Law Commons^™

Test Your Legal Literacy By Answering One Question, John M. Bosco

John M Bosco

No abstract provided.

The Cartography Of Legal Inquiry, Tonya Kowalski

Tonya Kowalski

As lifelong learners, we all know the feelings of discomfort and bewilderment that can come from being asked to apply existing skills in a completely new situation. As legal educators, we have also experienced the frustration that comes from watching our students struggle to identify and transfer skills from one learning environment to another. For example, a first-semester law student who learns to analogize case law to a fact pattern in a legal writing problem typically will not see the deeper applications for those skills in a law school essay exam several weeks later. Similarly, when law students learn how …

A Tale Of Election Day 2008: Teaching Storytelling Through Repeated Experiences, Serge A. Martinez, Stefan H. Krieger

Stefan H Krieger

The article was inspired by a one-day project November 4, 2008, when we supervised a number of clinic students representing voters who had been denied the right to vote. As they represented client after client, we noticed significant improvement in their storytelling skills over a very short period, despite having little training in storytelling theory or techniques. Using our Election Day project as a starting point, the article questions the dominant pedagogical model for teaching storytelling, which focuses primarily on teaching storytelling and narrative theory. We propose a new method, based on cognitive science findings about experiential learning, that emphasizes …

Refashioning Legal Pedagogy After The Carnegie Report: Something Borrowed, Something New, Debra M. Schneider

Debra M Schneider

The Carnegie Foundation published in 2007 its ground-breaking book titled Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, in which it pointed out significant pedagogical imbalance in legal education. In particular, the Carnegie report said that law schools should infuse their curricula with more practical and ethical training. How a law school ought to accomplish the Carnegie aim is another challenge, one that this paper squarely addresses.

Traditional legal education is sorely imbalanced. A law student receives rigorous training in legal doctrine and analytical skills—he learns to “think like a lawyer”—but is left with little training in practical skills or …

Beginning Legal Writers In Their Own Words: Why The First Weeks Of Legal Writing Are So Tough And What We Can Do About It, Miriam E. Felsenburg, Laura P. Graham

Miriam E Felsenburg

ABSTRACT

In the summer of 2007, the authors undertook a study designed to illuminate the reasons why many first-year legal writing students find the first few weeks of the class so difficult and so frustrating. Their own students’ struggles during early legal writing classes were of deep concern to the authors, primarily because these early classes were devoted to teaching fundamental skills, including legal reasoning and analysis. To isolate the reasons for these struggles, the authors administered a series of three surveys to first-year law students at two diverse law schools, seeking to learn how the students’ attitudes toward and …

Balancing Law Student Privacy Interests And Progressive Pedagogy: Dispelling The Myth That Ferpa Prohibits Cutting-Edge Academic Support Methodologies, Louis N. Schulze

Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Controversy exists over whether the Family Education Records Privacy Act prohibits certain progressive law school academic support methodologies. This Article analyzes these claims, using the text of the statute, the related regulations, case law from the Supreme Court of the United States and other federal courts, and statements from the Department of Education. The thesis of this Article is that most academic support methods are perfectly lawful and that FERPA and progressive pedagogy can peaceably coexist.

Legal Reading And Success In Law School: Law Students With Attention Deficit Disorder (Add), Leah M. Christensen

Leah M Christensen

The new reality in legal education is that a certain percentage of our students will come to us with ADD or with another learning disability, either disclosed or undisclosed. Yet there has been little empirical research on how law students with learning disabilities read and understand the law. This study examined how three law students with ADD read a judicial opinion. The results suggested a relationship between successful law school performance and the use of problematizing and rhetorical reading strategies; and less successful law school performance and the use of default reading strategies. Further, the results suggest that law students …

Judging By The Numbers: An Empirical Study Of The Power Of Story, Kenneth D. Chestek

