative feedback on student papers and advertise clear and compelling sentences, the roles of professor and student in the assessment and outcome-achievement process may appear passive, or even supplanted. Using feedback to improve learning, however, requires both professor and student to play active roles. In legal education, law professors are tasked with identifying and assessing learning outcomes. And much has been written about these tasks as they relate to both doctrinal and legal-writing courses. But less attention has been devoted to law students’ role in responding to feedback on their writing and …

Navigating The Moral Minefields Of Human Rights Advocacy In The Global South, Sandra L. Babcock

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Human rights advocacy in foreign countries raises complex ethical, moral, and political questions. Legal scholars have challenged the legitimacy and accountability of international human rights activists that impose foreign agendas on local partners in the Global South. Development economists have raised related concerns about the impact of foreign assistance on government accountability. In this article, I use narrative storytelling techniques to illustrate the fraught strategic judgments and moral choices that permeate human rights advocacy. These narratives are drawn from my international human rights clinic’s twelve-year engagement in justice reform work in Malawi, where my students and I have been instrumental …

A Structural Approach To Case Synthesis, Fact Application, And Persuasive Framing Of The Law, Lara Gelbwasser Freed, Joel Atlas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Lawyering-skills courses, although typically writing-focused, address a wide array of topics. Indeed, to prepare an effective legal document, students must not only write well but analyze well. And, although teaching the pure-writing aspects of the course is certainly a challenge, teaching the analysis-related skills is often the most difficult.

Among the thorniest of these skills are synthesizing cases, applying facts, and persuasively framing the law. Professors struggle to teach these skills, and students consistently struggle to understand and implement them. To lighten the burden for both professors and students, we have approached these skills structurally and, in doing so, have …

The Role Of Skills Instruction In Legal Education, Eduardo M. PeñAlver

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

When Tenure Standards Are Wrong, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Real + Imaginary = Complex: Toward A Better Property Course, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

“Property” in most law schools means real property: the dense, illogical, and special-purpose body of land law. But this is wrong: property also comes in personal, intangible, and intellectual flavors—all of them more important to modern lawyers than land. Real property is deeply unrepresentative of property law, and focusing our teaching on it sells the subject short. A better property course would fully embrace these other forms of property as real property’s equals. Escaping the traditional but labyrinthine classifications of real property frees teachers to bring out the underlying conceptual coherence and unity of property law. The resulting course is …

The Quintessential Law Library And Librarian In A Digital Era, Femi Cadmus

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Libraries, like most institutions and industries today, are faced with disruptive technologies that challenge their relevancy in a digital era. As a result, erstwhile notions and nostalgia associated with the quintessential library and librarian are changing rapidly.

This is a compelling era to reimagine the library, retaining essential traditions alongside the new technologies, which facilitate the preservation, discoverability, accessibility, and delivery of information. It is also an opportunity for libraries to respond creatively and innovatively to change. The quintessential law library and librarian cannot only survive but can also thrive in the digital era by continuing to demonstrate value through …

The Final Legal-Writing Class: Parting Wisdom For Students, Joel Atlas, Estelle Mckee, Andrea J. Mooney

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The last class of a legal-writing course is a beginning rather than an end for our students. Soon, they will have the opportunity to employ, in real life, the skills they have learned in the course. And professors want their students not only to succeed, but to excel, in practice. To help realize this goal, and as a fitting finale to the course, a professor may choose to provide students with tips for the immediate and long-term future in their profession.

Due Diligence: Company Information For Law Students, Matthew M. Morrison

Cornell Law Librarians' Publications

Many law students are placed with corporate law firms whose clients are overwhelmingly companies. While many law school courses focus on doctrine, students need to learn company information and where to find it. This article explains why teaching company information is crucial, where to find sources, and how to use these sources.

