Law Commons^™

Unm Newsroom Interviews Nathalie Martin: Unm Law Professor Practices Yoga And Meditation In Stressful Times, Nathalie Martin, Maggie Branch

Faculty Scholarship

A professor at The University of New Mexico School of Law has become a very accomplished Yogi – someone who studies and is proficient in yoga. Nathalie Martin, who has been a part of the UNM law faculty since 1998, was featured in a magazine put together by the Property Brothers and HGTV regarding her Yogi status.

Evidence Supporting The Value Of Surgical Procedures: Can We Do Better?, Christopher Robertson, Jonathan Darrow, Willard S. Kasoff

Faculty Scholarship

There is an acknowledged need for higher-quality evidence to quantify the benefit of surgical procedures, yet not enough has been done to improve the evidence base. This lack of evidence can prevent fully informed decision-making, lead to unnecessary or even harmful treatment, and contribute to wasteful expenditures of scare health care resources. Barriers to evidence generation include not only the long-recognized technical difficulties and ethical challenges of conducting randomized surgical trials, but also legal challenges that limit incentives to conduct surgical research as well as market-based challenges that make it difficult for those funding surgical research to recoup investment costs. …

Repealing The Statute Of Wizarding Secrecy In Legal Education, Mark Burge

Faculty Scholarship

In the fictional Harry Potter universe, J.K. Rowling has fashioned a parallel world based on our own, but with the fundamental difference of a separate magical society grafted onto it. In Rowling’s fictional version, the magical population lives among the non-magical Muggle population, but we Muggles are largely unaware of them. This secrecy is by elaborate design and was brought about by centuries-long hostility toward wizards by the non-magical majority. But what if secrecy is precisely the wrong approach? What if widespread wizard-Muggle collaboration were precisely the thing needed to address the enormous and pressing problems of the day?

The …

The Emerging Legal Architecture For Social Justice, Luz E. Herrera, Louise G. Trubek

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers advocating for social change are now front and center in newspapers and social media. This article discusses how a new breed of progressive lawyers envision social justice law practice today. These “critical lawyers” are diverse in background, gender, ethnicity and race. They see law as a complex, contradictory tool rather than a necessary and sufficient route to justice. Their practices differ from the traditional non-profit public interest firms of the earlier generation that assumed justice would result if law and lawyers were accessible. To highlight the differences, the article discusses the law practices of Beyond Legal Aid, Law for …

The Law Professor Pipeline, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout U.S. legal education’s history, a small number of elite law schools have produced the vast majority of law professors. Although law professor hiring is now more inclusive in certain respects, the law school an aspiring professor attended continues to serve as a powerful predictor of hiring market success. Some scholars have maintained that this preference for graduates of elite law schools infects legal education with class bias and distorts legal pedagogy, but the absence of reliable data on socioeconomic diversity within law schools has muted these criticisms.

This Essay reorients the debate on law school hiring by focusing on …

Join With Me, Won't You? Civic Engagement, Covid-19, And The Millennial Generation Of Law Professors, Joseph A. Schremmer

Faculty Scholarship

My goals in this essay are to place legal education’s COVID-19 crisis into this broader context and illuminate the unique opportunity that millennial law professors have to create the conditions for more robust community participation within and outside of our law schools. Part I summarizes the decline of civic engagement and social capital in preceding decades and its consequences for law, public discourse, and quality of life. Part II outlines how this deficit of social capital exacerbates the challenges facing law schools and professors in delivering legal education and constructing community during the coronavirus pandemic. Part III explores the unique …

"Mommy Track" On Steroids: How The Pandemic Is Further Derailing "Moms Of Law", Lysette Romero Córdova

Faculty Scholarship

As students or professors with children to raise, we inherently experience law school differently from our male and childless peers—and not in a good way. Even before the pandemic hit, the Moms of Law were at a disadvantage because we must divide our time and attention between the demands of law school and parenting. Thus, while the pandemic has created challenges for everyone involved in legal education, the inequitable impact on those raising young children has brought new meaning to the term “mommy track.” Part I of this essay describes the mommy track experience and how the inequity that it …

Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Breath: A Call For Economic Justice, Verónica Gonzales-Zamora

Faculty Scholarship

In Part I of this essay I interpret this unique moment in history through a retelling of the folk story La Llorona in order to identify the monsters and ghosts of the past and the present. Domino Renee Perez describes her own critical reflection of La Llorona as reinforcing 'a valuable lesson about power and authority' because her family’s 'storytelling circle was more than simply an arbitrary setting; it was a safe place for them to create, however problematically, a world of words, where they faced the dangers and challenges of life, embodied by a woman, and survived.' The lore …

An Introduction To The Collection [Get In Good Trouble: A Collection Of Essays By Millennial Law Scholars], Verónica Gonzales-Zamora

Faculty Scholarship

Get in Good Trouble: A Collection of Essays by Millennial Law Scholars Introduction by Verónica C. Gonzales-Zamora with essays by Kinda Abdus-Saboor, Ernestine Chaco, Marcus Gadson, Verónica Gonzales-Zamora, Camilo Romero, Lysette Romero Córdova, Morenike Saula, Joseph Schremmer, and Hon. Roshanna Toya. Afterword by Marcus Gadson. In response to the global pandemic, legal education in the United States shifted almost immediately to new tools and methods of delivery. Unsure of the lasting impact of these shifts, law faculty and law students around the country remain in limbo preparing for different scenarios when instruction resumes. Millennial law professors and scholars, with decades …

Teaching Professional Responsibility Through Theater, Michael Millemann, Elliott Rauh, Robert Bowie Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about ethics-focused, law school courses, co-taught with a theater director, in which students wrote, produced and performed in plays. The plays were about four men who, separately, were wrongfully convicted, spent decades in prison, and finally were released and exonerated, formally (two) or informally (two).

The common themes in these miscarriages of justice were that 1) unethical conduct of prosecutors (especially failures to disclose exculpatory evidence) and of defense counsel (especially incompetent representation) undermined the Rule of Law and produced wrongful convictions, and 2) conversely, that the ethical conduct of post-conviction lawyers and law students helped to …

Contributions To The Intellectual Life Of The Institution And The Profession, Janet Sinder

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Challenges And Opportunities: Intersectional Leadership In Law Schools, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, the Author organized with Maria Isabel Medina and participated as a panelist in the Roundtable on Intersectionality and Strengths and Challenges in Leadership at the Fourth National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference. This Essay is one of four in the cited article. The Essay summarizes the Author’s remarks at the Roundtable on contemplating a leadership role, the value of mentorship, and the profound impact that a woman of color as dean can have, simply by occupying that role.

Law Students And Cell Phone Use: Results Of A Six-School Survey, Robert Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law School As A Consumer Product: Beat ‘Em Or Join ‘Em?, Debra Vollweiler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

If You Can’T Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em (Virtually): Institutionally Managing Law Students As Consumers In A Covid World, Debra Vollweiler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching And Learning Law And Business: An Open Resource Tool, John O. Sonsteng, Willow Najjar Anderson, Michael Carlson, John Edell, Alexander Koch, Samuel Mccollough, Hannah Mohs

Faculty Scholarship

This dissertation examines the impacts of business law education through a multi-layered review of surveys, data, and literature. The authors examine what law schools across the country offer, explore research conducted in partnership with the Minnesota and American Bar Associations, and provide a systemic review of the relevant literature. The data shows attorneys resoundingly do not believe law school coursework prepared them adequately for the business of law.

Despite the practical changes that have been made to law school education since the 1960s to the present, there is still a disconnect between what law schools say they will provide and …

“The Worst Idea Ever”: Lessons From One Law School’S Embrace Of Online Learning, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores one law school's contrarian and pioneering embrace of online education into the core of its J.D. program, a five-year journey undertaken by William Mitchell College of Law (now Mitchell Hamline School ofLaw). This essay makes a simple point. Online pedagogy ought to be part of the palette of tools available for the design of J.D. programs. But placing it at the core of a J.D. program is not universally to be desired. Like any pedagogy, these online tools have their strengths and their weaknesses. The particular combination of tools and methods represents a question of design: of …

