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Will Legal Education Change Post-2020?, Heather K. Gerken Apr 2021

Will Legal Education Change Post-2020?, Heather K. Gerken

Michigan Law Review

The famed book review issue of the Michigan Law Review feels like a reminder of better days. As this issue goes to print, a shocking 554,103 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States alone, the country seems to have begun a long-overdue national reckoning on race, climate change and economic inequality continue to ravage the country, and our Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists with the encouragement of the president of the United States. In the usual year, a scholar would happily pick up this volume and delight in its contents. This year, one marvels at the scholars who …


Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis Of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” In U.S. Legal Education, Loren M. Lee Mar 2021

Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis Of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” In U.S. Legal Education, Loren M. Lee

Michigan Law Review

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has recognized diversity as a compelling government interest to uphold the use of affirmative action in higher education. Yet the constitutionality of the practice has been challenged many times. In Grutter v. Bollinger, for example, the Court denied its use in perpetuity and suggested a twenty-five-year time limit for its application in law school admissions. Almost two decades have passed, so where do we stand? This Note’s quantitative analysis of the matriculation of and degrees awarded to Black and Latinx students at twenty-nine accredited law schools across the United States illuminates a stark lack of …


Editors' Note, Michigan Law Review May 2020

Editors' Note, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A reflection on the origins of the Michigan Law Review book review issue.


Incorporating Social Justice Into The 1l Legal Writing Course: A Tool For Empowering Students Of Color And Of Historically Marginalized Groups And Improving Learning, Sha-Shana Crichton May 2019

Incorporating Social Justice Into The 1l Legal Writing Course: A Tool For Empowering Students Of Color And Of Historically Marginalized Groups And Improving Learning, Sha-Shana Crichton

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The media reports of police shootings of unarmed Black men and women; unprovoked attacks on innocent Jews, Muslims, religious minority groups, and LGBTQ persons; and current pervasive, divisive, and misogynistic rhetoric all cause fear and anxiety in impacted communities and frustrate other concerned citizens. Law students, and especially law students of color and of historically marginalized groups, are often directly or indirectly impacted by these reports and discrimination in all its iterations. As a result, they are stressed because they are fearful and anxious. Research shows that stress impairs learning and cognition. Research also shows that beneficial changes are made …


Draft Of A Letter Of Recommendation To The Honorable Alex Kozinski, Which I Guess I'M Not Going To Send Now, Yxta Maya Murray Jan 2018

Draft Of A Letter Of Recommendation To The Honorable Alex Kozinski, Which I Guess I'M Not Going To Send Now, Yxta Maya Murray

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This legal-literary essay engages the current social and jurisprudential moment, encapsulated by the hashtag #metoo. It focuses on the allegations, made in the first week of December 2017, that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski verbally sexually harassed former law clerks Emily Murphy and Heidi Bond. I wrote the lioness’s share of the piece during December 10–11—that is, in the days before news outlets reported that other women complained of Kozinski touching them on the thigh or breast while propositioning them for sex or discussing recent sexual encounters—and concluded that Kozinski was unlikely to face impeachment or meaningful …


Doug Kahn: Class Master, Dennis E. Ross Jun 2016

Doug Kahn: Class Master, Dennis E. Ross

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Doug has always been a bit of a departure from the professorial norm. Teaching for Doug was no accommodation to the job, no activity collateral to his true ambition, but rather an openly genuine attempt to engage his students and pull them into a subject that he obviously loved. His evident joy when in front of a class closed any distance with his students, no small feat considering the subject matter. Tax is forbidding territory for many, and Doug was justifiably known for his refusal to dumb the material down. Thus, much of his class may have been there reluctantly, …


A Note, Robert T. Pelinka Jr. Jun 2016

A Note, Robert T. Pelinka Jr.

