Law Commons^™

By The Inch, It’S A Cinch: The Case For Go-Ing Slow In First-Year Legal Writing Courses, Patrick J. Long

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Swimming With Broad Strokes: Publishing And Presenting Beyond The Lw Discipline, Robin Boyle-Laisure, Stephen Paskey

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Legal Corpus Linguistics And The Half-Empirical Attitude, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

Legal writers have recently turned to corpus linguistics to interpret legal texts. Corpus linguistics, a social-science methodology, provides a sophisticated way to analyze large data sets of language use. Legal proponents have touted it as giving empirical grounding to claims about ordinary language, which pervade legal interpretation. But legal corpus linguistics cannot deliver on that promise because it ignores the crucial contexts in which legal language is produced, interpreted, and deployed.

First, legal corpus linguistics neglects the relevant legal context—the conditions that give legal language authority. Because of this, legal corpus studies’ evidence about language use perversely obscures and misstates …

The Law Is Made Of Stories: Erasing The False Dichotomy Between Stories And Legal Rules, Stephen Paskey

Journal Articles

When lawyers think of legal analysis, they think chiefly of logic and reason. Stories are secondary. As Michael Smith explains, our legal system “is not founded on narrative reasoning” but on “a commitment to the rule of law.” The article suggests that this dichotomy between “rule-based reasoning” and “narrative reasoning” is false, and that narrative and stories are central to legal reasoning, including rule-based reasoning. In doing so, the article uses literary narrative theory to show that every governing legal rule has the structure of a “stock story”: the elements of the rule correspond to elements of a story. It …

On The Receiving End Of Influence: Helping Craft The Scholarship Of My Students And How Their Work Influences Me, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

My essay is divided into two parts. In part one I share about the struggle I had to endure to even allow myself the opportunity to be influenced by my students. Institutional struggles and professorial expectations as to how the academy should operate were hurdles I had to clear. Also, I had personal hurdles of making the commitment that I did for over five years. In part two, I primarily focus on some of my law students’ scholarship over the past five years and reflect on the life changing influence they have had on me. Their work and dedication have …

Before They Even Start: Hope And Incoming 1ls, Barbara Brunner

Journal Articles

Newly-accepted law school 1Ls often express interest in how they should spend the summer before starting their fall courses in order to be best prepared for success in their first semester. This desire to have a "leg up" on law school success leads those of us teaching first-year courses to think more deeply about what constitutes a "good preparation" for the unique experiences that new law students will face, and what skills are really necessary to increase their possibilities of success, especially in the first semester.

Over the past few years, I have compiled a list of activities which I …

Profiling Minority Law Librarians: An Update, Dwight B. King, Rhea Ballard-Thrower, Grace M. Mills

Journal Articles

This is a 2007 update of a survey of minority law librarians first conducted in 1992. It offers a recent profile of our minority colleagues, enabling one to see how things have changed - or remained the same - over the course of fifteen years.

A Tribute To Robert L. Oakley: Remembering Bob Oakley, Roger F. Jacobs

Journal Articles

A tribute to Robert L. Oakley, Professor and Law Librarian (1945-2007).

Cali Lessons In Legal Research Courses: Alternatives To Reading About Research, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

Journal Articles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

Fahrenheit 451on Cell Block D: A Bar Examination To Safeguard America’S Jailhouse Lawyers From The Post-Lewis Blaze Consuming Their Law Libraries, Evan R. Seamone

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

User Surveys: Libraries Ask, "Hey, How Am I Doing?", Dwight B. King

Journal Articles

Mr. King offers suggestions on how to create and use surveys effectively to assess the quality of a library.

Researching Georgia Law, Nancy P. Johnson, Nancy J. Adams, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

In The Mountain/Green Eggheads And Old Hams, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

This article presents In the Mountain and Green Eggheads and Old Hams. Green Eggheads and Old Hams is an academic variation on a theme of Professor Seuss.

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles

Journal Articles

Academic law librarians have long insisted on the value of autonomy from the university library system, usually basing their arguments on strict adherence to ABA standards. However, law librarians have failed to construct an explicit and consistent definition of autonomy. Lacking such a definition, they have tended to rely on an outmoded Langdellian view of the law as a closed system. This view has long been discredited, as approaches such as law and economics and sociolegal research have become mainstream, and courts increasingly resort to nonlegal sources of information. Blind attachment to autonomy as a goal rather than a means …

Empirical Work In Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

Until fairly recently, researchers have not done much theoretical work on the subject of family law. Although the move towards theoretical work is a positive one, unfortunately, most of the latest reforms in family law have been uninformed by empirical studies. Furthermore, the few empirical studies that have been conducted are replete with intractable problems.

In this essay, Margaret Brinig discusses some of the problems researchers have encountered in their attempts to conduct empirical work in the area of family law. For example, most researchers have used state cross-sectional data for their experiments. Reliance on this type of data can …

The University Of St. Thomas Law Library: A New Library For A New Era In Legal Education, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

In spring 2000, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, offered me an intriguing challenge: Would I be willing to help create a brand new law library at St. Thomas' new School of Law? That opportunity was, in many ways, the ultimate chance to reconsider the fundamental underlying premises that form one's basic vision of a law library. One's understanding and thinking about these basic ideas forms the foundation on which one makes critical decisions about the law library every working day. What would it be like to have no past history to either inform or encumber those …

Competent Legal Writing - A Lawyer's Professional Responsibility, Debra R. Cohen

Journal Articles

The legal profession is constantly evolving to keep pace with our increasingly complex society.' Today, the legal profession "is larger and more diverse than ever before." Despite this transformation, "the law has remained a single profession identified with a perceived common body of learning, skills and values." This common body of learning, skills, and values constitutes the fundamental elements of competent representation. Writing is one of the essential skills of competent representation.