Kenneth D. Chestek

The recent debate about whether “empathy” is a desirable trait in Supreme Court Justices begs a more fundamental question: are appellate court judges in fact persuaded by appeals to pathos? This article attempts to answer that question by reporting the results of an empirical study the author conducted that investigates whether narrative reasoning, or “stories,” are persuasive to appellate judges. It is the first rigorous study to ever confront this issue directly. The article first describes how the author wrote four test briefs, two on each side of a hypothetical lawsuit. One brief on each side was written as a …

On-Line Legal Research Workshops, Frederick B. Jonassen

Frederick B. Jonassen

Like riding a bicycle, playing tennis, or driving a car, legal research is a skill, and like any other skill it is learned by doing and not by listening to a lecture, though lectures are indispensable for introducing the skill. The mental processes applied in electronic legal research may differ from those applied to book legal research, but because both electronic and book research are skills, a guided workshop in electronic legal research may be based on similar principles to that underlying a workshop in book legal research with appropriate modifications.

The aspects of the electronic legal workshop proposed here …

What Law Schools Should Teach Future Transactional Lawyers: Perspectives From Practice, Michael A. Woronoff

Michael A Woronoff

Since at least the 1980’s, law schools have been chided for doing a poor job at teaching skills. This criticism has been accompanied by pressure to increase their emphasis on skills training. The pressure increased with the publication of the McCrate Report in 1992, and then again with the publication of the Carnegie Report in 2007. This article is based on my remarks given on June 10 at the 2009 mid-year meeting of the AALS Conference on Business Associations. In those remarks, I respond to the questions “Are law schools teaching students adequate transactional skills?” and “From the standpoint of …

Korean Legal Education For The Age Of Professionalism: Suggestions For More Concerted Curricula, Young-Cheol K. Jeong

Young-Cheol K. Jeong

No abstract provided.

Modern Disparities In Legal Education: Emancipation From Racial Neutrality, David Mears

David Mears

Wealth, leadership and political power within any democratic society requires the highest caliber of a quality legal education. The Black experience is not necessarily a unique one within legal education but rather an excellent example of either poor to substandard quality disseminated unequally among racial and socioeconomic stereotypes based upon expected outcomes of probable success or failure. It is often said, “Speak and so it will happen” – many within the halls of academia work hard to openly predict failure yet seemingly do very little to foster success internally within the academic procedures and processes based on the customer service …

"Sending Down" Sabbatical: Lawyering In The Legal Services Trenches Has Benefits For Professor And Practitioner Alike, Suzanne Rabe

Suzanne Rabe

This article proposes that clinical professors, and legal writing professors in particular, consider practicing law -- in real-life, non-clinical settings –- during some significant portion of their sabbaticals from teaching. This proposal would (1) improve the learning experience for students in clinics, writing classes, and skills classes, (2) offer a vital public service to the under-represented, and (3) improve the overall administration of justice. At little cost, this proposal would foster a richer engagement by clinicians and legal writing professors with the world of legal practice. This idea could also infuse increased life and meaning into our law school classes. …

Universal Instructional Design: Engaging The Whole Class, Suzanne J. Schmitz, Douglas K. Rush

Suzanne J. Schmitz

UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN: ENGAGING THE WHOLE CLASS By Douglas K. Rush and Suzanne J. Schmitz ABSTRACT This paper explores the application of Universal Instructional Design principles to law school pedagogy. Universal design originated as an architectural concept whose goal was to make structures accessible to people of all ability levels. The best known examples of universal design are sidewalk curb-cuts. Originally intended to allow access to mobility impaired individuals, sidewalk curb-cuts are now recognized as aiding people of all abilities in negotiating urban environments. Parents with small children in strollers, delivery people, travelers with roller luggage and even urban skateboarders …

"Ph.D. Lite": A New Approach To Teaching Scholarly Legal Writing, Jacqueline Lipton