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

I find it quite meaningful that heartwarming reflections about Douglas Kahn come very naturally to me. Perhaps that, in and of itself, says something about this incredible man. For context, my time in physical proximity to Professor Kahn came during my years as a student-athlete at the University of Michigan, where I graduated from the Ross School of Business, and the Law School. I was also a member of The Michigan Wolverines Basketball Team, where I participated in three NCAA Final Fours, and earned an NCAA Championship Title. I mention these things, not to tout my own accomplishments, but rather …


Where Does One Begin To Describe A Professor Who Literally Changed Your Life?, Kelli Turner Jun 2016

Where Does One Begin To Describe A Professor Who Literally Changed Your Life?, Kelli Turner

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

A bit of background to set the stage, if you’ll indulge me. Growing up in West Bloomfield, Michigan, I was never overly ambitious, nor did I have any lofty academic goals. In particular, I never had any desire to go to law school or, for that matter, to become a lawyer. I come from a family of trial attorneys and it never interested me much. I was a numbers person and didn’t enjoy a lot of deep reading and essay writing (somewhat ironic as I’m writing this for a law journal). But when I started in public accounting and developed …


A Grateful Testimonial To Doug Kahn, Terrence G. Perris Jun 2016

A Grateful Testimonial To Doug Kahn, Terrence G. Perris

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

It is difficult for me to accept the reality that Doug Kahn is about to retire after a triumphant fifty-two year tenure as a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. For much of the nearly forty-seven years of my association with the Law School, first as a student and then as an alumnus, Doug has practically symbolized the Law School for me, as he went from being a revered teacher, to a valued mentor, to a dear friend, to a colleague and co-author, and, dare I say, to virtually a member of the family. But I am only …


Doug Kahn - A Personal Appreciation, Patricia D. White Jun 2016

Doug Kahn - A Personal Appreciation, Patricia D. White

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Doug Kahn has a booming laugh and an infectious enthusiasm for his subject. I am one of the legions of students who were infected by the tax bug—thanks to Doug. It is appropriate that, on the occasion of his retirement, some of us who were most infected reflect on Doug’s influence in our lives. In my case this is easy. I owe the basic contours of my career to Doug. I graduated from Michigan Law in 1974. Times were different then. I graduated never having had a female instructor. There were no women on the faculty. Only thirteen percent of …


Doug Kahn: The Pied Piper Of Tax Law, Barrie Lawson Loeks, Burt P. Rosen Jun 2016

Doug Kahn: The Pied Piper Of Tax Law, Barrie Lawson Loeks, Burt P. Rosen

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Doug Kahn’s love of tax law appears to be contagious. His wife was a tax lawyer, his son is now a tax law professor, and even his daughter in law is a tax lawyer. Doug may have caught the “tax disease” from his elder brother, who was also a leading tax lawyer. In politics, we have the Kennedys, the Bushes, and the Clintons; in the world of tax law, we have the Kahn family dynasty. One can only assume that the discussions around the family Thanksgiving table sliced and diced tax regulations and policies right along with the turkey and …


The Seventh Letter And The Socratic Method, Sherman J. Clark Oct 2015

The Seventh Letter And The Socratic Method, Sherman J. Clark

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Law teachers use the phrase “Socratic method” loosely to refer to various methods of questioning students in class rather than merely lecturing to them. The merits of such teaching have been the subject of spirited and even bitter debate. It can be perceived as not only inefficient but also unnecessarily combative—even potentially abusive. Although it is clear that some critics are excoriating the least defensible versions of what has been called the Socratic method, I do not attempt to canvas or adjudicate that debate in this brief essay. Rather, I hope to add to the conversation by looking to a …


Helping A Lawyer To Understand What It Means To Think Like An Architect, Kevin Emerson Collins Oct 2015

Helping A Lawyer To Understand What It Means To Think Like An Architect, Kevin Emerson Collins

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Professor Radin unquestionably influenced legal academia through her ideas, arguments, and scholarship. With that said, my tribute is decidedly personal. To me, Professor Radin was the mentor and role model that I sorely needed when I was figuring out what being a legal academic could mean for me.


