Law Commons^™

Where Have All The (Legal) Stories Gone?, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

Games In The Law School Classroom: Enhancing The Learning Experience, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Educators have always been concerned with devising ways to make education fun while engaging students in an activity that will be intellectually beneficial. This article explores the use of games in the legal writing classroom.

Pierson V. Post: The New Learning, Daniel R. Ernst

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Pierson v. Post, 3 Caines 175 (N.Y. 1805), one of the most commonly assigned cases in the first-year Property course, was a dispute over the ownership of a fox discovered at large “upon a certain wild and uninhabited, unpossessed and waste land, called the beach.” For a very long time, all that was known about the case, other than the report itself, was a vivid but antiquarian account published in the Sag Harbor Express of October 24, 1895, by the judge and local historian Henry Parsons Hedges (1817-1911). Hedges claimed to have met Jesse Pierson (1780-1840) and Lodowick Post …

Dan Freed: My Teacher, My Colleague, My Friend, Ronald Weich

All Faculty Scholarship

At a recent meeting of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions, Yale professor Dan Freed was honored during a panel discussion titled "Standing on the Shoulders of Sentencing Giants," Dan Freed is indeed a sentencing giant. but he is the gentlest giant of all. It is hard to imagine that a man as mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and self-effacing as Dan Freed has had such a profound impact on federal sentencing law and so many other areas of criminal justice policy, Yet he has.

I've been in many rooms with Dan Freed over the years — classrooms, boardrooms, dining rooms, and others. …

The Benefits Of Podcasting, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article discusses the benefits of podcasting in legal writing courses, based on the author's participation in CALI's 2005 inaugural podcasting project.

The Anatomy Of A "Pantsuit": Performance, Proxy And Presence For Women Of Color In Legal Education, Deleso Alford Washington

Journal Publications

This essay is intended to begin a dialogue on how the presence of women of color standing at the intersection of gender, race and class can don a pantsuit or not and still experience under-discussed social realities that influence the attainment of 21st Century leadership roles in the legal academy.

Foreword Symposium: Having It Our Way: Women In Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

On November 14, 2007, the University of Baltimore School of Law, the University of Maryland School of Law and the Women's Law Center of Maryland co-sponsored a symposium entitled "Having it Our Way: Women in Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027." The insightful collection of papers in this volume of the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class represents the work of employment law scholars, public policy specialists, and activists who presented on the current state of Maryland employment law and discussed Maryland's future. This distinguished group of experts and scholars present several themes: the hope of new …

Foundational Competencies: Innovation In Legal Education, David E. Van Zandt

Faculty Working Papers

Spurred by a rapidly changing legal environment and a desire to differentiate and maximize the success of our graduates, Northwestern Law recently completed a major strategic planning initiative resulting in a revolutionary report entitled Plan 2008: Preparing Great Leaders for the Changing World. Plan 2008 is the most recent installment of a long-term process to enhance our student quality and programs. The new initiatives build upon a strategic plan that we have been refining since its implementation in 1998. Under the prior plan, we introduced the evaluative admissions interview and work-experience policy for applicants.1 We also added a number of …

Teaching With Technology: Is The Pedagogical Fulcrum Shifting, Camille Broussard

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Finding Power, Fighting Power (Or The Perpetual Motion Machine), Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Law School 2.0: Legal Education For A Digital Age, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Legal education is at a crossroads. As today's media-saturated students enter law school, they find themselves thrust into old style lecture-orientated, casebook modes of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years legal education has resisted many studies recommending change, most recently from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Clinical Legal Education Association. . .