Jacqueline D Lipton

Most American law schools require the satisfaction of an upper level writing requirement, usually in the form of a seminar paper, or “Note”, for graduation. The problem for many students is that the J.D. is not generally geared towards learning scholarly writing. In recent years, the author has experimented with reformulating a seminar class as a “writing workshop” in order to focus on the scholarly writing process. In so doing, she has drawn from experiences supervising legal research degrees in other countries where research-based LL.M. degrees and Ph.D. degrees in law are the norm. This essay details her approach – …

Deliberative Democracy On Air: Reinvigorate Localism-Resuscitate Radio's Subversive Past, Akilah N. Folami

Akilah N Folami

Radio, once the vibrant center of deliberative democracy, is now widely regarded as a commercialized wasteland. As the FCC, Congress, and the courts reconsider current media policy in light of the public outcry over the lack of diverse content on the nation’s radio airwaves, many scholars and media reformists attribute the commercial marginalization of radio to deregulation, and the resulting consolidation in radio ownership and homogenization of radio content. They argue for more local news and public affairs programming as a remedy to this problem. This article builds on such arguments but further posits that local music and popular cultural …

Ambiguity About Ambiguity: An Empirical Inquiry Into Legal Interpretation, Anup Malani

Anup Malani

Most scholarship on statutory interpretation discusses what courts should do with ambiguous statutes. This paper investigates the crucial and analytically prior question of what ambiguity in law is. Does a claim that a text is ambiguous mean the reader is uncertain about its meaning? Or is it a claim that readers, as a group, would disagree about what the text means (however certain each of them may be individually)? This distinction is of considerable theoretical interest. It also turns out to be highly consequential as a practical matter.

To demonstrate, we developed a survey instrument for exploring determinations of ambiguity …

Of Authorship And Audacity: An Empirical Study Of Gender Disparity And Privilege In The “Top Ten” Law Reviews, Minna J. Kotkin

Minna J. Kotkin

In today’s law schools, article placement is a significant consideration in hiring, promotion, tenure, and lateral mobility. This article analyzes authorship by gender and home school “privilege” in 15 law reviews (the “top ten”) over a three year period. It compares these data with the gender composition of the professoriate and of the 15 schools’ faculties, using Association of American Law Schools and American Bar Association statistics. The mean percentage of articles authored by one or more women (and no men) is 20.4. Nationally, women comprise 31% of the tenured/tenure-track professoriate and 28.3% at the 15 schools. At the associate …

The Puzzle Of Judicial Education: The Case Of Chief Justice William De Grey, Emily Kadens

EMILY KADENS

Unlike civil law systems in which young lawyers choose between an attorney career track and a judicial one, Anglo-American legal systems mostly select their judges from the whole pool of bar members, regardless of the fact that the appointees may have had no experience with the court on which they are placed. Such a method of selection ensures that many judges come to the bench still needing to prepare themselves for their new positions. This problem is not a new one. At least by the seventeenth century, the specialization of legal practice in England meant that many neophyte judges had …

Beyond The Model Rules: Aristotle, Lincoln, And The Lawyer's Aspirational Drive To An Ethical Practice, Billie J. Ellis, William T. Ellis

Billie J. Ellis Jr.

Many scholars have criticized the Model Rules for omitting the aspirational ethic of earlier ABA codes, leaving only the minimum, mandatory regulations for conduct. Our article BEYOND THE MODEL RULES: ARISTOTLE, LINCOLN, AND THE LAWYER’S ASPIRATIONAL DRIVE TO AN ETHICAL PRACTICE, offers a new approach to dealing with this "aspirational void" created by the Model Rules, yet it does not engage in the useful yet typical debates regarding this problem, including the need for greater emphasis on ethics in law schools, reform of the ABA, reform of the Model Rules, or the need for a so called professional movement. Rather, …

How A Mediation Clinic Can Inform The Curriculum, Dr Leonardo J. Raznovich, Ben Waters

