Legal Education Commons^™

The 'Double Feature' Of Hearsay And The Confrontation Clause, Plus Coming Attractions, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

Class handout outlining the interaction between the evidence rule of hearsay and the Confrontation Clause of the Constitution.

Health Law’S Coherence Anxiety, Theodore Ruger

All Faculty Scholarship

Academic health law is often said to suffer from a "law of the horse" problem, or, more particularly, to lack various dimensions of theoretical coherence. In conventional legal academic discourse, the "coherence" ideal prioritizes a cluster of attributes, all of which health law lacks: sparse conceptual singularity, a reductionist focus on particular legal forms, institutional centralization, and historical determinism and orderly development of a legal field. Health law is a singularly poor fit with this traditional model of field coherence. It is a mishmash of various legal forms, applied by divergent and often colliding institutions, and has developed much more …

The Ethical And Legal Basis For Student Practice In Clinical Education In The United States And Japan: A Comparative Analysis, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Clinical legal education is currently undergoing a surge of interest and development in Japan. This raises numerous opportunities as well as difficulties. One of the most vexing issues concerns the scope of work a clinic student in Japan can do. This issue is particularly difficult given that in Japan there are currently no "student practice rules" so common in the United States.

The norms and rules governing what activities law students can perform in the United States might assist those interested in clinical education in Japan as they work through these issues. This article will attempt to do this. I …

The Practice Of Teaching, The Practice Of Law: What Does It Mean To Practice Responsibly?, Howard Lesnick

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Roger D. Groot: Always Mr. Groot, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Integrating Practical Training And Professional Legal Education: Three Questions For Three Systems, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

This address deals with integrating theory and practice in practical professional training in US, German and Japanese systems of legal education.

Exorcising The Exercised: A Response To Professor Gordon, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

I have always welcomed honest criticism of my work, as I hope other scholars do of theirs. If Robert W. Gordon's lengthy review of my book, Trembling in the Ivory Tower: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure, were the launching pad for a thoughtful essay on postmodern critical legal studies, I would not feel compelled to respond. Unfortunately, despite (and perhaps because of) Gordon's considerable notoriety as a CLS theorist, his disagreement with what I perceive to be the primary ills of the modern academy seriously misreads both the substance and satire of my book. More troubling still …

Foreword, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Thomas F. Eagleton was an original. Many found him to be one of the most compelling and admirable people they had ever encountered. That was certainly my experience as I came to know him during the last few years of his life. And he certainly made a strong, favorable impression on the students we taught together at Saint Louis University School of Law in our seminar on the Presidency and the Constitution.

Educating Lawyers Now And Then: Two Carnegie Critiques Of The Common Law And The Case Method, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

The 2007 Carnegie Foundation report on legal education, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, is eerily reminiscent of the Foundation's 1914 Report, The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law School. This article compares the two reports. It commends the 1914 report for its broad comparative civil/common law perspective that is unsurpassed to this day. It shows how the two reports view the case method similarly, but with significantly different emphases. The 2007 report counts the case method as academic, while the 1914 report sees it as practical. It shows how the two reports, while …

Musical Chairs And Tall Buildings: Teaching Poverty Law In The 21st Century, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Too Long Neglected: Expanding Curricular Support For Public Interest Lawyering, Louis S. Rulli

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Next "New Wave": Law Genre Documentaries, Lawyering In Support Of The Creative Process, And Visual Legal Advocacy, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

Unlike law-related feature films, law-related documentary or nonfiction films have rarely been the subject of legal scholarship, nor have they been extensively used as teaching tools throughout the law school curriculum. The lack of interest in such films is explained by a number of popular misconceptions about documentaries, such as their “genre-lessness” or the lack of common threads running through the films that facilitate critical reception; the elusive nature of documentary truth; the films’ fixation on victimization and by necessity the exploitation of the films’ subjects; and the lack of practical payoff for law students and lawyers from critically studying …

Open Access In Law Teaching: A New Approach To Legal Education, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

The "open access" movement seeks to change our approach to the distribution of scholarship in the fields of science, medicine, the social sciences, and law. This Essay argues for the application of these principles to legal education itself. Open access would mean greater flexibility, interaction, and innovation in the creation of course materials. It would lead to new teaching methods and new forms of feedback between student and professor. Open access centers on particular legal subject areas could facilitate national and international collaboration. Ultimately, the open access law school would ameliorate the growing standardization and commodification of legal education by …

Two Rules For Better Writing, Amy E. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

'"You Have Been In Afghanistan": A Discourse On The Van Alstyne Method, Garrett Epps

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay pays tribute to William Van Alstyne, one of our foremost constitutional scholars, by applying the methods of textual interpretation he laid out in a classic essay, "Interpreting This Constitution: On the Unhelpful Contribution of Special Theories of Judicial Review." I make use of the graphical methods Van Alstyne has applied to the general study of the First Amendment to examine the Supreme Court's recent decisions in the context of the Free Exercise Clause, in particular the landmark case of "Employment Division v. Smith". The application of Van Alstyne's use of the burden of proof as an interpretive tool …

Using Our Brains: What Cognitive Science And Social Psychology Teach Us About Teaching Law Students To Make Ethical, Professionally Responsible, Choices, Alan Lerner

All Faculty Scholarship

Throughout our lives, below the level of our consciousness, each of us develops values, intuitions, expectations, and needs that powerfully affect both our perceptions and our judgments. Placed in situations in which we feel threatened, or which implicate our values, our brains, relying on those implicitly learned, emotionally weighted, memories, may react automatically, without reflection or the opportunity for reflective interdiction. We can "downshift," to primitive, self-protective problem solving techniques. Because these processes operate below the radar of our consciousness, automatic, "emotional" reaction, rather than thoughtful, reasoned analysis may drive our responses to stressful questions of ethics and professional responsibility.

Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …

An Experiment In Integrating Critical Theory And Clinical Education, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

Critical theory is important in live-client clinical teaching as a means to achieve the pedagogical goals of clinical education. Feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and poverty law theory serve as useful frameworks to enable students to deconstruct assumptions they, persons within institutions, and broader society make about the students' clients and their lives. Critical theory highlights the importance of looking for both the "obvious and non-obvious relationships of domination." Thus, critical theory informs students of the presence and importance of alternative voices that challenge the dominant discourse. When student attorneys ignore or are unaware of such voices, other voices …

Ignacio Gomez Palacio, With A Note In My Hand (El Pagaro En La Mano), Garrett Epps

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Telling Stories About Health Insurance: Using New Films In The Classroom, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

In keeping with the Symposium theme, "The Mass Media's Influence on Health Law and Policy," this essay is designed to share my experience using clips from three recent popular films as a method of enhancing coverage and discussion of legal and policy issues surrounding the private health insurance system, and to provide some practical advice for others interested in doing the same. Specific topics include the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance, continuation of private coverage under COBRA and HIPAA, public health care programs, physician incentives, the uninsured and access to care and legal remedies for claim denial. This essay builds …

The Five Stages Of Law Review Submission, Brannon P. Denning, Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

"The Five Stages of Law Review Submissions," is a humorous look at the law review submissions process from the author's perspective. My colleague Miriam Cherry and I suggest that the process of submitting to law reviews tracks Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's "five stages of grief."

The Future Of The Casebook: An Argument For An Open-Source Approach, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

Despite dramatic technological change, the thick, attractively bound casebook remains ensconced as the written centerpiece of legal education. That will soon change - but its replacement has not been established. This paper argues that the legal academy should take this opportunity to implement an open source approach to future course materials. Guided by analysis and examples of commons-based peer production such as open source software, professors could establish electronic commons casebooks with a myriad of materials for every course. These joint databases would unshackle individual creativity while engendering collaboration on levels previously impossible. Although there may be concerns that such …

Approaches To Brown V. Board Of Education: Some Notes On Teaching A Seminal Case, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

During the past year, dozens of American law schools commemorated the
fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.[1] The attention was
appropriate because Brown is one of the Supreme Court’s seminal decisions.
By all appearances, the fiftieth anniversary of Brown attracted much more
attention than did, say, the 200th anniversary of Marbury v. Madison [2] in 2003
or the centennial of Lochner v. New York [3] this year. Brown’s unique
significance resides in part in the fact that it changed America’s constitutional norm regarding race, our most embarrassing and vexing problem. In effectively overturning the doctrine of Plessy v. …

The Pimple On Adonis's Nose: A Dialogue On The Concept Of Merit In The Affirmative Action Debate, Tobias Barrington Wolff, Robert Paul Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

Efforts at progressive educational reform in general, and affirmative action in particular, frequently encounter a rhetorically powerful objection: Merit. The story of merit proclaims that high-achieving applicants - those who have already made effective use of educational opportunities in the past and demonstrated a likelihood of being able to do so in the future - enjoy a morally superior claim in the distribution of scarce educational resources. Past achievement, in other words, entitles an applicant to a superior education. This moral framework of merit serves as a constant counterpoint in debates over affirmative action, including those contained in the Court's …

The New Japanese Law Schools: Putting The Professional Into Legal Education, James Maxeiner, Keiichi Yamanaka

All Faculty Scholarship

In April 2004, more than sixty law schools began operation in Japan. Legal education, previously treated as a combination of undergraduate education in law and extra-university training in professional skills, will now be concentrated in new professional law schools. The reforms of Japanese legal education are intended both to produce more attorneys in a nation that has a shortage of legally trained professionals, and to help increase the role of law in Japanese society generally.

In order for Japan's new Jaw schools to achieve their educational objectives, they must successfully address a host of conceptual, pedagogical and organizational challenges. Foremost …

The Rule Of Law In The Reform Of Legal Education: Teaching The Legal Mind In Japanese Law Schools, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

• a. The Rule of Law is at the heart of the present legal reform.
• b. There is an international consensus about basic elements of the Rule of Law.
• c. Legal methods are central to the Rule of Law. But different legal methods are used to realize the Rule of Law.
• d. Teaching legal methods, i.e., teaching to think like a lawyer, is at the heart of that which is professional in legal education.
• e. The present legal reform invites Japanese law schools to teach legal methods.

A Tax Teacher Tries Law And (Dramatic) Literature, Jeffrey G. Sherman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Leadership Opportunities Hiding In Plain View (With Harold J. Krent), Ronald W. Staudt

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Embracing The Writing-Centered Legal Process, Suzanne Ehrenberg

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Leadership Opportunities Hiding In Plain View (With Ronald W. Staudt), Harold J. Krent

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.