Pedagogy And Policy: A Tribute To Karen Rothenberg’S Contributions To Health Law, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Karen Rothenberg has had a significant influence on my life, impacting my education, my career, and the way I think. Professor Rothenberg has been a pillar in the health law community, but perhaps her most lasting impact for myself was creating the health law program at the University of Maryland, Francis King Carey School of Law. This nationally recognized program grew from her passion, expertise, and recognition of the importance of health, and is the reason I chose to attend the University of Maryland. The curriculum, faculty, and experience made it one of the best decisions of my life …

The 'Other' Market, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

The hiring market for tenure-track non–legal writing positions is a world unto itself with its own lingo (i.e., “meat market” and “FAR form”), its own unwritten rules (i.e., “Do not have two first-year courses in your preferred teaching package.”), and carefully calibrated expectations for candidates and schools with respect to the process and timing of hiring. These norms and expectations are disseminated to the participants in this market through a relatively well-established set of feeder fellowships, visiting assistant professor programs, elite law schools, blogs, and academic literature on the subject.

But there is another market that goes on every year …

From Judge To Dean And Back Again: Reflections On Transitions, David F. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Experiential (R)Evolution, Allison Korn, Laila L. Hlass

Faculty Scholarship

For more than a century, law schools have resisted substantial reforms relating to experiential education. Yet, in 2014, the ABA mandated a six-credit experiential course graduation requirement for law schools, alongside a packet of experiential curriculum amendments. Proponents of experiential education had hoped for a fifteen-credit mandate, aligning law schools with other professional schools that require one-quarter to one-third skills training. Still, six credits is significant, potentially marking a striking shift in the direction of legal education. To date, no one—including the ABA—has broadly evaluated the post-mandate legal education experiential landscape. It is particularly urgent to consider recent shifts in …

The Gaps Model And Faculty Services: Quality Analysis Through A “New” Lens, Alex Zhang, Sherry Xin Chen

Faculty Scholarship

Faculty service is an important function of U.S. academic law libraries. This article evaluates three types of faculty services programs using the Gaps Model to identify, analyze, and propose ways to fill four main gaps: knowledge, policy, delivery, and service quality.

In Times Of Chaos: Creating Blueprints For Law School Responses To Natural Disasters, Jeffrey R. Baker, Christine E. Cerniglia, Davida Finger, Luz E. Herrera, Jonel Newman

Faculty Scholarship

A recent onslaught of domestic natural disasters created acute, critical needs for legal services for people displaced and harmed by storms and fires. In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Michael struck much of Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, displacing millions from their homes. Wildfires burned throughout California and tested the capacity of pro bono and legal aid systems across the state. In 2018, Hurricane Florence flooded North Carolina, and Hurricane Michael devastated the Florida Panhandle. California again suffered wildfires, the largest and most devastating in recorded history. Natural disasters are both more common and more destructive, the “new abnormal.” …

Women Law Deans, Gender Sidelining, And Presumptions Of Incompetence, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Discussions of presumptions of incompetence and gender sidelining all address challenges that women, especially women of color, face in leadership roles. This Article explores these topics in the context of law deans.

This Article starts with updated data on the number of women law deans, including women of color, and demonstrates increased numbers of both women and women of color in deanships. It then shifts to plausible explanations for this growth: some optimistic and some more skeptical. It may be no coincidence that as the job became less desirable, women were appointed in greater numbers.

Next, this Article provides narrative …

Building A Law-And-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond The Twentieth-Century Synthesis, Jedediah S. Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynski, K. Sabeel Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

We live in a time of interrelated crises. Economic inequality and precarity, and crises of democracy, climate change, and more raise significant challenges for legal scholarship and thought. “Neoliberal” premises undergird many fields of law and have helped authorize policies and practices that reaffirm the inequities of the current era. In particular, market efficiency, neutrality, and formal equality have rendered key kinds of power invisible, and generated a skepticism of democratic politics. The result of these presumptions is what we call the “Twentieth-Century Synthesis”: a pervasive view of law that encases “the market” from claims of justice and conceals it …