Law Commons^™

The Trouble With Categories: What Theory Can Teach Us About The Doctrine-Skills Divide, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

We might not need another article decrying the doctrine/skills dichotomy. That conversation seems increasingly old and tired. But like it or not, in conversations about the urgent need to reform legal education, the dichotomy’s entailments confront us at every turn. Is there something more to be said? Perhaps surprisingly, yes. We teach our students to examine language carefully, to question received categories, and to understand legal questions in light of their history and theory. Yet when we talk about the doctrine/skills divide, we seem to forget our own instruction.

This article does not exactly take sides in the typical skills …

Of Carts And Horses: Organizing Remedies For The Classroom, Elaine W. Shoben

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No abstract provided.

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

Continuing Classroom Conversation Beyond The Four Whys, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Bailey Kuklin

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LAW school classes regularly prove Santayana's aphorism. Although nearly every law teacher desires to keep discussion focused and forward-moving, there are more than a few moments of thundering silence experienced in the classroom. Most of us adjust to this inevitability by positing some pedagogical virtue to still air and contenting ourselves with the knowledge that conversation-stopping “whys?” are usually delivered by us as teachers rather than the students. Perhaps we are underappreciative of the value discomfitting silence has, but we generally prefer that the conversation continue, that we miss the opportunity to feel simultaneously smug and uncomfortable, and that students …

The Convergence Of Analogical And Dialectic Imaginations In Legal Discourse, Linda H. Edwards

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The dialogue over the role of narrative in the making and interpreting of law and in legal practice is often stalemated by confusion about the complex relationships between narrative and other forms of legal reasoning. Are narrative and rules opposing methods for interpretation and persuasion? Does narrative theory assert that lawyers can win cases by presenting a sympathetic story, without regard for the governing rule of law? If so, it is no wonder that conversations about narrative theory are so difficult.

This article explores the relationship between narrative and other forms of legal interpretation and persuasion. It relies on David …