Law Commons^™

Alexander Hamilton And Administrative Law: How America's First Great Public Administrator Informs And Challenges Our Understanding Of Contemporary Administrative Law, Rodger D. Citron

Cleveland State Law Review

Alexander Hamilton’s recognition and reputation have soared since the premiere of "Hamilton," Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about him in 2015. For lawyers, Hamilton’s work on the Federalist Papers and service as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary likely stand out more than other aspects of his extraordinary life. Politics and economics were fundamental concerns addressed by the Framers in a number of ways, including what we now refer to as administrative law—the laws and procedures that guide government departments (or, as we say today, agencies). Indeed, "Hamilton" reminds us that questions of administration and administrative law have been with us since the …

Beyond Response: Reimagining The Legal Academy's Role In Disaster Recovery And Preparedness, Latisha Nixon-Jones

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article proposes expanding the legal academy’s role in responding to disasters and emergencies, specifically through creating disaster clinics that take a community-based lawyering approach. The Article is one of the first to identify the need for community-based disaster legal clinical education that goes beyond the immediate response phase. It also proposes creating a disaster legal pipeline from the clinic through post-graduation employment. The Article furthers the literature’s discussion of the need for sustained disaster legal education. As the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 coronavirus continues to impact vulnerable populations and the frequency of natural disasters continues to increase, this …

The Role Of Law In U.S. History Textbooks, Russ Versteeg

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article analyzes the references to law found in three standard U.S. History textbooks: (1) ALAN BRINKLEY, AMERICAN HISTORY CONNECTING WITH THE PAST 745 (McGraw-Hill Educ., 15th ed. 2015); (2) ERIC FONER, GIVE ME LIBERTY! AN AMERICAN HISTORY 461 (Steve Forman et al. eds., 5th ed. 2017); and (3) DAVID GOLDFIELD ET AL., THE AMERICAN JOURNEY: A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES (7th ed. Combined vol. 2014, 2011, 2008). The Article includes a quantitative analysis of topics (i.e., tabulating the topics that appear most frequently in the texts arranged chronologically) as well as summaries of those topics. It also discusses …

Friend Or Foe? Lexis Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Legal Writing, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs in the law are becoming more popular, moving from downloadable forms, to generating and critiquing contracts and handbooks, and even generating text. Lexis has two major research products that appeal especially to first-year students. The first product is Brief Analysis, which analyzes documents and provides suggestions for additional research. Brief Analysis is more appropriately used to expand research for briefs, motions, and other types of persuasive writing, but could be used to review research and citations for objective memos. The second product is a downloadable add-on that enables research to be done side-by-side with the writing …

The Power Of Vulnerability In Promoting A Sense Of Belonging: The Perspective Of A First-Generation American, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

It is my intention that students teach each other through really getting to know one another and finding commonality in each other’s experiences. Most of us live in a social bubble, partially because we feel vulnerable in worlds where we perceive that we do not belong. By sharing vulnerabilities, we are able to expand our world to not only understand our commonalities, but to get a new view of what we thought was inalterable. By sharing my own experience as an out-sider, I am better able to encourage students to consider more deeply the opinions of others and to learn …

A Stitch In Time Saves Nine: How The State Of Ohio Can Save Money And Distress Through Legal Training For Pre-Service Teachers, Karin Mika, Christine Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

For simplicity, this Note will focus on the educational requirements for high school teachers rather than elementary or middle school teachers. Here, the requirements include core content instruction, literacy instruction, and a 12-week student teaching experience. Additionally, ODHE issues a vague requirement of preparation in six different Ohio school-related standards. Only one of those standards, the Ohio Standards for the Teaching Profession, even mentions correctly applying the law.

There is clearly a need for some form of legal preparation for teachers in Ohio that must take place before an individual becomes a teacher. Not only is there an ethical obligation …

Actively Achieving Greater Racial Equity In Law School Classrooms, Catherine Bramble, Rory Bahadur

Cleveland State Law Review

2020 illustrated the ongoing pervasiveness of implicit and explicit racism in our society. Less well-acknowledged and recognized is the extent to which Socratic pedagogy also reflects those pervasive racist realities while simultaneously resulting in inferior learning based on a teaching method invented 150+ years ago. Despite this racist and outdated reality, the legal academy has been reluctant to alter the traditional method of teaching. Tangible, empirical evidence obtained from data-driven cognitive learning science research demonstrates that active learning not only improves learning outcomes for all students, but also mitigates the structural effects of racism in the classroom thereby increasing racial …

From Governance To The Classroom: Rethinking Large-Scale School Reform To Improve Educational Opportunity And Equity, Benjamin M. Superfine Phd, Mark Paige Phd

