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.

The Political Origins Of Secular Public Education: The New York School Controversy 1840-1842, Ian C. Bartrum

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As the title suggests, this article explores the historical origins of secular public education, with a particular focus on the controversy surrounding the Catholic petitions for school funding in nineteenth-century New York City. The article first examines the development of Protestant nonsectarian common schools in the northeast, then turns to the New York controversy in detail, and finally explores that controversy's legacy in state constitutions and the Supreme Court. It is particularly concerned with two ideas generated in New York: (1) Bishop John Hughes' objection to nonsectarianism as the 'sectarianism of infidelity'; and (2) New York Secretary of State John …

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 …

Book Review, Elaine W. Shoben

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The Burden of Brown by Raymond Wolters is a long book with a very short message: integration is bad, but desegregation is not. The distinction between the two is crucial to Wolters's analysis. Desegregation is the prohibition of officially sanctioned separation of the races. Integration, on the other hand, is the compelled mixing of the races for the sake of mixing. The "burden" of Brown v. Board of Education, according to Wolters, is that the Supreme Court has blurred this distinction and erroneously requires integration instead of merely prohibiting segregation. Wolters's thesis is that Brown had two prongs: one …

Reverse Political Checkoff Per Se Illegal As Violation Of Federal Election Campaign Act, Jay S. Bybee

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This casenote summarizes the district court for the District of Columbia’s decision in Federal Election Commission v. National Education Association.