Law Commons^™

"Ph.D. Lite": A New Approach To Teaching Scholarly Legal Writing, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Most American law schools require the satisfaction of an upper level writing requirement, usually in the form of a seminar paper, or “Note”, for graduation. The problem for many students is that the J.D. is not generally geared towards learning scholarly writing. In recent years, the author has experimented with reformulating a seminar class as a “writing workshop” in order to focus on the scholarly writing process. In so doing, she has drawn from experiences supervising legal research degrees in other countries where research-based LL.M. degrees and Ph.D. degrees in law are the norm. This essay details her approach – …

Stone Soup: Thoughts On Balancing A Deanship And Family Life After Twelve Years As Dean, Richard L. Aynes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

JUNE 30, 2007 marked the conclusion of my twelve-year service as Dean of the University of Akron School of Law. During that time the University of Toledo Law Review initiated its very successful “Leadership in Legal Education Symposium” and I benefited from reading articles in the prior symposia. It was inspiring to read about the efforts, thoughts, concerns, and accomplishments of fellow deans. Sometimes those essays gave me reassurance, raised my curiosity, provided new ideas, gave me an opportunity to think about old matters from a different perspective, and even prompted healthy disagreement.

Having benefited from the contributions of other …

Preparing New Students For Legal Practice In A "Flat World", Martin H. Belsky

Akron Law Faculty Publications

I went to a law school [Columbia University] specifically because of their international program and became involved with almost all aspects of that program--which they called “transnational law.” I also did graduate work in International Affairs and Law. I was, and am, committed to incorporating transnational law concepts into the law school program. And I have had administrative responsibilities that have made me take a pragmatic approach to reaching that goal.

During this workshop, we have heard many ideas about bringing transnational law and issues into the first year curriculum. We have heard descriptions of the actions of individual faculty …

Gerry Spence's The Smoking Gun As A Teaching Tool, Dana K. Cole

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The Smoking Gun, is the true story of a woman and her teenage son charged in what appeared to be a hopeless murder case. At Mr. Spence’s request, Professor Cole wrote a companion manual for use by law professors interested in using Spence’s book in teaching criminal law, criminal procedure, clinical practicum, ethics, evidence or trial advocacy. The companion manual is a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book that highlights teachable topics and analyzes some of the skills and techniques described in the book.

Tlc In The Funny Papers, Dana K. Cole

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The author describes Tom Batiuk's visit to his trial advocacy class during a painting exercise. Mr. Batiuk's Funky Winkerbean series depicting the class is reprinted.

Psychodrama At Harvard, Dana K. Cole

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The author describes his experience teaching trial advocacy at Harvard Law School.

Law Schools As Legal Education Centers, Martin H. Belsky

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education in the early twentieth century was divided into three concurrent paths-study at one of the "elite" law schools, consisting of mostly full-time students already possessing a college degree; study at one of the other mostly part-time practice based schools; and a course of study with a practitioner/mentor outside of formal educational institutions. ... Graduation was a serious event, as students were already thinking about passing the bar exam. ... Some of the reasons that law schools can deliver legal education to elementary and secondary students, obviously apply to junior college, college, and non-law school graduate and professional education …

Use And Limits Of Syllogistic Reasoning In Briefing Cases, Wilson R. Huhn

Akron Law Faculty Publications

During the nineteenth century, law was equated with science, and legal reasoning was thought to be a species of deductive logic. Consistent with this notion, judicial opinions have traditionally been summarized in the form of syllogisms, that is, as arguments of deductive logic. More specifically, judicial opinions have been described as chains of syllogisms, reasoning from base premises to ultimate conclusions. The principal thrust of this article is to demonstrate that in hard cases, judicial reasoning proceeds not by way of deduction, but by evaluation and balancing.

Accordingly, Part II of this article compares law with science. Historically, law was …

Psychodrama And The Training Of Trial Lawyers: Finding The Story, Dana K. Cole

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The author attempts in this article to make trial lawyers and trial advocacy teachers aware of a tool called psychodrama and how it is being used in prepartation for trial and at trial.

Teaching Legal Analysis Using A Pluralistic Model Of Law, Wilson R. Huhn

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this Article is to describe a pluralistic model of reasoning that may be used to teach the skills of legal analysis. There are different ways to categorize legal arguments. Perhaps the most common method is to identify different legal arguments with specific schools of jurisprudence or moral philosophy. This is the standard approach followed by leading scholars such as Lon Fuller. In a classic article, Fuller illustrated how a murder case could be analyzed utilizing jurisprudential frameworks such as positivism, natural law, social contract, practical wisdom, and legal realism. Another example of this method of characterizing legal …