Cleveland State Law Review

For decades, governmental institutions have focused on improving and equalizing the educational opportunities for students. Courts, legislatures, and chief executive officers at federal and state levels have spearheaded a range of large-scale educational reform efforts, including desegregation, school finance reform, educational improvement for students with disabilities, charter schools, and standards-based accountability systems. However, many assessments of these efforts reflect limited or mixed success. This Article takes a bird’s-eye view examination of not simply why a single type of educational reform has failed to reach its goals in a particular area, but instead at why such efforts have failed to reach …

Student And Career Services Newsletter 07, Office Of Student And Career Services

Student and Career Services Newsletter

March 2021 - Part 2

Who Wants To Be A Prosecutor? And Why Care? Law Students’ Career Aspirations And Reform Prosecutors’ Goals, Shih-Chun Steven Chien, Stephen Daniels

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Often called “progressive” or “reform” prosecutors, a number of reform-minded prosecutors have been elected recently across the United States—promising a distinctive vision of criminal justice and signaling that their role will be more attuned to issues of race and equity than “law and order.” Furthering this vision requires dramatic changes to the working cultures—the norms, practices, and even personnel—of their offices. Diversity plays a major role.

One central challenge is identifying, attracting, and hiring newly-minted lawyers who can, over time, be socialized into and sustain a changing organizational culture. This article empirically examines that challenge, which involves two sides of …

Change At The Speed Of Leadership, Lee Fisher

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership. . . That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

“Lawyers are in the anomalous position of serving as leaders but generally lacking leadership training and skills. Competency in lawyering skills often functions as a proxy for leadership skills, despite the evidence that leadership skills are distinct and may take years to develop. Our neglect of leadership skills is reaching crisis proportions because nearly half of all current law firm partners will retire within the next ten …

Is Law A Discipline? Forays Into Academic Culture, Gene R. Shreve

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article explores academic culture. It addresses the reluctance in academic circles to accord law the full stature of a discipline. It forms doubts that have been raised into a series of four criticisms. Each attacks an academic feature of law, inviting the question: Is law different from the rest of the university in a way damaging its stature as an academic discipline? The Article concludes that, upon careful examination of each criticism, none establishes a difference between law and other disciplines capable of damaging law’s stature.

Professional Identity Formation Through Pro Bono Revealed Through Conversation Analysis, Linda F. Smith

Cleveland State Law Review

Law school is supposed to teach legal analysis and lawyering skills as well as mold law students’ professional identities. Pro bono work provides an opportunity for law students to use their legal knowledge and skills and to develop their identities as emerging legal professionals. As important as both pro bono work and identity formation are, there has been very little research regarding how pro bono contributes to students’ identity formation. This Article utilizes a data set of over forty student-client consultations at a pro bono brief advice project that have been recorded and transcribed. It uses conversation analysis to study …

Sociolegal Research, The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement, And Studying Diversity In Judicial Clerkships, Shih-Chun Steven Chien, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Xiangnong Wang

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) is an extraordinary asset for examining a vast array of topics related to the educational experiences of law students. By focusing on student-oriented surveys, LSSSE provides law schools and researchers an invaluable opportunity to delve into a wide range of issues dealing with the law student experience, including the career preferences and expectations of students throughout their law school years. In particular, there remains a wealth of opportunity for scholars interested in using LSSSE data to explore issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in legal education and the profession.

The American Bar …

Foreword: Behind The Classroom: An Examination Of Law Schools In The 21st Century, Brandon Stump

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

No abstract provided.

Allowing Autistic Academics The Freedom To Be Autistic: The Ada And A Neurodiverse Future In Pennsylvania And Beyond, Brandon Stump

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article focuses on those Autistics who have the ability, in terms of intellect credential, and measurable skill, to enter the workplace. In particular, this Article addresses Autistics who are academics and teach at the collegiate level, specifically in the American legal classroom. I have chosen a narrow subset of a broad community to make a targeted argument for employment protection which can help expand the law for the entire Autistic community. While we are different than neurotypically developed persons, "[m]any with [Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)] have a high attention to detail and the ability to sustain intense concentration in …

The Holy Grail? Designing And Teaching An Integrated Doctrine And Drafting Course, Claire C. Robinson May

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I’ve long considered teaching doctrine and skills together in a single course to be the holy grail of legal education. If we could do so successfully, we might make significant strides in providing a legal education that better prepares our students to be practicing lawyers. In spring 2016, my colleague Professor April Cherry and I took the plunge and collaboratively offered a course titled Estates and Trusts: Doctrine and Drafting at our institution, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. This essay describes our experience and lessons learned pursuing the holy grail.

