Law Commons^™

Rethinking U.S. Legal Education: No More "Same Old, Same Old", Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

In this Essay, I suggest that we should think about how to create a curriculum that encourages students to develop a variety of skill sets. Law students simply don’t need three years of Socratic questioning regarding the fine details of court opinions. They need a wide range of experiences, preferably building on skill sets (like the twenty-six Berkeley factors) that effective lawyers have developed. A law school’s curriculum should have courses that focus on different factors in each year of law school. Ultimately, what we should be teaching law students is how to develop the judgment to advise clients. Teaching …

On Teaching Conflicts And Why I Dislike Allstate Insurance Co. V. Hague, Thomas O. Main

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Report And Recommendations On The Status Of Clinical Faculty In The Legal Academy, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

"Report and Recommendations on the Status of Clinical Faculty in the Legal Academy" identifies and evaluates the most appropriate modes for clinical faculty appointments in the legal academy, concluding that legal education is best served when full-time clinical faculty are appointed predominantly on a unitary tenure-track model. Drawing on data collected through a survey of clinical program directors and faculty, the Report analyzes the five most identifiable clinical faculty models: unitary tenure track; clinical tenure track; long-term contract; short-term contract; and clinical fellowships. It determines that, despite great strides in the growth of clinical legal education in the last 30 …

Vico, Llewellyn And The Task Of Legal Education, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Legal education fails students by not appreciating the rhetorical basis of legal reasoning and argumentation. I draw from Vico's "On the Study Methods of Our Time" and Llewellyn's legal realism; both argued that law and legal reasoning are exemplary sites of rhetoric. I suggest that contemporary cognitive studies of the metaphorical structure of human understanding and the initiatives of the "new legal realism" carry forward the insights of Vico and Llewellyn. This re-orientation corrects the shallow and instrumentalist outlook of most lawyers.

Vico's "Ingenious Method" And Legal Education, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Contemporary discussions about the need to reform legal education, culminating in the 2007 Carnegie Report, should be put into a broader historical, philosophical and ethical perspective. Three hundred years ago the Italian humanist, Giambattista Vico delivered his famous oration, "On the Study Methods of Our Time," in which he lamented the rise of Cartesian critical philosophy at the expense of the cultivation of imagination, prudence and eloquence. Vico discussed law and legal education as his primary example, and his oration therefore provides an incredible resource for our contemporary deliberations.

Part One considers the literature addressing the demise of legal professionalism …

Recruiting Sexual Minorities And People With Disabilities To Be Dean, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

As our day-to-day work lives make abundantly clear, a law faculty is a many-headed creature: an assortment of people with a variety of interests, strengths, foibles, personalities, and identities. Within the legal academy, a dominant consensus acknowledges that a strong faculty embodies diversity along multiple axes, including, for example, race, gender, religion, age, political ideology, research and teaching methodologies, and subject matter expertise.

The dean, however, stands alone, and stands above. Thus, issues of expectation, representation, comfort with and fear of difference operate quite differently when deans are selected, and when they do their jobs. The dean exercises authority over …