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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Revisiting A Classic: Duncan Kennedy's Legal Education And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy The Ghost In The Law School: How Duncan Kennedy Caught The Hierarchy Zeitgeist But Missed The Point, Steve Sheppard
Steve Sheppard
In his manifesto, Duncan Kennedy aptly identified hierarchies within legal scholarship and the legal profession, but his conclusion--hierarchies in law are wrong and must be resisted--is misplaced. Kennedy’s Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System, claims law schools breed a hierarchical system, where rank plays an important part in how law schools relate to each other; how faculty members relate to each other and to students; and how students relate to other students. This system trains students to accept and prepare for their place within the hierarchy of the legal profession. According to Kennedy, such …
An Informal History Of How Law Schools Evaluate Students, With A Predictable Emphasis On Law School Exams, Steve Sheppard
An Informal History Of How Law Schools Evaluate Students, With A Predictable Emphasis On Law School Exams, Steve Sheppard
Steve Sheppard
This story of the evolution of legal evaluations from the seventeenth century to the close of the twentieth depicts English influences on American law student evaluations, which have waned in the twentieth century with the advent of course-end examinations. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English examinations given to conclude a legal degree were relatively ceremonial exercises in which performance was often based on the demonstration of rote memory. As examination processes evolved, American law schools adopted essay evaluations from their English counterparts. Examinees in the nineteenth century were given a narrative, requiring the recognition of particularly appropriate legal doctrines, enunciation of the …