Teaching Business Lawyering In Law Schools: A Candid Assessment Of The Challenges And Some Suggestions For Moving Ahead, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

As a result of several recent studies and changes in the ABA's Standards for Approval of Law Schools, legal education is paying more attention to skills training for law students. The need to bring the skills and values of business lawyers into the classroom has never been greater, yet there remains a real risk that "skills training" may be skewed in favor of litgation skills, with little emphasis given to transactional practice. This Article assesses some of the obstacles that stand in the way of effective integration of transactional skills into the law school curriculum and offers some concrete suggestions …

Who Gets To Be The Expert?: Legal Research Skills Certification In Legal Education, Richard Leiter

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library

This article considers the question of whether there is a need for law schools to offer certification for specialization in legal research skills and discusses various approaches to legal research skills cer­tification. The author argues that it is unnecessary to offer legal research certification as it is presupposed that a basic legal educa­tion should include instruction in how to find and read the law. Anything less is a failed legal education.

Exactly how special are legal research skills? Are they special enough to warrant certification? As a matter of fact, the act of legal researching is so intimately connected with …

Research Stories: Video Tales From The Summer Associate Workplace, Susan Herrick

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recalibrating The Moral Compass: Expanding "Thinking Like A Lawyer" Into "Thinking Like A Leader", Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was prepared for the Leadership in Legal Education Symposium IX.

A Law Library Development Project In Iraq, Kimberli Morris Kelmor

Law Library Faculty Works

The author talks about her changing perspectives on her experiences while working in Iraq with the International Human Rights Law Institute from February 2004 to Jan 1, 2006. The contract was initially proposed as a three-year plan to help Iraqi law schools overcome the effects of more than twenty years of economic, physical, and intellectual isolation. The complete project included a program for clinical legal education, curriculum reform, rule of law, and library and educational technology. Accomplishing this in three geographically dispersed schools was a logical plan, but a very ambitious one. As the security situation and travel restrictions worsened, …

Sim City: Teaching “Thinking Like A Lawyer” In Simulation-Based Clinical Courses, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Globalization And Corporate Social Responsibility: Challenges For The Academy, Future Lawyers, And Corporate Law, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

Changes in information technology, in combination with changing popular and political opinion (including concern over climate change) are moving the subject of corporate social responsibility ('CSR') to the forefront of policy reform, consumer and investor behavior, and graduate business education. Nevertheless, up to the present, CSR has not thrived within law schools’ curricula, or mainstream graduate or undergraduate programs. First, the subject is too synthetic to fit neatly within the core, established framework of academic subject areas (e.g. history, economics, sociology and management), or law schools’ conventional teaching of corporate, securities, employment, administrative, or environmental law. CSR is relevant to …

The Clinical Year, Stephen J. Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

This article makes the case for the value – and the feasibility, under current accreditation and related rules governing law schools - of a clinical rotation for law students, modeled on the rotations that are a key part of medical school education. The “clinical year,” which would engage students in almost full-time practice/study for their third year of law school, could be a significant step in building the complete apprenticeship that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has urged. It would also rely to a large extent on the supervision, and teaching, that adjunct law school faculty – …

"The Real World": Creating A Compelling Appellate Brief Assignment Based On A Real-World Case, Elizabeth Inglehart, Martha Kanter

Faculty Working Papers

Creating an appellate brief problem that is realistic, balanced, and interesting for students to work on is one of the most challenging opportunities facing a legal analysis and writing professor. Developing such a problem is particularly important because many legal writing courses use an appellate brief problem throughout an entire law school semester, usually requiring students to write at least one, and often two, appellate briefs based on the problem, and to argue that case in a moot court. This article provides advice, drawn from the authors' experience as professor of legal analysis and writing, as to how to develop …

Balancing Law Student Privacy Interests And Progressive Pedagogy: Dispelling The Myth That Ferpa Prohibits Cutting-Edge Academic Support Methodologies, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Faculty Publications

Controversy exists over whether the Family Education Records Privacy Act prohibits certain progressive law school academic support methodologies. This Article analyzes these claims, using the text of the statute, the related regulations, case law from the Supreme Court of the United States and other federal courts, and statements from the Department of Education. The thesis of this Article is that most academic support methods are perfectly lawful and that FERPA and progressive pedagogy can peaceably coexist.

