Law Commons^™

The Tintinnabulation Of Bell's Letters, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is easy to admire Derrick Bell for the passion of his principles, and to empathize with the pain he feels for his people. Those same emotions, however, are so often conveyed with such rhetorical acrimony that his considerable merits as a role model - as well as his standing as an impartial scholar engaged in objective and well-reasoned analysis - have come to be substantially diminished. Nevertheless Bell's letters have a disturbing resonance, a tintinnabulation that gives many people of good will second thoughts about the quest for equality in America.

Professor Bell certainly has a right to his …

Defining Cutting Edge Scholarship: Feminism And Criteria Of Rationality, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

All too often, attempts to define or evaluate good scholarship develop criteria of meritocracy that reinforce existing hierarchies. Some of the efforts are quantitative. They involve cataloguing articles as measured by overall citation rates, ranking law reviews by citation counts, or classifying articles on a "greatest hits" list. Or they may count citations to construct a list of articles most-often-cited in fancy publications. Other efforts to describe quality scholarship involve the construction of criteria of merit, often for purposes of pronouncing what sorts of scholarship qualify for tenure, and for disqualifying nontraditional ideas and forms of writing as unworthy. The …

Faculty Spotlight, Michael Heller

Other Publications

Professor Michael Heller talks about his teaching and research.

Symbiotic Legal Theory And Legal Practice: Advocating A Common Sense Jurisprudence Of Law And Practical Applications, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Lawyers and legal academics are waging a fierce war over the soul of legal education in the United States. The various battles in this war include disputes over the proper emphasis on teaching versus scholarship; the need for clinical, practical, or transaction-oriented education versus the need for theoretical education; and the need for traditional doctrinal work versus the need for interdisciplinary or more liberal arts-oriented education within law schools. The war also plays itself out in discussions over law school hiring and tenure decisions.

In this Article I urge that practice and even the most abstract theory are complementary, not …

Bouquets For Jerry Israel, Yale Kamisar

Articles

As it turned out, of those asked to write a few words for an issue of the Michigan Law Review honoring Jerry Israel, I was the last to do so. And when I submitted my brief contribution to the Law Review I took the liberty of reading what the four others who paid tribute to Jerry had written. As a result, I feel like the fifth and last speaker at a banquet who listens to others say much of what he had planned to say.

On Becoming A Law Professor, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

Thirty-five years ago, when I first joined a law faculty, only one job description existed for law professors, that for the conventional classroom teacher. In the years since, the opportunities available to lawyers interested in teaching have become a bit more varied. In addition to conventional classroom teachers, a growing number of law teachers are employed by law schools to provide what I shall somewhat misleadingly call clinical instruction.1 Although these comments are addressed mainly to men and women interested in classroom teaching, a few lines about clinical teaching may be in order because the initial question for anyone considering …