Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

How Law Students' Part-Time Legal Employment Can Help Employers Improve Their Own Writing Skills, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Professor Abrams authors a column, Writing it Right, in the Journal of the Missouri Bar. In a variety of contexts, the column stresses the fundamentals of quality legal writing — conciseness, precision, simplicity, and clarity.

Citation, Slavery, And The Law As Choice: Thoughts On Bluebook Rule 10.7.1(D), David J.S. Ziff

Articles

Today, more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, lawyers and judges continue to rely on antebellum decisions that tacitly or expressly approve of slavery. This reliance often occurs without any acknowledgement of the precedent’s immoral and legally dubious provenance. Modern use of these so-called “slave cases” was the subject of Professor Justin Simard’s 2020 article, Citing Slavery. In response to Professor Simard’s article, the latest edition of The Bluebook includes Rule 10.7.1(d), which requires authors to indicate parenthetically when a decision involves an enslaved person as a party or the property at issue. Unfortunately, Rule 10.7.1(d) …

Unbelievable: How Narrative Can Help Vulnerable Narrators Overcome Perceived Unreliability In The Legal System, Cathren Page

Articles

This article examines how advocates can champion vulnerable narrators’ truths. First, advocates must prime the audience by educating the audience about the ways the vulnerability manifests; this process helps to allay credibility questions. Second, advocates must reframe seemingly untrustworthy behavior by showing how the behavior is consistent with someone in the vulnerable narrator’s situation. Third, advocates must create what fiction writers call verisimilitude—a sense of reality—by including concrete details that logically fit together in the legal narrative. Finally, advocates must label the tactics commonly used to discredit vulnerable narrators so that the audience can see those tactics for what they …

Ssrn’S Impact On Citations To Legal Scholarship And How To Maximize It, Rob Wiley, Melanie Kanpp

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Persuasion Principles For Lawyers, Jarome E. Gautreaux

Mercer Law Review

Lawyers spend a lot of time trying to persuade others. In this, they are not unlike most every other human being. Whether one spouse is trying to get the other to attend a sporting event they normally wouldn’t enjoy, or a car salesperson is trying to convince a potential buyer to buy the latest model convertible, or a doctor is trying to get their patient to stop smoking, all of us engage in persuasion a large portion of the time. It isn’t a stretch to say that persuading others, or at least trying to, is part of the fabric of …

Reconceiving Argument Schemes As Descriptive And Practically Normative, Brian N. Larson, David Seth Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

We propose a revised definition of “argument scheme” that focuses on describing argumentative performances and normative assessments that occur within an argumentative context, the social context in which the scheme arises. Our premise-and-conclusion structure identifies the typical instantiation of an argument in the argumentative context, and our critical framework describes a set of normative assessments available to participants in the context, what we call practically normative assessments. We distinguish this practical normativity from the rationally or universally normative assessment that might be imposed from outside the argumentative context. Thus, the practical norms represented in an argument scheme may still be …

Norms Of Public Argumentation And The Ideals Of Correctness And Participation, Frank Zenker, Jan Albert Van Laar, Bianca Cepollaro, Anca Gâță, Martin Hinton, Colin Guthrie King, Brian N. Larson, Marcin Lewinski, Christoph Lumer, Steve Oswald, Maciej Pichlak, Blake D. Scott, Mariusz Urbanski, Jean H.M. Wagemans

Faculty Scholarship

Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. …

Centering Students’ Rhetorical Knowledge: The Community Of Inquiry As Formative Assessment, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

This essay describes an approach to peer review and classroom workshopping intended to develop a community of inquiry in the first-year law school classroom, center students’ own rhetorical knowledge, and establish the authority of students—especially minoritized students—as rhetorical agents. The technique described in this essay works from the presumption that each student who comes to law school comes with rich rhetorical experience. In other words, they have extensive experience constructing discourse suited to certain audiences and certain contexts. They use a variety of tools to construct such discourse, including linguistic registers (or styles) and rhetorical genres (such as the academic …

An Integrated Approach To Citation Literacy, Jaclyn Celebrezze

Presentations

This presentation explored how integrating citation literacy instruction into the fundamentals could lead to more durable learning for students and identify five quick methods to make it happen.

