Law Commons^™

Academic Law Libraries And Scholarship: Communication, Publishing, And Ranking, Dana Neacsu, James Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The context in which academic libraries operate is fast evolving, and the current COVID pandemic has underscored the new demands on libraries to reinvent themselves and their scholarship role. The library’s role has always been focused on scholarly dissemination and preservation, more recently by archiving their faculty work on mirror sites known as academic repositories. Libraries connect scholarship and users by offering the space for users to come and use the archived knowledge. However, if historically their role was to collect and provide secure access to sources, that role is in the midst of radical transformations.

In our age of …

Visual Rhetoric: Topics Of Invention And Arrangement And Tropes Of Style, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article evaluates visual legal rhetoric in order to demonstrate the potential of visual-graphical devices and narrative elements for use in legal discourse. The subject of my demonstration of graphical rhetorical devices is the famous work of modern rhetoric, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." I will perform a rhetorical analysis of the verbal topics of invention and tropes of style in the text of the letter, and simultaneously demonstrate the use of images and visual elements in an "illustrated" form of the letter.

Part II of this Article provides an introduction and background information regarding …

The Ethics Of Visual Legal Rhetoric, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article discusses both visual rhetoric and visual narrativity. Visual rhetoric is the use of graphics, photographs, and other depictions for communication, for construction of knowledge and understanding, and ultimately for persuasion in the truth and rightness of the communication. Narrativity, which is sometimes described as narrative reasoning or storytelling," is the modern movement to focus our legal writing on the tools that best communicate our clients' stories-their situation, conditions, and circumstances-along with the "story" of the development, growth, and meaning of the law itself that provides the context for the clients' legal situation. Communicating the story of the development …

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Beau Steenken

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this book review, Beau Steenken discusses Legal Research Methods by Michael D. Murray & Christy H. DeSanctis.

Creac In The Real World, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article will examine the extent to which common legal writing paradigms such as CREAC are used by attorneys in the "real world" of practice when writing on the kinds of issues law students may encounter in the first-year legal writing classroom. To that end, it will focus on the analysis of two factor-based criminal law issues: whether a defendant was in custody and whether a defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy. In focusing on "first-year" issues, the article seeks not to examine whether organizational paradigms are used at all in legal analysis, but to discover whether and how …

The Open Access Advantage For American Law Reviews, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson, Caroline Osborne

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Open access legal scholarship generates a prolific discussion, but few empirical details have been available to describe the scholarly impact of providing unrestricted access to law review articles. The present project fills this gap with specific findings on what authors and law reviews can expect.

Articles available in open access formats enjoy an advantage in citation by subsequent law review works of 53%. For every two citations an article would otherwise receive, it can expect a third when made freely available on the Internet. This benefit is not uniformly spread through the law school tiers. Higher tier journals experience a …

Law, Legitimacy, And The Maligned Adverb, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The standard rules for good writing dictate that adverbs should be avoided. They undermine the effectiveness of the text and detract from the author’s point. Students and teachers of legal writing have incorporated this general rule, leading them not only to avoid adverbs in their own writings, but also to overlook them in the writings of others, including statutes and cases. However, as Michael Oakeshott has argued, law happens not in the rules but in the adverbs. To become desensitized to the power of adverbs, or to presume that they are weak and unnecessary, leads the reader not only to …

Technology And Client Communications: Preparing Law Students And New Lawyers To Make Choices That Comply With The Ethical Duties Of Confidentiality, Competence, And Communication, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involve preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose …

Something Bad In Your Briefs, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In a profession heavily driven by writing, plagiarism is an ethical issue that plagues the legal community. The legal profession generally views plagiarism as unethical, but often sends mixed messages by condemning it in some settings, but not others. In this short Commentary, Professor Underwood discusses the ethical implications of plagiarism in legal writing.

The Promise Of Parentheticals: An Empirical Study Of The Use Of Parentheticals In Federal Appellate Briefs, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article on current trends in briefing reports an empirical study of the use of parentheticals in federal appellate court briefs submitted between February 1, 2011, and July 31, 2011. The study was designed to answer this question: How are parentheticals currently used for rhetorical purposes in appellate briefs to explain a synthesis of authorities? My hypothesis entering the study was that parentheticals currently are used beyond a simple informational function in citation forms for four rhetorical purposes: (1) to quote and highlight portions of authorities ("quotation" function), (2) to explain and illustrate the principles induced from a synthesis of …

