Legal Education Commons^™

Poetic Justice: Connecting The Modern American Prosecutor To Her Rhetorical Roots, Michael Caves

All Dissertations

Poetic Justice: Connecting the Modern American Prosecutor to her Rhetorical Roots explores the gap between rhetoric and the American prosecutor, to eventually advocate for a more creative, inventive trial practice for prosecutors that embraces the spirit and methods of narrative, poetics, and Ulmeric mystories, with the prosecutor’s unique ethical obligations forming the basis of a new prosecutor’s rhetoric. This research opens with an autoethnographic account of the author’s own path to criminal prosecution, to give the reader a sense of the author’s ethos, to identify the shortcomings of rhetorical training in law school pedagogy, and to outline the rhetorical …

Still Writing At The Master’S Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric In Legal Writing For A “Woke” Legal Academy, Teri A. Mcmurtry-Chubb

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

When the author wrote Writing At the Master’s Table: Reflections on Theft, Criminality, and Otherness in the Legal Writing Profession almost 10 years ago, her aim was to bring a Critical Race Theory/Feminism (CRTF) analysis to scholarship about the marginalization of White women law professors of legal writing. She focused on the convergence of race, gender, and status to highlight the distinct inequities women of color face in entering their ranks. The author's concern was that barriers to entry for women of color made it less likely that the existing legal writing professorate, predominantly White and female, would problematize the …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.

Exploring Diversity With A "Culture Box" In First-Year Legal Writing, Ann N. Sinsheimer

Articles

Studying law is in many ways like studying another culture. Students often feel as though they are learning a new language with unfamiliar vocabulary and different styles of communication. Throughout their legal education, students are also exposed to a profession comprised of unique traditions and expectations. As a result, learning law takes time and energy. It can be both engaging and frustrating and may even challenge some of students’ values and belief systems. To ease her students’ transition to law school, the author starts her course each year with a “culture box” exercise, which encourages students to examine who they …

Celebrating Classical Rhetoric & Building Contemporary Law, Brian Larson

Brian Larson

Critiquing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Frank's Plea And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

This article explains how, from 1920 to 1960, the role, or persona, of the law professor in the United States remained the situs of considerable rhetorical controversy that the role had been in the fifty years before 1920. On one hand, lawyers used rhetoric to promote a persona, that of a scholar, appropriate for the law professor situated within the university, a context suitable for the professionalization of law. On the other hand, different lawyers like Judge Jerome Frank used rhetoric to critique, often in a scathing manner, the scholar persona and put forth their own persona, that of a …

The Genre Discovery Approach: Preparing Law Students To Write Any Legal Document, Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Employers bemoan that new lawyers cannot write. Professors teaching upper-level law school courses wonder why students cannot apply their first-year (1L) legal writing skills. Law students worry that their legal writing courses have not prepared them to write all of the document types they will encounter in practice. In response to these complaints and fears, law school administrators push legal writing professors to squeeze more and more different document types into first- year legal writing courses.

I argue that the “more documents” strategy does not adequately prepare practice-ready legal writers. We cannot inoculate our students against every conceivable genre that …

Constructing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Langdell, Ames, And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

This article explains how lawyers like Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames, a disciple of Langdell, employed rhetoric between 1870, when Langdell assumed the deanship at Harvard Law School, and 1920, when law had emerged as a credible academic field in the United States, to construct a persona, that of a scholar, appropriate for the law professor situated within the university. To do so, the article contextualizes the rhetoric with historical background on the law professor and legal education, draws upon rhetorical theory to give an overview of persona theory and persona analysis as a means of conducting the …

Professor Kingsfield In Conflict: Rhetorical Constructions Of The U.S. Law Professor Persona(E), Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

At least since the 1960s, a “‘two cultures’ phenomenon” has become quite apparent within the legal field in the United States. On one hand, some lawyers, usually those within the university, have been more academically oriented, and, on the other hand, other lawyers, usually those in legal practice or sitting on the bench, have been more pragmatically oriented. Problems arise when these two groups begin to talk differently from each other. In a way, the field of law has developed into at least two different legal professions, and, not surprisingly, scholars and practitioners have experienced tension because of this situation. …

Beyond Aristotle: Alternative Rhetorics And The Conflict Over The U.S. Law Professor Persona(E), Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

Prior research has sketched out a picture in which, at least since 1960 and continuing to the present, advocates of the differing personae, or roles, of the U.S. law professor have been sharply divided over such personae. Lawyers have advocated two major personae for the law professor to perform. One major persona is that of the scholar, who is a full-time teacher, researcher, and sometimes public servant, but who often has limited practical experience. The other major persona is that of the practitioner, who has a substantial number of years of practice at the bar and is prepared for hands-on …

Studying And Teaching "Law As Rhetoric": A Place To Stand, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This article proposes that law students may find a better fit within the legal culture of argument if they are introduced to rhetorical alternatives to counter narrowly formalist and realist perspectives on how the law works and how judges decide cases. The article makes a two-part argument: first, introducing law students to rhetorical alternatives allows them to envision their role as lawyers as constructive, effective, and imaginative while grounded in law, language, and reason. Second, offering rhetorical alternatives allows law professors to enrich their own study and teaching and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the law school classroom …

The Rhetoric Of Catharsis And Change: Law School Autobiography As A Nonfiction Law And Literature Subgenre, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

To date, little scholarship, if any, has addressed the autobiographies of law students, which have appeared in law review articles and books since at least the late 1970s. This shortcoming of law and literature scholarship in the nonfiction genre of autobiography is problematic. In the interest of understanding diverse perspectives in the legal community, legal scholars with autobiographical interests ought to give attention to the autobiographies of different individuals in this community, including the law students who will be the future members of the profession. Also, this shortcoming leaves a gap in the narrative discourse of the law since lawyers …

The Ten Commandments As Secular Historic Artifact Or Sacred Religious Text: Using Modrovich V. Allegheny County To Illustrate How Words Create Reality, Ann N. Sinsheimer

Articles

In his essay, The 'Ideograph: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology', Michael Calvin McGee proposes that our system of beliefs is shaped through and expressed by words. We are consciously and unconsciously conditioned and controlled by the words we hear and use. Words carry ideology and convey and create meaning. Like Chinese characters, words are 'ideographs that 'signify' and 'contain' a unique ideological commitment', that is frequently unquestioned. McGee also suggests that by understanding that a single word can carry ideology and that ideology can be expressed in a single word, we are better able to expose and evaluate ideology …

Applying New Rhetoric To Legal Discourse: The Ebb And Flow Of Reader And Writer, Text And Context, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

No abstract provided.