"Law is a profession of words." Lawyers use words, both written and oral, in a wide array of contexts-to advise, to advocate, to elicit information, to establish legal …

Meet My Mentors -- Janet Wallin And Caroline Heriot, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

In this article, Dean Ed Edmonds describes his relationship with two people who mentored him in his career as a legal librarian.

Legal Writing In The New Millennium: Lessons From A Special Teacher And A "Special Classroom", Kenneth F. Ripple

Journal Articles

After receiving the invitation to address this conference, I found my thoughts often returning to my own education in legal writing. As I recall, my legal writing experience in law school was not a very intensive—or positive—one. As was quite typical in that era (almost thirty-three years ago), the program at my law school was not very extensive: we wrote a memorandum of law and a brief under the guidance of a graduate law student.

My real legal writing education took place in the study of the Chief Justice of the United States. For the better part of five years, …

"Meet My Mentor": A Collection Of Personal Reminiscences, Frank G. Houdek, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

Contributors describe the mentoring they received as law librarians. Individually the pieces offer fascinating glimpses of individuals and relationships. Collectively, they demonstrate how important - and how varied - the process of mentoring has been and continues to be for the growth and evolution of the profession.

Shall - Take No. 2, Debra R. Cohen

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

"A Day In My Law Library Life," Circa 1997, Dwight B. King, Frank G. Houdek

Journal Articles

Contributors describe their lives as law librarians by recounting what they did during a single day at their jobs. Given the wide range of positions and libraries represented by the authors, the pieces collectively represent a snapshot - and a historical record - of the law library profession in 1997.

Catholic Faith And Legal Scholarship, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The most obvious and the most personally important way in which scholarship reflects faith knows no distinction between Protestants and Catholics. For all of us who are Christians, the life of the scholar is our vocation, our contribution to the building of the Kingdom, our share in the church's mission. We did not just stumble upon this life of scholarship, or choose it because it is interesting, exciting, or fun (though sometimes it is). Rather, we discerned through prayerful reflection upon our gifts, our opportunities, and the needs of our communities that God called us to serve others by striving …

Profiling Minority Law Librarians: A Report On The 1992-93 Survey, Dwight B. King, Rhea A-L Ballard, Helena Lai, Grace M. Mills

Journal Articles

The authors present a demographic and professional profile of AALL minority law librarian members based upon responses to a detailed survey that elicited information about work experience and skills, professional activities and participation, and career aspirations. The results lead the authors to suggest some recruitment strategies to increase diversity in law librarianship and the level of minority participation in AALL.

Sexual Freedom And Your Right To Privacy: A Selective Bibliography, Sandra S. Klein

Journal Articles

Like so many other privacy issues, concern over sexual freedom took on more than intellectual overtones with the advent of greater public discussion. As courts and government appeared to enter the most private domain of all, the bedroom, the public's interest in privacy issues dealing with sexual freedom increased dramatically. This bibliography should serve as a valuable tool for researchers who have an interest in this highly controversial area of social concern.

The Right To Die As An Issue Of Privacy: A Selective Bibliography, Sandra S. Klein

Journal Articles

The issue of whether or not an individual has the right to choose when he or she will die, is a very controversial one for many reasons. Further complicating the issue is the question of who, if anyone, has the right to decide for those who are unable to choose for themselves. The bibliography which follows includes articles which discuss this topic from a right to privacy perspective, and should prove useful to those researchers who are new to the subject, as well as to those who are already familiar with the many complex issues involved.

Employee/Employer, Sandra S. Klein

Journal Articles

The issue of privacy as it relates to employment in general is one of great concern, both to employers and employees. Both groups are faced with increasing threats to their individual or corporate privacy. Given that such threats carry personal, economic and social consequences, it is not surprising that many people are concerned. The bibliography which follows provides the reader with many sources which should prove useful to those well-versed in the subject, as well as to those who are looking at this issue for the first time.

Drug Testing/Use, Sandra S. Klein

Journal Articles

Drug testing is one of the most controversial of recent privacy issues. The bibliography which follows provides the reader with access to a wide range of discussion on this topic which is, or should be, of interest to everyone. Whether in our private lives, or on the job, drug use and drug testing will have an impact on every one of us.

Your Right To Privacy And Children's Rights/Family Law: A Selective Bibliography, Sandra S. Klein

Journal Articles

In a society increasingly aware of real or perceived social inequities, it is not surprising to note a greater concern for the rights of children and their families. It is also apparent that privacy issues are an integral subset of the larger social sphere of interests. Privacy aspects can be seen to be involved pervasively throughout the area of law dealing with children and families, especially in view of the fact that there is obvious potential for conflict not only between families and the state, but between children and the families of which they are a part