The Great Recession And The Rhetorical Canons Of Law And Economics, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Great Recession of 2008 and onward has drawn attention to the American economic and financial system and has cast a critical spotlight on the theories, policies, and assumptions of the modern, neoclassical school of law and economics-often labeled the "Chicago School"-because this school of legal economic thought has had great influence on the American economy and financial system. The Chicago School's positions on deregulation and the limitation or elimination of oversight and government restraints on stock markets, derivative markets, and other financial practices are the result of decades of neoclassical economic assumptions regarding the efficiency of unregulated markets, the …

Will An Institutional Repository Hurt My Ssrn Ranking? Calming The Faculty Fear, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Faculty members should not view the institutional repository as a drain on their SSRN rankings. While SSRN excels at delivering their work to the cadre of legal specialists, IRs typically do a better job of presenting it to a broader readership. This expanded exposure should be judged a

positive benefit of participation in the IR, helping to mitigate criticisms of law faculty as sequestered, insular, and writing only for themselves. Anyone interested in giving their ideas the widest possible hearing should deposit their intellectual work in as many venues as possible. For law professors, this means they should have both …

Tenure And The Law Library Director, James M. Donovan, Kevin B. Shelton

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This essay offers a response to the current discussion concerning the possible rescission of ABA Accreditation Standard 603 governing tenure-track appointment of the law library director.

Part I reviews this discussion, highlighting the terms and arguments on all sides of the debate. Part II offers a defense of the current standard, based upon the need for the director both to receive the protections of academic freedom and to participate in faculty governance of the law school. The need for tenure to perform a director's professional duties, however, does not make one automatically tenureable. Part III examines the skeptical attitude that …

After The Great Recession: Law And Economics' Topics Of Invention And Arrangement And Tropes Of Style, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the work, The Great Recession and the Rhetorical Canons of Law and Economics,' the Author examined the role of law and economics in the Great Recession of 2008 and onward by examining neoclassical and contemporary law and economics from the perspective of legal rhetoric. The modern, neoclassical school of law and economics-often labeled the "Chicago School"-has had great influence on the American economy and financial system because of its rhetorical canons: mathematical and scientific methods of analysis and demonstration; the characterization of legal phenomena as incentives and costs; the rhetorical economic concept of efficiency; and rational choice theory as …

For The Love Of Parentheticals: The Story Of Parenthetical Usage In Synthesis, Rhetoric, Economics, And Narrative Reasoning, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

What follows is a substantive discussion of the reasons why parentheticals are rhetorically advantageous-in other words, why they are so beloved and often employed in appellate briefs and cases. I will examine the use of parentheticals in citation forms, synthesis, rhetoric, economics, and narrative reasoning in an effort to trace the attraction.

Open Access: Good For Readers, Authors, And Journals, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Readers, authors, and even law journal publishers will all achieve their different but related interests by adopting open access principles. Readers of every kind will have more efficient access to the materials they need to pursue their intellectual and informational goals; authors will see their works read and cited by a broader audience; and law reviews and journals can raise their own profiles without injuring their revenue streams from fee-based sources. Open access works for everyone, and is the future of information creation and distribution.

Citation Advantage Of Open Access Legal Scholarship, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this study focusing on the impact of open access on legal scholarship, the authors examine open access articles from three journals at the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarship freely available via open access improves an article’s research impact. Open access legal scholarship—which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties—can expect to receive fifty-eight percent more citations than non–open access writings of similar age from the same venue.

Explanatory Synthesis And Rule Synthesis: A Comparative Civil Law And Common Law Analysis, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In comparative study of common law and civilian legal analysis, many scholars have noted a convergence in the two systems' use of precedent cases. Although common law legal theory historically has started from a position that judges are fully competent to create law and change the law through their adjudication of cases and the judicial opinions they write, and civilian theory historically has started from a position that judges are not empowered to create and change the law enacted by the legislature but rather are to read and apply the existing law to new cases, the practice of tribunals within …

Rule Synthesis And Explanatory Synthesis: A Socratic Dialogue Between Ireac And Treat, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article explores the theory and process of explanatory synthesis in comparison to rule synthesis and case-to-case analogical reasoning as a method of demonstrative legal reasoning and analysis and legal rhetoric. The Article takes the form of a Socratic dialogue to discuss the analytical and rhetorical advantages of explanatory synthesis. Explanatory synthesis provides an important option for inductive reasoning and argumentation within the deductive paradigm of legal analysis, and has rhetorical advantages over other forms of analogical reasoning when examined using the tools of modern argument theory and the rhetorical canons of law and economics.

Institutional Repositories: A Plethora Of Possibilities, Carol A. Watson, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The law library can be a major contributing partner to the success of its law school by establishing a digital repository to preserve and promote the institution's intellectual memory. Today's law school repositories have matured to include many more types of materials than simply faculty law review and journal articles. Librarians are ideally poised to capture, organize and preserve their institution's history in this new and powerful showcase.