Legal Education Commons^™

Dr. King, Bull Connor, And Persuasive Narratives, Shaun B. Spencer

Faculty Publications

This article describes an in-class exercise that illustrates the use of persuasive narrative techniques in a U.S. Supreme Court decision. The article first describes the background to the Supreme Court’s decision in Walker v. City of Birmingham. Next, the article examines persuasive narrative techniques through the lens of an in-class exercise in which students identify the Justices’ narrative devices and consider how those devices preview the Justices’ legal arguments. Finally, the article describes why the Walker case and the exercise are valuable not only to teach persuasive narratives, but also to raise broader issues of lawyering and social justice.

Popular Culture As A Lens On Legal Professionalism, Alex Scherr, Hillary Farber

Scholarly Works

Why use art to teach lawyering?' Despite divergences in method and intention, the two disciplines overlap. If the prevalence of lawyers in movies, television, literature, and even humor means anything, popular culture remains fascinated with lawyers. Our practices, our ethics, and our professional personae serve as a mine for image and narrative, a target for cultural critique, and a catalyst for expression. Not surprisingly, images of lawyers in cartoons, film, television, and literature offer unique opportunities to teach and explore professionalism. The proliferation of lawyer images in popular culture provides an array of material ranging from career choice to particular …

Yale Kamisar The Teacher, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

I first heard Yale Kamisar's name in the spring of 1977 while deciding where to go to law school. The then Dean of Admissions at Michigan suggested I call a graduate practicing law near me in upstate New York. The graduate eloquently endorsed Michigan. But what impressed me most was his statement, "When you go to Michigan you must be sure to take a course from a professor named Yale Kamisar. That course changed the way I thought about law. Every day we'd go to class and talk about interesting cases and I was always confused. But at the very …

Rhetoric, Advocacy And Ethics: Reflections On Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Stephen A. Newman

Articles & Chapters

The rhetorical skill necessary to speaking and writing persuasively may be studied with great profit by exploring realms of knowledge far from the courtroom and the law office. Literature naturally comes to mind as a rich resource for the study of persuasion. For this essay, I have chosen a well-known set of speeches that appear in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to illustrate various aspects of persuasion.

In the play's most riveting scene, Marcus Brutus and Mark Antony speak before a crowd of Romans, giving their opposing views of the assassination of Caesar. Brutus claims justification for his and his co-conspirators' …