The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the following Review, I analyze the leading criminal law casebooks on the market and describe the ways in which they do — and do not — respond to the needs of criminal law teachers. At least part of the issue is the changing nature of law teaching — what actually happens in the classroom has changed in the last three decades. Moreover, there may be less uniformity in classroom practice than in the past; in other words, what works in one law school might not work in another, due in part to the changing profile of law students, as …

Promoting Clinical Legal Education And Democracy In India, Sital Kalantry

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Clinical legal education emerged in the United States in the 1960s to give valuable skill-based instructions to law students while providing legal services to people who could not otherwise afford them. This essay proposes another reason why both Indian and American law schools should support the development of law clinics. Drawing on the works of John Dewey and Martha Nussbaum, I argue that clinical legal education promotes democracy. Both elite American and Indian universities are largely unrepresentative of the respective population demographics of their countries. In clinics, law students bridge this divide by undertaking representation for people from different racial, …

Library Director As Change Agent: Analysis Two, Implementing Change In Difficult Times, Femi Cadmus

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law Review Divide: A Study Of Gender Diversity On The Top Twenty Law Reviews, Lynne N. Kolodinsky

Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

My goal in this Note is to provide the first comprehensive statistical analysis of independently reported and verified data on law review membership in order to determine whether or not a gender disparity exists on law reviews. I further hope that this analysis would indicate whether any given admissions process correlates particularly strongly with that gender disparity. Interestingly, no single selection method or even combination of selection methods appears to consistently yield any greater number of women than men; some law reviews with similar admissions processes have very different membership compositions by gender, and some law reviews with very different …

Learning By Doing: Adding A Clinical Component To A Traditional Family Law Course, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This paper describes a clinical component recently added to the course in Family Law at Cornell Law School. Students who are either co-registered for or have previously taken Family Law receive an extra two credits for clinical work under the instructor's supervision. Each student undertakes to represent at least one client, who is referred from Neighborhood Legal Services, from the initial client interview through drafting, filing and service of the many documents required to obtain a final judgment for dissolution of marriage in New York State. In order to complete this work in one semester, the students do relatively simple …

Five Steps To Successfully Developing A Law Practice Technology Course, Femi Cadmus

Cornell Law Librarians' Publications

No abstract provided.

Meeting The Challenges Of Instructing International Law Graduate Students In Legal Research, Nina E. Scholtz, Femi Cadmus

Cornell Law Librarians' Publications

Teaching international LL.M. students legal research offers its own peculiar challenges. The brevity of the LL.M. program and the limited time available for thoroughly introducing basic research concepts have made it particularly difficult, but the innovative and creative methods of instruction highlighted in this article have provided good solutions.

Legal Education In An Era Of Globalisation And The Challenge Of Development, Muna Ndulo

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The article examines the challenges legal education faces as a result of globalisation with specific reference to African law schools. It considers the challenges and ways of meeting them. The practice of law in a globalised world requires a body of knowledge which is both complex and interdisciplinary. It requires the acquisition of a broad range of new skills and techniques of solving legal problems. To equip lawyers with the needed skills to practise law in a globalised world will require changes in the traditional law school curriculum. It will require a curriculum which trains lawyers for the practice of …

Not Your Parents' Law Library: A Tale Of Two Academic Law Libraries, Julian Aiken, Femi Cadmus, Fred Shapiro

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

As academic law libraries continue to face the inevitability of a rapidly changing landscape which includes a new breed of digital users with sophisticated technological needs, it remains to be seen what libraries will look like in years to come. It is certain that libraries as we know them today will have changed, but to what extent? An ability to remain adaptable and to anticipate the evolving needs of users in a dynamic environment will continue to be key for libraries to remain relevant, and even to survive, in the 21st century; vital to this endeavor will also be an …

Promoting Clinical Legal Education In India: A Case Study Of The Citizen Participation Clinic, Sital Kalantry, Elizabeth Brundige, Priya S. Gupta, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Clinic, Jindal Global Law School. Good Rural Governance And Citizen Participation Clinic

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Report is the product of a unique collaboration between the Good Governance and Citizen Participation Clinic at Jindal Global Law School and the Cornell International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School. Students based in the Jindal Global Law School (Sonipat, India) and Cornell Law School (Ithaca, N.Y.) participated in a joint class using videoconferencing technology from January to May, 2012 and worked on preparing the Report.