Dr Leonardo J Raznovich

There are many different ways and settings in which the curriculum can be developed to provide clinical legal education to students at university level within the UK. With the assistance of HEFCE research informed teaching funding and after nearly a year of preparatory research, two members of the Legal Studies team, in department of Crime and Policing at Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) in England set up a mediation clinic as a fundamental element of the development of a Qualifying Law Degree. The clinic at Canterbury Christ Church University is unique, not least for the fact that it is the …

Teaching The “Portraits, Mosaics And Themes” Of The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Lee D. Schinasi

Lee D. Schinasi

Teaching the “Portraits, Mosaics and Themes” of The Federal Rules of Evidence: This article discusses an approach to teaching, learning, and applying the Federal Rules of Evidence – the “portraits and mosaics regime.” It is designed to accomplish four things: First, for professors new to teaching evidence, the “portraits and mosaics regime” is a macro level introductory overview of the statute and is aimed at providing perspective and insight. It introduces the statutes’s most significant concepts, how they interrelate, and how they can be applied. Second, it can be used as a teaching outline for new evidence professors approaching their …

Myths Of The Origin Of Law, Paul J. Gudel

Paul J. Gudel

No abstract provided.

The Decline And Fall Of The American Judicial Opinion: Back To The Future From The Roberts Court To Learned Hand, Jeffrey A. Van Detta

Jeffrey A. Van Detta

In September 2008, Adam Liptak of the N.Y. Times wrote in an article “American Exception: U.S. Court Now Guiding Fewer Nations”:

Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.

But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.

This is astonishing to many …

Bringing Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Into The Tax Classroom, Anthony C. Infanti

Anthony C. Infanti

A recent piece in the Journal of Legal Education analyzing student surveys by the Law School Admission Council reports that, despite improvement in the past decade, LGBT students still experience a law school climate in which they encounter substantial discrimination both inside and outside the classroom. Included among the list of “best practices” to improve the law school climate for LGBT students was a recommendation to incorporate discussions of LGBT issues in non-LGBT courses, such as tax. In a timely coincidence, the Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues held a day-long program at the 2009 AALS annual meeting …

Global Legal Education And Comparative Visa Regulations, Luca Melchionna

Luca Melchionna

GLOBAL LEGAL EDUCATION AND COMPARATIVE VISA REGULATIONS Luca C. M. Melchionna ABSTRACT Legal education is slowly but steadily becoming global. U.S. law schools are adapting to the need to educate jurists who can work on cross border issues. Within the next 100 years, U.S. law schools will face the challenges of educating an increasing number of international students, while dealing with diverse legal systems. In the next 100 years, U.S. law schools will expand overseas with several branches (at least one in every country or group of countries with legal and economic relevancy) and will embrace corporate form and a …

Do “Sea Turtles” Creep Faster Than “Soft-Shell Turtles”: A Quantitative Study Of Academic Performance Of Law Faculty In Premier Chinese Law Schools, Wei Zhang

Wei Zhang

No abstract provided.

Beyond "Thinking Like A Lawyer" And The Traditional Legal Paradigm: Toward A Comprehensive View Of Legal Education, Jess M. Krannich

Jess M. Krannich

No abstract provided.

To Failure And Back: How Law Rescued Me From The Depths, Harvey Gilmore

Harvey Gilmore

This Article considers some of the reasons that attorneys have an overly acute sense of frustration with their chosen profession. It also takes a periodic look at some of the same struggles I went through as a member of the accounting profession. Ironically, while some attorneys look at their journey through law as their ticket to the depths of professional hell, it was my own journey through law that ultimately rescued me from my own professional hell. Next, this Article examines some career-changing (and life-altering) decisions, which can ultimately lead to a more rewarding life and career. Finally, I offer …

Libertad, Confianza Y Afecto Como Fundamentos De La Comunidad De Nuestra Escuela, Juan Pablo Pampillo Baliño

Juan Pablo Pampillo Baliño

No abstract provided.