Peggy Radin, Mentor Extraordinaire, R. Anthony Reese Oct 2015

Peggy Radin, Mentor Extraordinaire, R. Anthony Reese

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

I write to celebrate Peggy Radin’s contributions to the legal academy in her role as a mentor. I know that others will speak to her significant scholarly achievements and important contributions across several fields. I want to pay tribute to the substantial time and energy that Peggy has devoted over the course of her career to mentoring students and young academics. I was extremely fortunate to have had a handful of mentors who helped me become a law professor. (I am also extremely fortunate that some of those mentors became generous senior colleagues who occasionally continue to help me navigate …


Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Sep 2015

Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Law Journals have been under heavy criticism for as long as we can remember. The criticisms come from all quarters, including judges, law professors, and even commentators at large. In an address at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference almost a decade ago, for example, Chief Justice Roberts complained about the “disconnect between the academy and the profession.” More pointedly, he continued, “[p]ick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was …


The Legacy Of Professor Joe Sax, Fred Krupp Oct 2014

The Legacy Of Professor Joe Sax, Fred Krupp

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

I grew up as the environmental movement did, in the 1960s and 1970s. In college at Yale, engineering professor Charlie Walker became my mentor and taught me that there are practical solutions for almost all environmental problems. This hopeful point of view inspired me to devote myself to the subject, first as an academic pursuit. As I neared graduation and was trying to decide on a path, Professor Walker handed me a book: Defending the Environment by Joseph Sax.1 That book was visionary in its description of private citizens’ ability to protect and defend the environment through the legal system. …


Joseph Sax, A Human Kaleidoscope, Zygmunt Plater Oct 2014

Joseph Sax, A Human Kaleidoscope, Zygmunt Plater

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Probably more than any other person most of us will ever have the opportunity of knowing, Joe Sax was kaleidoscopic in the way he projected his mind and lived his life as a scholar, teacher, and citizen seer. Shifting his analytical gaze from challenging context to challenging context, he repeatedly threw rich new patterns of perceptive light, thoughts broad and deep, onto a remarkable range of puzzles. Joe’s ability to think broadly and deeply influenced and reshaped the way that his students, friends, colleagues, and readers understood the intricacies, beauty, and challenges of the world around them. Others in this …


Letting Go Of Old Ideas, William D. Henderson Apr 2014

Letting Go Of Old Ideas, William D. Henderson

Michigan Law Review

Two recently published books make the claim that the legal profession has changed (Steven Harper’s The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis) or is changing (Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future). The books are interesting because they discuss the types of changes that are broad, sweeping, and dramatic. In suitable lawyer fashion, both books are unfailingly analytical. They both also argue that the old order is collapsing. The Lawyer Bubble is backward looking and laments the legacy we have squandered, while Tomorrow’s Lawyers is future oriented and offers fairly specific prescriptive advice, particularly to those lawyers entering …


Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson Aug 2013

Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

As applicants, federal judges, and law school career counselors everywhere frantically come to terms with the new clerkship landscape, one truth is inescapable: the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan ("the Plan") is dead. On January 29, 2013, the D.C. Circuit-the Plan's last and best defender-announced that it would no longer follow the Plan. The consequences of that announcement have been swift. For the last several months, months earlier than almost anyone expected, untold numbers of federal judges across the country have been rushing to hire law clerks. For these judges, the unregulated clerkship market of the pre-Plan era is back. …


What Ails The Law Schools?, Paul Horwitz Apr 2013

What Ails The Law Schools?, Paul Horwitz

Michigan Law Review

In January 2012, law professors from across the country arrived in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"). It was an opportune moment. The legal economy was struggling. Graduates were begging for jobs and struggling with unprecedented levels of debt. The smart talk from the experts was that the legal economy was undergoing a fundamental restructuring. For these and other reasons, law schools were under fire, from both inside and outside of the academy. Judges - including the keynote speaker at the AALS conference himself! - derided legal scholarship as useless. Law school …


The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz Sep 2012

The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …


The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos Sep 2012

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …


The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo Sep 2011

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet the Court's assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This Article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Lav School campus itself in March 2010 to examine not only whether, but how diversity affects learning. The data indicate both that there are sufficient numbers of students of color …


Teaching Whren To White Kids, M. K.B. Darmer Jan 2009

Teaching Whren To White Kids, M. K.B. Darmer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article addresses issues at the intersection of United States v. Whren and Grutter v. Bollinger at a time when the reality of racial profiling was recently illustrated by the high-profile arrest of a prominent Harvard professor. Given the highly racialized nature of criminal procedure, there is a surprising dearth of writing about the unique problems of teaching issues such as racial profiling in racially homogeneous classrooms. Because African American and other minority students often experience the criminal justice system in radically different ways than do Whites, the lack of minority voices poses a significant barrier to effectively teaching criminal …


Without Color Of Law: The Losing Race Against Colorblindness In Michigan, Khaled Ali Beydoun Jan 2007

Without Color Of Law: The Losing Race Against Colorblindness In Michigan, Khaled Ali Beydoun

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay examines affirmative action, while discussing its fall in California, Washington State, and ultimately Michigan.


