Law Commons^™

There's A Pennoyer In My Foyer: Civil Procedure According To Dr. Seuss, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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This is what it purports to be: a Seussian take on civil procedure. It’s a short, fun essay that covers (1) the iron triangle of civil procedure - the role of lawyers, judges, and juries, and (2) prominent civil procedure doctrines, such as personal jurisdiction, Erie, pleading, discovery, and joinder.

Where Have All The (Legal) Stories Gone?, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

From Imperial Scholar To Imperial Student: Minimizing Bias In Article Evaluation By Law Reviews, Rachel J. Anderson

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This Article is intended to serve as a roadmap for law professors and law review editors alike in their efforts to find a better way for students to evaluate articles. Further, this Article aims to offer low-cost ways to improve the institution of student-run law reviews by strengthening editors' evaluation skills and processes. This Article is divided into three main parts. Part II of this Article, Manifestations of Systemic Bias, develops a theory of the safe-dissent continuum and employs this theory to determine whether there is empirical support for claims of bias in article evaluation and the legal discourse. Part …

The Food Stays In The Kitchen: Everything I Needed To Know About Statutory Interpretation I Learned By The Time I Was Nine, Hillel Y. Levin

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What happens when kids and their parents interpret laws like lawyers and judges? Where and why does interpretation go off the rails?

Based on a true story, this piece starts with a proclamation by Mother, the Supreme Lawmaker, that "no food may be eaten outside the kitchen." What follows is a series of rulings by Judges - father, babysitter, grandma (a liberal jurist, of course), etc. - who, using traditional tools of interpretation, eventually declare it to mean that all food may be eaten outside of the kitchen. Ultimately, the supreme lawmaker reacts and clarifies.

The piece is meant to …

Teaching Sicko, Elizabeth Weeks

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This article provides insights in how to make up cancelled law classes to ensure compliance with American Bar Association accreditation instructional hours requirements. How to cover the missed course content. How to find mutually agreeable make-up class times and locations with a group of busy, upper-level law students. Faced with the prospect of having to make up two hours each of my Health Care Financing and Regulation course and my Public Health Law seminar, I turned to the teacher's little helper: the DVD player

A Litigation-Oriented Approach To Teaching Federal Courts, Michael Wells

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The traditional focus of the course on Federal Courts has been the study of highly abstract principles of separation of powers and federalism. This paper argues that most students are better served by a course that focuses on what lawyers need to know in order to litigate issues regarding the types of disputes federal courts may address and the division of authority between federal and state courts. With that aim in mind, the paper suggests that the course should focus largely on the opportunities and obstacles faced by lawyers seeking to advance federal constitutional or statutory claims in the federal …

How Embedded Knowledge Structures Affect Judicial Decision Making: An Analysis Of Metaphor, Narrative, And Imagination In Child Custody Disputes, Linda L. Berger

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We live in a time of radically changing conceptions of family and of the relationships possible between children and parents. Though undergoing "a sea-change," family law remains tethered to culturally embedded stories and symbols. While so bound, family law will fail to serve individual families and a society whose family structures diverge sharply by education, race, class, and income.

This article advances a critical rhetorical analysis of the interaction of metaphor and narrative within the specific context of child custody disputes. Its goal is to begin to examine how these embedded knowledge structures affect judicial decision making generally; more specifically, …

Teaching Problem-Solving And Preventive Law Skills Through International Labour And Employment Law, Ruben J. Garcia

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This essay describes how problem-solving and preventive law principles apply in the teaching of international labor and employment law. This is because the subject itself crosses disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Students are taught about the importance of the lawyer's role as a counselor, rather than simply a litigator, which is at the center of the model of the lawyer as a problem solver.

Three Ways Of Looking At A Health Law And Literature Class, Jennifer Bard, Thomas W. Mayo, Stacey A. Tovino

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The authors of this Article participated in a panel at the American Society of Law, Ethics & Medicine Conference in 2008 that discussed the use of literary materials in law school to teach medical ethics (and related matters) in a law school setting. Each author comes at the topic from a different perspective based on his or her own experience and background. This Article and the panel on which it was based reflect views on how literature can play a valuable role in helping law students, as well as medical students, understand important legal and ethical issues and concepts in …

Vico And Imagination: An Ingenious Approach To Educating Lawyers With Semiotic Sensibility, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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Law is a specialized semiotic realm, but lawyers generally are ignorant of this fact. Lawyers may manage meaning, but they also are managed by meaning. Seemingly trapped by the weight of pre-existing signs, their attempts to manage these meanings generally are limited to technical interventions and instrumentalist strategies. Signs have power over lawyers because they are embedded in narratives, a semiotic economy that confronts the lawyer as ‘‘given’’ even though it is dynamic and constantly under construction. Most lawyers do not make meaning through legal narratives; rather, they parrot bits of the controlling narratives in response to certain problems. Because …