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Full-Text Articles in Legal Education
Problems With The Structure Of Casebooks And Instruction, John Makdisi
Problems With The Structure Of Casebooks And Instruction, John Makdisi
Cleveland State Law Review
The case method of instruction has served to instruct generations of students from the time of its introduction by Christopher Langdell at the Harvard Law School. It has much to recommend it inasmuch as the lawyers who have been trained to think, analyze and solve problems by analyzing cases include some of the best minds in the country. However, this time-honored method of instruction contains some major flaws and it is time that we reexamine a pedagogic approach satirized for its punishing role in The Paper Chase. A pedagogic approach to law training that focuses on problem solving is not …
The Justice Mission Of American Law Schools, David R. Barnhizer
The Justice Mission Of American Law Schools, David R. Barnhizer
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
The scholar's dilemma, particularly those scholars in disciplines such as law that are irreversibly linked to the operation of power and implicit willingness to do violence if necessary, is that societies require shared consensus far more than truth. Negative truths about the scientifically unsupportable premises of our fundamental beliefs might interfere with the quality of the operating consensus, at least for those satisfied with their lot. The stark truth about opportunity, fairness, racial and gender bias, about who receives economic benefits and so forth would not be knowledge that “sets us free” but “sets us at each other's throats”. If …
Law Schools Should Be About Justice Too, Henry Rose
Law Schools Should Be About Justice Too, Henry Rose
Cleveland State Law Review
Millions of low and middle-income Americans face legal problems every day. Most cannot afford an attorney. What is remarkable about these legal problems is that they are ignored by legal educators. American law schools, the training ground for our lawyers, do not focus on the civil legal problems of low and middle income persons. American law students are taught to focus on the legal problems of persons or entities able to pay for legal services. Not only are the common legal problems of Americans not studied in our law schools, the maldistribution of legal services in the society is barely …
Nurturing The Impulse For Justice, Lynne Henderson
Nurturing The Impulse For Justice, Lynne Henderson
Cleveland State Law Review
By dwelling on doctrine and appellate case analysis we too often lose sight of the underlying assumptions behind the law and the social consequences of the law. By doing so we fail to give students even a glimmer of understanding as to what they need to know to fight injustice effectively. We spend much classroom time rationalizing the real and evading difficult questions of social justice. We do almost nothing to help our students develop any sense of justice or injustice or ways of identifying how the law produces justice and injustice. Let me work through an example of how …
An Agenda For Social Justice Through Law, Norman Dorsen
An Agenda For Social Justice Through Law, Norman Dorsen
Cleveland State Law Review
It will not surprise many of you that, in defining social justice, I start from the policies of the ACLU. These value free expression, religious liberty, separation of church and state, due process, privacy, and the fair treatment of those that need special protection such as people with disabilities, poor people, gay people, nonwhite people, and women. In general, that is what I have in mind when I think about social justice. But the topic today is the agenda for social justice through law. We are not talking about theory or doctrine, but action. The title of this conference, "The …
Building Bridges Between Theory And Practice, Scholarship And Activism, Elizabeth M. Schneider
Building Bridges Between Theory And Practice, Scholarship And Activism, Elizabeth M. Schneider
Cleveland State Law Review
The recent events of the last few weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings concerning Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, and Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, have shaken the nation and I'm sure all of us in this room. These events underscore the urgency and challenge of the justice mission of legal education. In these remarks, I will briefly explore a critical dimension of this mission, the building of bridges between theory and practice, scholarship and activism, in American legal education. Our presence here signifies our commitment to the idea that law schools have a …
The Distinction Between Lawyers As Advocates And As Activists; And The Role Of The Law School Dean In Facilitating The Justice Mission, James Douglas
The Distinction Between Lawyers As Advocates And As Activists; And The Role Of The Law School Dean In Facilitating The Justice Mission, James Douglas
Cleveland State Law Review
When David Barnhizer invited me to be involved in the Justice Mission conference I jumped at the opportunity; because justice is an issue that is extremely important to me, especially being a person of color in America. In presenting my ideas about the justice mission, I will be talking about two distinct concerns. One is the role of the law school dean in facilitating the justice mission in the law schools. The second is related but applies even more broadly since it draws upon the experiences of lawyers both in their roles as practitioners and as social activists. The point …
Clinical Scholarship And The Justice Mission, Robert D. Dinerstein
Clinical Scholarship And The Justice Mission, Robert D. Dinerstein
Cleveland State Law Review
To many people, the relationship between clinical programs and the justice mission of American law schools is so clear as to be self-evident. These programs may pursue justice on behalf of individual clients or for groups of clients through class-action or other impact litigation. Moreover, clinical teachers frequently discuss with their students the need for the latter to serve justice in their legal careers, whether as the principal focus of their legal work or through pro bono publico activities. Indeed, for many law students, the law clinic may be the only place in which concerns about justice are discussed and, …
Advocacy Strategies In Social Welfare Policy: Homelessness, Barbara Sard
Advocacy Strategies In Social Welfare Policy: Homelessness, Barbara Sard
Cleveland State Law Review
I currently direct the homelessness unit at Greater Boston Legal Services after having been a welfare lawyer for fifteen years. When I first started teaching at Harvard about six years ago, I taught a course on Welfare Law. There is a value in teaching homelessness law as a discrete topic rather than lumping it under the traditional topics of welfare law or housing law. Initially, when I started teaching at Harvard, my goal was to impress the students with the fact that a poverty law subject like Welfare Law was as complicated doctrinally as anything else that they might learn. …