Table Of Contents And Masthead, Maribeth Beyer

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing Agency Rulemaking, Christopher J. Walker

Reviews

When it comes to understanding the political dynamics of agency rulemaking, the place to start is Rachel Potter’s book Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, about which the Yale Journal on Regulation published a blog symposium in 2019. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, Potter explores how agency officials—both career civil servants and political appointees—play a role in the rulemaking process and leverage procedural rules to help advance their preferred policy outcomes.

Formatting Legal Documents With Microsoft Word, Cardozo Law Library

Flyers 2022-2023

No abstract provided.

Cedaw Convention And Engendering Faculty Of Law's Curriculum Reinforcement: A Lesson Learnt From Indonesia, Iva Kasuma, Sulistyowati Irianto

Indonesian Journal of International Law

This research aims to describe the strategies used to eliminate discrimination against women through academic-based programs conducted in universities. This includes the International Law, a powerful reference for teaching material in legal education used to promote humanity. Presently, globalization of law is marked in the International Law-making process by delegates from various countries, which spreads to State parties through ratification with a significant impact on legal reform. A number of senior female professors have initiated the socialization and implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Convention). This was conducted through the ratification …

Table Of Contents And Masthead, Maribeth Beyer

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Luck Of The Draw Iii: Using Ai To Examine Decision‐Making In Federal Court Stays Of Removal, Sean Rehaag

All Papers

This article examines decision‐making in Federal Court of Canada immigration law applications for stays of removal, focusing on how the rates at which stays are granted depend on which judge decides the case. The article deploys a form of computational natural language processing, using a large‐language model machine learning process (GPT‐3) to extract data from online Federal Court dockets. The article reviews patterns in outcomes in thousands of stay of removal applications identified through this process and reveals a wide range in stay grant rates across many judges. The article argues that the Federal Court should take measures to encourage …

Reimagining Langdell’S Legacy: Puncturing The Equilibrium In Law School Pedagogy, Joy Kanwar, Rachel Gurvich, Danielle Tully, Laura Webb, Alexa Chew, Jane Cross

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: The Long Road To The Law : Kiron Ireland, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Feedback Loops: Feedback Fundamentals, Patrick Barry

Books

Learning how to give and receive feedback is fundamental to the development of every student and professional. Yet few of us are ever taught anything like “feedback skills.”

This book, which is the first in the Feedback Loops series, is designed to change that. Here is what students who have taken the University of Michigan Law School course on which the series is based have said about it:

“One of the most memorable and useful classes I have taken in law school!”

“Excellent, full stop.”

“This class was always a fun highlight of my week.”

Researching South African Government And Legal Information: Presentation For The 41st Annual Meeting Of The American Association Of Law Libraries, Sindiso Mnisiweeks, Yemisi Dina, Michelle Pearse, Marcelo Rodríguez

Librarian Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Editing And Advocacy, Patrick Barry

Books

Good editors don’t just see the sentence that was written. They see the sentence that might have been written. They know how to spot words that shouldn’t be included and summon up ones that haven’t yet appeared. Their value comes not just from preventing mistakes but from discovering new ways to improve a piece of writing’s style, structure, and overall impact.

This book— which is based on a popular course taught at the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and the UCLA School of Law— is designed to help you become one of those editors. …

Ok, Zoomer: Teaching Legal Research To Gen Z, Olivia R. Smith Schlinck

Library Staff Articles

Generation Z has entered law school. With each new generation comes new education preferences. While research on Gen Z in the legal academy has grown over the past few years, to date none deal explicitly with teaching legal research to Gen Z. This article connects Gen Z’s childhood and resulting peer personality to 10 tangible pedagogical changes for teaching legal research to Gen Z.