Consumer Law Immersion, Kevin M. Mcdonald, Karl Hochkammer, Steven Wernikoff

Global Business Law Review

As part of Washington University School of Law’s (WashULaw) Online Master of Legal Studies (MLS) program, students attend optional weekend immersion courses at the law school in St. Louis in both the spring and fall. We recently taught a course on consumer law over the spring 2018 weekend session held on March 23-25, 2018. In attendance were twenty-two students, most of whom were enrolled in the MLS program. Several were foreign lawyers and one was an LL.M. student. This article summarizes our three-day experience and concludes with our key learnings that incorporate feedback we received from students both during and …

Using Grit And Growth Mindset To Foster Resilience And Professionalism In Law Students And Attorneys, Carolyn Broering-Jacobs

Law Faculty Presentations and Testimony

The presentation introduced current research showing correlation between grit, growth mindset, and success in varied disciplines, then suggested several means for improving grit. Attendees discussed several problems that a young lawyer might experience and considered how grit and growth mindset might affect the lawyer's response to the problem.

Creating Assessment Tools For Students, Adjuncts, And Site Supervisors, Carolyn Broering-Jacobs, Carole O. Heyward

Law Faculty Presentations and Testimony

During this workshop, we plan to explore how clinicians can assess student performance at project, course, and program levels using self-evaluation, peer evaluation, and faculty evaluation (focusing on clinical adjuncts and site supervisors).

A Quartet Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Regardless of academic rhetoric, universities are powerful institutional systems that are as doctrinaire and hidebound in their behavior as any other institution whose beneficiaries are seeking to protect vested interests or simply defend that with which they are most familiar and on which their training is based and reputations sustained. This is consistent with Keynes’ conclusion that most university faculty are little more than “academic scribblers” who live their lives content to operate within the safe confines of the ideas and reward system in which they were initially indoctrinated and from which they extract benefits. While the ideal of the …

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …

How To Have An Effective Student Conference, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

No abstract provided.

A Trilogy Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

At the beginning it is helpful to realize that the five versions of the scholarly ideal produce different forms of intellectual work with distinct goals and motivations. The scholar engaging in such activity can vary dramatically in terms of what the individual is seeking to achieve through his or her research output and actions that might be taken related to the findings reflected in that product. Similarly, there is a diverse set of targets at which the work is directed. These targets include communicating ideas and knowledge to other scholars who are invested in a specific sub-discipline. They also include …

Apps, Artificial Intelligence, And Androids: Beyond Schumpeter’S “Creative Destruction” To “Destructive Destruction” David Barnhizer, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The analysis offered here is not a Neo-Luddite rage against “the machine”. As with the oft-stated reproach about paranoia, there sometimes really are situations in which people are “out to get you”. In our current situation the threat is not from people but from the convergence of a set of technological innovations that are and will increasingly have an enormous impact on the nature of work, economic and social inequality and the existence of the middle classes that are so vital to the durability of Western democracy. The fact is that developed nations’ economies such as found in Western Europe …

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …

The American Law School And Nine Elements Of “Thinking Like A Lawyer”, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The idea of “thinking like a lawyer” represents a form that combines strategic analysis, assessment and action. At this point my analysis takes an unusual step and seeks to enhance our understanding through use of a seemingly “exotic” framework. In A Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi describes nine points a strategist must master. I have long thought these points represent the true meaning and composition of what it means when we say “thinking like a lawyer” and am offering them here as a focusing device. Musashi’s nine elements are: 1). Do not think dishonestly; 2). Become acquainted with every …

Angst, Technology, And Innovation In The Classroom: Improving Focus For Students Growing Up In A Digital Age, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Many professors in legal education have noticed increased angst in students, who fear that well-paying jobs are scarce. Often, that angst is manifested in the classroom. Some educators blame the phenomenon on the distractions of technology—but more specifically, the author finds that technology has brought all of our stressors to the fore, affecting concentration and the ability to absorb information. This article addresses the extent to which technology has changed the ways that people navigate the world within the span of only a few generations, and how the author continues to adjust her teaching techniques in her technology-oriented classroom in …

"The Millennials Are Coming!" : Improving Self-Efficacy In Law Students Through Universal Design In Learning, Jason S. Palmer

Cleveland State Law Review

The Millennial generation has arrived in law school. This new generation of self-confident and extremely high achieving learners merits a new interdisciplinary approach to legal education. Some institutions have explored formative assessments and regulated self-learning to improve academic success. Other universities have looked to universal design, specifically universal design in learning or universal design in instruction, as a mechanism for furthering educational goals for their students. All agree that a lack of self-efficacy can prevent Millennial students from overcoming challenges in their educational growth, and that high self efficacy, the ability to put forth effort and persistence to successfully accomplish …

In The Mind's Eye: Visual Lessons For Law Students, Brian A. Glassman

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article shows how to use works of art to demonstrate essential components of effective legal writing. Part I discusses the learning theory under pinning the use of visual lessons. Part II describes the lessons themselves. Part III explains the benefits--both direct and indirect--that result from using visual lessons to teach law and summarizes student responses to the use of these lessons in first-year legal writing. The conclusion suggests ways in which this technique might be extended and adapted to teach not only legal writing but also other law school courses.