The Report points out that most law schools in India lack robust clinical legal education programs. Clinical legal education is essential to preparing law students to practice law effectively and promoting access …

Civil Procedure’S Five Big Ideas, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Civil procedure, more than any other of the basic law-school courses, conveys to students an understanding of the whole legal system. I propose that this purpose should become more openly the organizing theme of the course. The focus should remain, of course, on the mechanics of the judicial branch. What I am championing is giving some conscious attention, albeit mainly in the background and at an introductory level, to the big ideas of the constitutional structure within which the law formulates civil procedure. Such attention would unify the doctrinal study, while enriching it for the students and revealing its true …

Should Law Schools Teach Professional Duties, Professional Virtues, Or Something Else? A Critique Of The Carnegie Report On Educating Lawyers, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Analysis Of Empirical Legal Scholarship Production, 1990-2009, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Inspired by the retirement of Professor Tom Ulen of the University of Illinois, the author considers the growth and development of empirical legal scholarship over two decades—a period of time that corresponds, not coincidentally, with Professor Ulen’s career. Starting in the 1990s when empirical scholarship had not yet “caught on,” the author first documents the increase in quantity of empirical scholarship over two decades. Next, the author applies a law and economics perspective to the recent surge in empirical scholarship, explaining that the trend has been fueled by an increase in the number of empirically trained scholars and also by …

Beyond The Expected: Creating And Sustaining Relationships For Your Institutions, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reforming Knowledge? A Socio-Legal Critique Of The Legal Education Reforms In Japan, Annelise Riles, Takashi Uchida

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article critiques the current Japanese legal education reforms, modeled largely on the United States, by proposing a socio-technical framework for analyzing the distribution of legal expertise in a given society. On one side of the spectrum is the "monocentric" model of legal expertise, in which expertise is monopolized by the profession and legal literacy is low. On the other side of the spectrum is the "polycentric" model of legal expertise, in which a range of social and institutional actors share responsibility for legal expertise and legal literacy is high. If the U.S. is a more monocentric system, the Japanese …

Not Just Key Numbers And Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research, Julie M. Jones

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills.

Enhanced Legal E-Ducation: Knowledge Technology At Cornell Law School, Sasha Skenderija

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

In 2008, it comes as no surprise that new knowledge technologies have had a significant impact upon the field of legal education as well. While many opportunities have been explored and some of them seized, there also remain a number of hurdles to the full utilization of the new possibilities. Cornell Law School, one of the top legal education institutions in the United States, is widely recognized for the academic excellence of its faculty and students as well as for the innovative approach to legal teaching and research. The significant share of this recognition originates from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, …

Legal Research And Legal Education In Africa: The Challenge For Information Literacy, Vicki Lawal

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This paper analyses legal research within the context of legal education in Africa, it examines some of the challenges of electronic legal research in view of the influences of online legal electronic resources and Computer Assisted legal Research (CALR) and the importance of information literacy in addressing some of the issues raised especially with regards to undergraduate legal education.

Keynote Address: Remarks At The Workshop On Tapping Into The World Of Electronic Legal Knowledge , Muna Ndulo

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

Professor Muna Ndulo of Cornell Law School presented the keynote address at the 2007 Starr Workshop, “Tapping into the World of Electronic Legal Knowledge.” The workshop took place at Cornell Law School October 7-10, 2007 and was co-sponsored by the Starr Foundation, New York University Law Library, and Cornell Law Library.

Professor Ndulo addresses the topic of new information technologies and their importance to legal research and teaching.