Cambridge Law School For Women: The Evolution And Legacy Of The Nation's First Graduate Law School Exclusively For Women, Nina A. Kohn Jan 2005

Cambridge Law School For Women: The Evolution And Legacy Of The Nation's First Graduate Law School Exclusively For Women, Nina A. Kohn

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Although several scholars have briefly discussed CLSW in conjunction with work on other subjects, this Article presents the first comprehensive history of the school. The Article begins in Section Two by exploring how and why CLSW came into being in 1915 after two young Radcliffe suffragists led an unsuccessful campaign for admission to Harvard Law School. Section Three examines the design, pedagogical foundations, and day-to-day workings of the school during its first two years. Sections Four and Five explore the historical events that led to CLSW's closure in 1917. These sections also document and discuss the school's subsequent, and previously …


Dealing With Hate In The Feminist Classroom: Re-Thinking The Balance, Kathryn M. Stanchi Jan 2005

Dealing With Hate In The Feminist Classroom: Re-Thinking The Balance, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The goals of this essay are two-fold. First, by describing the experience the author had in Law and Feminism, the essay will show how hateful and harassing speech in a seminar devoted to issues of gender, race and sexuality can rob students of important educational experiences. The story of the author’s class is meant to remind legal educators and administrators of the concrete harm, both personal and educational, of hate speech. Too often the hate speech debate focuses on the theoretical and the abstract; participants forget that the principles at stake have demonstrable consequences for real people. Second, while this …


The Sacred Way Of Tibetan Crt Kung Fu: Can Race Crits Teach The Shadow's Mystical Insight And Help Law Students "Know" White Structural Oppression In The Heart Of The First-Year Curriculum? A Critical Rejoinder To Dorothy A. Brown, Reginald Leamon Robinson Jan 2005

The Sacred Way Of Tibetan Crt Kung Fu: Can Race Crits Teach The Shadow's Mystical Insight And Help Law Students "Know" White Structural Oppression In The Heart Of The First-Year Curriculum? A Critical Rejoinder To Dorothy A. Brown, Reginald Leamon Robinson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I of this Article uses a quasi-parable, in which Dorothy Brown is a Tibetan Master who teaches law students CRT Kung Fu, the monastic fighting skills by which they will acquire the Shadow's mystical insight to "know" the heart of the first-year curriculum. Part II challenges the organizing principles and content on which Brown's Critical Race Theory purports to critically interrogate traditional legal doctrine, applying a New Age Philosophical critique as well as agency theory to crack dealing in Spanish Harlem. I use this case study to argue that crack dealers deliberately and purposefully choose extra-legal economic opportunities, even …


In The Supreme Court Of The United States Barbara Grutter, Petitioner, V. Lee Bollinger, Et Al., Respondents. On Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Jerome S. Hirsch, Joseph N. Sacca, Scott D. Musoff, Mark Lebovitch, Linda M. Wayner Jan 2003

In The Supreme Court Of The United States Barbara Grutter, Petitioner, V. Lee Bollinger, Et Al., Respondents. On Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Jerome S. Hirsch, Joseph N. Sacca, Scott D. Musoff, Mark Lebovitch, Linda M. Wayner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Brief of the University of Michigan Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, the University of Michigan Black Law Students' Alliance, the University of Michigan Latino Law Students Association, and the University of Michigan Native American Law Students Association as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents


Reflections (On Law Review, Legal Education, Law Practice, And My Alma Mater), Harry T. Edwards Aug 2002

Reflections (On Law Review, Legal Education, Law Practice, And My Alma Mater), Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

It is an honor for me to offer some reflections in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Michigan Law Review. I have many fond memories of my time at the University of Michigan Law School, both as a law student and a member of the faculty. I was therefore pleased to accept the assignment to present the keynote address at the Centennial Celebration banquet. It is hard for me to believe that it has been almost 40 years since I was invited to serve on the Michigan Law Review. I remember it like it was yesterday, for it was …