Law Commons^™

Criminal Laws: Materials And Commentary On Criminal Law And Process In Nsw, Alex Steel, David Brown, David Farrier, Sandra Egger, Luke Mcnamara, Michael Grewcock, Donna Spears

David C. Brown

The success of Criminal Laws lies both in its distinctive features and in its appeal to a range of readerships. As one review put it, it is simultaneously a “textbook, casebook, handbook and reference work”. As such it is ideal for criminal law and criminal justice courses as a teaching text, combining as it does primary sources with extensive critical commentary and a contextual perspective. It is likewise indispensable to practitioners for its detailed coverage of substantive law and its extensive references and inter-disciplinary approach make it a first point of call for researchers from all disciplines. This fifth edition …

The Importance Of Comparative Law In Legal Education: United States Goals And Methods Of Legal Comparisons, Hugh J. Ault, Mary Ann Glendon

Hugh J. Ault

This Essay discusses the gradual changes occurring within legal education, which are finding wide acceptance in law schools throughout the United States. These changes include greater attention to other disciplines, primarily economics and behavioral sciences, and the contributions they make to a fuller understanding of the legal system. In addition, law schools are increasingly exploring the ways in which the law in textbooks may differ from the law in action. Nearly every law school, therefore, is seriously investigating the social and economic background of legal rules and their consequences through clinical legal education, which attempts to provide a real or …

Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …

Beyond The Ada: How Clinics Can Assist Law Students With “Non-Visible” Disabilities To Bridge The Accommodations Gap Between Classroom And Practice, Alexis Anderson, Norah Wylie

Norah Wylie

This article examines how best to educate law students with disabilities so that they can successfully transition from classroom to practice. At the very time that the importance of experiential learning is being trumpeted as critical to the preparation of all law students for practice, all too little attention has been given to the role of clinical education in helping students with non-visible disabilities succeed in their chosen careers. Increasingly, law students are seeking accommodations for a range of mental health, cognitive, and learning disabilities. Law schools have become more adept at providing accommodations in academic classes to qualified students …

A Brief Reflection On The Multiple Identities And Roles Of The Twenty-First Century Clinician, Michael Pinard

Michael Pinard

No abstract provided.

Why I Teach (A Prescription For The Post-Tenure Blues), R. Michael Cassidy

R. Michael Cassidy

In this brief essay from a collection of articles designed to demonstrate the scope and breadth of issues in legal pedagogy, Professor Michael Cassidy explores an important psychological event for many in the legal academy - the post-tenure blues. He offers reasons to keep doing what we do - teach with joy, inspiration and a sense of purpose for the next generation. He encourages us to think of our own reasons for what keeps us going in an occupation that many of us think is one of the best in the world.

"The Purer Fountains": Bacon And Legal Education, Daniel R. Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

Today, the classical underpinnings of American legal education are under intense critical review. The dominant pedagogy, the case book and the Socratic method, were established by Christopher Columbus Langdell (1806-1906) at Harvard Law School more than a century ago. Together with Langdell's first year curriculum, which was exclusively focused on Anglo-American common law doctrine, and his emphasis on a competitive, anonymous graded meritocracy, this system still exercises an incredible grip on elite American law schools. But Langdell's 19th Century model has now been challenged by many rivals, including critical legal studies, law and economics empiricism, global curriculums, and clinical instruction. …

Environmental Law And Three Economies: Navigating A Sprawling Field Of Study, Practice, And Societal Governance In Which Everything Is Connected To Everything Else, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The vast sprawl of the environmental law field makes it a bemusing and confounding puzzle even to those who pursue it as their primary academic vocation. The amorphous breadth and intricate depths of environmental law present special challenges to anyone who tries to navigate the field. This Article addresses several of these challenges, briefly analyzing how environmental curricula are designed, and then suggests a potentially useful new way to conceptualize the realm of environmental law.

Mind The Gap: How Law Professors, Academic Support Professionals, And Students Can Fill In The Formative Assessment Gap, Heather Zuber-Harshman

Heather Zuber-Harshman

This article serves to accomplish three things. First, to provide students with feedback tools that will help them achieve academic success and improve the quality of their law school experience. Students who do not receive feedback or receive inadequate feedback should use the provided forms to proactively and creatively find ways to obtain feedback. They should never be afraid or too proud to ask others for assistance with generating this feedback.