The Justice Mission Of The Law Schools, Linda Greene
The Justice Mission Of The Law Schools, Linda Greene
Cleveland State Law Review
A Conference on the Justice Mission of the Law Schools is timely, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words about being “a drum major for justice” offer to us a vision of that mission. They demand that we reexamine the role of the law school to determine whether we have taken into account the question of justice while ordering our institutional priorities. The title of this conference implicitly asks whether we can continue to reproduce legal culture without evaluating the impact of that culture on both the powerful as well as the powerless. Legal educational institutions cannot right all historical wrongs …
Bad News, Good News: The Justice Mission Of U.S. Law Schools, Haywood Burns
Bad News, Good News: The Justice Mission Of U.S. Law Schools, Haywood Burns
Cleveland State Law Review
I attempt to address what is wrong with law schools and how to fix it. First of all, with respect to the issue of the justice mission, one of the things that is wrong is that most law schools do not even recognize they have a mission. Secondly, there is the issue of what gets taught in the curriculum. Furthermore, the justice mission calls for us to reexamine the way in which we approach the question of admissions. The question not only whom do we teach but who teaches is also of great concern to us. How we teach has …
The Justice Of Life And Death: Problems And Perspectives In Teaching Capital Punishment Law, Victor Streib
The Justice Of Life And Death: Problems And Perspectives In Teaching Capital Punishment Law, Victor Streib
Cleveland State Law Review
Please use this brief sketch to think along with me as I struggle with my continuing problems in teaching an upper-level law school course on capital punishment. Although I have been teaching it for six years, I continue to have serious doubts about my ability to do it. If I can intrigue you enough with my quandary, maybe I can squeeze out of our encounter a few insights to allow me to do better, or at least to keep me searching for answers. In return, maybe I can suggest some limitations on the justice mission of law faculty. Should the …
Research And The Justice Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Tushnet
Research And The Justice Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Tushnet
Cleveland State Law Review
There are some obvious things to say about research and the justice mission of law schools, and many other contributors to this discussion have said them. For example, jurisprudence lies at the core of the classical legal curriculum, and-at least in the contemporary law school-definitions of justice are part of the jurisprudence syllabus. Because the concept of justice is not self-defining, conceptual inquiry into the meaning of justice, a traditional mode of legal research, is recurrently needed. In this way, research is tightly linked to the justice mission of law schools. In this piece, I move from global concerns--jurisprudence in …
Hidden Messages In The Required First-Year Law School Curriculum, Leslie Bender
Hidden Messages In The Required First-Year Law School Curriculum, Leslie Bender
Cleveland State Law Review
The traditional required first-year law school curriculum transmits powerful hidden messages. The hidden messages contained within this required core tell students what is most important for all lawyers to know. I am going to suggest a proposed required first year curriculum as a heuristic model for examining hidden messages in curricula generally. The proposed curriculum tells students from the day they receive their registration packets that issues of justice, truth, equality and freedom are important to all lawyers. By the organization of the curriculum, we tell them that these values (or their absence) animate doctrine and process, rather than the …
Advice For The New Law Professor: A View From The Trenches, Susan J. Becker
Advice For The New Law Professor: A View From The Trenches, Susan J. Becker
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
A decade ago, Professor Douglas Whaley published an essay that offers comfort and advice to those commencing the metamorphosis from practitioners, judicial clerks, and students into professors of law. The purpose of this article is twofold: to offer a confirmation from the trenches of many of Professor Whaley's observations and to supplement his suggestions with some of my own.
Teaching About Justice And Social Contributions, Talbot D'Alemberte
Teaching About Justice And Social Contributions, Talbot D'Alemberte
Cleveland State Law Review
I have tried to state, in very brief outline, my case that the law schools and the large law firms have thrived on the “Paper Chase” model and that they are not fulfilling the mission which I will, without apology, call the seminary mission. They are not teaching us about justice. Each of us is at this conference because we are concerned with the way legal education operates today and most of us believe that it can be improved. Before this is over, I hope you design a grand agenda for change and I feel privileged to help begin that …
Teaching Morality, Robert A. Solomon
Teaching Morality, Robert A. Solomon
Cleveland State Law Review
Students come to law school filled with passion, with morality, with a sense of justice, and we, the law school itself, spends three years doing our best to crush them under the weight of the rule of law instead of helping them to integrate their ideas and values with the law. To the extent students are looking at clinics, they are not only looking at them as a means of touching reality. They are looking at clinics as a furlough from prison. In this conference we are talking about our goal as being that of trying to teach justice. I …
On Bringing The Justice Mission Conference Back Home, Marjorie A. Silver
On Bringing The Justice Mission Conference Back Home, Marjorie A. Silver
Cleveland State Law Review
The Justice Mission Conference had a special resonance for me. The Conference was an affirmation of the values that have led me to Touro, as well as a springboard for changes in my own teaching. The Conference nurtured inclinations and aspirations to furthering social justice through our teaching, our scholarship, and the way we relate to our students, to each other and to the world at large. The papers in this symposium memorialize the Conference's richness of insight and experience. The purpose of this essay is to reflect on the immediate and potential ongoing impact the Conference had on me …