Locating Free And Low-Cost Secondary Sources In Michigan, Cody James

Law Librarian Scholarship

Secondary sources are all the legal resources that describe what the law is without actually having the force of law. For example, treatises, law review articles, and practice series are secondary sources while statutes, regulations, and cases are primary sources. Although secondary sources are not binding authority, they provide valuable, up-to-date insight and commentary about existing laws. These insights are especially useful when handling matters outside of an attorney’s usual areas of practice.

Unfortunately, secondary sources are not cheap — consider that a full set of Michigan Civil Jurisprudence has a retail cost of $25,119. That said, a lot of …

Table Of Contents

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Building A Culture Of Scholarship With New Clinical Teachers By Writing About Social Justice Lawyering, Susan Bennett, Binny Miller, Michelle Assad, Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds, Jessica Millward, Citlalli Ochoa, Charles Ross, Anne Schaufele, Caroline Wick

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

This Article is a collection of essays about teaching social justice lawyering, as seen through the eyes of eight practitioners-in-residence in the clinical program at American University’s Washington College of Law (“WCL”). They include: Michelle Assad, Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds, Jessica Millward, Citlalli Ochoa, Charles Ross, Anne Schaufele, and Caroline Wick. They teach in seven clinics, including the Civil Advocacy Clinic, the Criminal Justice Clinic, the Community Economic and Equity Development Clinic, the Disability Rights Law Clinic, the Immigrant Justice Clinic, the International Human Rights Law Clinic, and the Janet R. Spragens Federal Income Tax Clinic. We use the terms …

Restating The Law In The Shadow Of Codes: The Ali In Its Formative Era, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter recounts the American Law Institute’s (ALI’s) history in its formative era (1923–1945), drawing from archival sources to deepen existing accounts of the ALI’s self-definition as an ongoing institution. The history is more complex than it appears in prior accounts because institutional necessities—including funding—as well as multiple contingencies shaped both the ALI and its work. Likewise, the ALI’s signal work in this period, the Restatement, departed in significant ways from its original plan. Generating the revenues requisite to its ongoing existence required that the ALI partner with commercial publishers and, at their urging, separately publish Annotations for each Restatement …

Household Intimacy And Being Unmarried: Family Pluralism In The Novels Of Anthony Trollope, Linda C. Mcclain, Allison Anna Tait

Faculty Scholarship

Many critics rightfully claim that the marriage market and an inquiry into its innermost workings are at the heart of Anthony Trollope’s novels, but this Article argues that his novels also depict—on the periphery or sometimes just hiding in plain sight—a set of curiously nonmarital households. These households vary in form, but include widows and widowers living on their own, mothers and daughters living collectively, and male cousins sharing space and the work of daily living. Critics have debated whether Trollope was simply a realistic social historian—chronicling families as he found them— or whether he constructively used literary license to …

What Mcculloch V. Maryland Got Wrong: The Original Meaning Of 'Necessary' Is Not 'Useful', 'Convenient', Or 'Rational', Steven Calabresi, Gary S. Lawson, Elise Kostial

Faculty Scholarship

McCulloch v. Maryland, echoing Alexander Hamilton nearly thirty years earlier, claimed of the word “necessary” in the Necessary and Proper Clause: “If reference be had to its use, in the common affairs of the world, or in approved authors, we find that it frequently imports that one thing is convenient, or useful . . . to another.” Modern case law has translated that understanding into a rational-basis test that treats the issue of necessity as all but nonjusticiable; The Supreme Court has never found a congressional law unconstitutional on the ground that it was not “necessary . . . …

References To Classic American Novels In Advocacy And Judicial Opinions, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

With this Journal of the Missouri Bar article, the survey of courts’ cultural markers returns to literature – particularly American literature. Besides “To Kill a Mockingbird,” federal and state courts in their written opinions have cited and quoted from other classic novels written by American authors, including "Catch-22", "Moby-Dick", and "The Grapes of Wrath".