A Litigation-Oriented Approach To Teaching Federal Courts, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

The traditional focus of the course on Federal Courts has been the study of highly abstract principles of separation of powers and federalism. This paper argues that most students are better served by a course that focuses on what lawyers need to know in order to litigate issues regarding the types of disputes federal courts may address and the division of authority between federal and state courts. With that aim in mind, the paper suggests that the course should focus largely on the opportunities and obstacles faced by lawyers seeking to advance federal constitutional or statutory claims in the federal …

Spam Jurisprudence, Air Law, And The Rank Anxiety Of Nothing Happening (A Report On The State Of The Art), Pierre Schlag

Publications

In 1969, I saw The Endless Summer. It was a surfer movie about two guys (Robert and Mike) who traveled the world in search of the perfect wave. High art -- it was not. Plus the plot was thin. And it's for sure, there weren't enough girls. But there was one line which, for my generation, will go down as one of the all-time great movie lines ever. And always it was a line delivered by some local to Robert and Mike, the surfer dudes, as they arrived on the scene of yet another dispiritingly becalmed ocean. And every …

Three Ways Of Looking At A Health Law And Literature Class, Jennifer Bard, Thomas W. Mayo, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

The authors of this Article participated in a panel at the American Society of Law, Ethics & Medicine Conference in 2008 that discussed the use of literary materials in law school to teach medical ethics (and related matters) in a law school setting. Each author comes at the topic from a different perspective based on his or her own experience and background. This Article and the panel on which it was based reflect views on how literature can play a valuable role in helping law students, as well as medical students, understand important legal and ethical issues and concepts in …

Mr. Sunstein's Neighborhood: Won't You Be Our Co-Author?, Tracey E. George, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In Six Degrees of Cass Sunstein: Collaboration Networks in Legal Scholarship (11 Green Bag 2d 19 (2007)) we began the study of the collaboration network in legal academia. We concluded that the central figure in the network was Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School and proceeded to catalogue all of his myriad co-authors (so-called Sunstein 1's) and their co-authors (Sunstein 2's). In this small note we update that catalogue as of August 2008 and take the opportunity to reflect on this project and its methodology.

The Madoff Scandal, Market Regulatory Failure And The Business Education Of Lawyers, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay suggests that a deficiency in legal education is a contributing cause of the regulatory failure. The most scandalous malfeasance of this new era, the Madoff Ponzi scheme, evinces the failure of improperly trained lawyers and regulators. It also calls into question whether the prevailing regulatory philosophy of disclosure is sufficient in a complex market. This essay answers an important question underlying these considerations: What can legal education do to better train business lawyers and regulators for a market that is becoming more complex. One answer, it suggests, is a simple one: law schools should teach a little more …

Between Diffusion And Distinctiveness In Globalization: U.S. Law Firms Go Glocal, Carole Silver, Nicole De Bruin Phelan, Mikaela Rabinowitz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is widespread agreement that law firms have embraced globalization, but what this means and why it matters are subjects still cloaked with uncertainty. Do law firms follow the models and processes of globalization characteristic of other businesses? Or are law firms forced to take a different approach because of the nature of law and its basis in a particular national system? In this article, we consider these questions as they apply to U.S. law firms, and offer a new lens to interpret the role of globalization in the activities of law firms and their lawyers. We use data relating …

Externships: A Signature Pedagogy For The Apprenticeship Of Professional Identity And Purpose, Kelly S. Terry

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Anti-Case Method: Herbert Wechsler And The Political History Of The Criminal Law Course, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to recover the dramatic transformation in criminal law teaching away from the case method and towards a more open-ended philosophical approach in the 1930s. It makes three contributions. One, it shows how Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler revolutionized the teaching of criminal law by de-emphasizing cases and including a variety of non-case related material in his 1940 text Criminal Law and Its Administration. Two, it reveals that at least part of Wechsler's intention behind transforming criminal law teaching was to undermine Langdell's case method, which he blamed for producing a "closed-system" view of the law …

Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.