Second, to encourage professors and Academic Support professionals who believe students should receive adequate feedback to take steps towards providing the feedback.

Third, to provide Academic Support professionals with …

Use Your Words: Providing Informational Feedback As A Means To Support Self-Determination And Improve Law Student Outlook And Outcomes, Paula J. Manning

Paula J Manning

When law school faculty neglect to make careful and informed choices about the words we use, ignoring the impact of those words on our students’ potential for success in law school, law practice and life, we contribute to our students’ psychological distress and decline in motivation and performance—which may well carry forward to the legal profession and justice system. This article uses the lens of self-determination theory to explore a simple and concrete step law school faculty can take to improve students’ outlook and outcomes, by making changes in feedback practices that contribute to the autonomy thwarting educational environment that …

Using John Dewey's Pragmatist Epistemology To Teach Legal Analysis And Communication, David T. Ritchie

David T. Ritchie

In this article I discuss the epistemology of the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who maintained that there is a “common pattern or structure” of human reasoning. According to Dewey, we naturally employ pragmatic problem-solving. In his epistemological works Dewey frequently discussed legal reasoning as a paradigm example of this sort of problem-solving. I develop and explain Dewey’s pragmatist epistemology, and then relate it to how novices can benefit from understanding his account. I end the article by explaining how I use this account of human reasoning in my law school classes.

.Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson

Kenneth Lasson

Abstract In many ways the story of modern legal education reads like a grim fairy tale, whose moral dénouement is no less compelling and perhaps more consequential than its fabulist forbears. Today's law schools are preoccupied with their reputations -- as much a survival instinct as anything else. The competition for bright students and talented faculty is more intense than ever, and marketing has increasingly come to be treated as a consideration at least as important as the actual academic enterprise. Thus do administrators seek to adopt a strategic identity plans – “building the brand” in the common parlance of …

Accomplishing Your Scholarly Agenda While Maximizing Students' Learning (A.K.A. How To Teach Legal Methods And Have Time To Write Too), Anna P. Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

In response to the demands of prospective law students, pressure from outside law organizations, and forces from within the legal academy, law schools are offering more skills training for students and more job security for Legal Methods professors. As a result, Legal Methods professors’ primary responsibilities in the legal academy are changing from a single focus of teaching to a dual focus of teaching and scholarship. Although the changes are welcomed, the task of producing scholarship remains especially difficult for Legal Methods professors because in many instances they still lack the necessary funding and time to fulfill this new obligation. …

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education In Clinical Legal Education, Margaret Johnson, Catherine Klein, Margaret Barry, Lisa Martin, A. Camp

Margaret E Johnson

There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering. The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed …

The Law School Firm, Bradley T. Borden, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

This Article introduces the concept of the law school firm. The concept calls for law schools to establish affiliated law firms. The affiliation would provide opportunities for students, faculty, and attorneys to collaborate and share resources to teach, research, write, serve clients, and influence the development of law and policy. Based loosely on the medical school model, the law school firm will help bridge the gap between law schools and the practice of law.

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll Versus Beardon, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon, occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a “madam” sold a house used for prostitution to another “madam.” The opinion is the last in a long line of cases to speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner arguably involve or are related to prostitution and is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law …

Ethical Issues In Business And The Lawyer's Role, Robert J. Rhee, Carol Morgan, Tamar Frankel, Mark Fagan

Robert Rhee

No abstract provided.

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll V. Beardon, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon, occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a “madam” sold a house used for prostitution to another “madam.” The opinion is the last in a long line of cases to speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner arguably involve or are related to prostitution and is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law …

Standing On Quicksand: Why Law Students Need New Survival Skills For An Evolving Legal Landscape, Allen R. Moye

Allen Moye

"Learning" Research And Legal Education: A Brief Overview And Selected Bibliographical Survey, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

How Much Clinic For How Many Students?: Examining The Decision To Offer Clinics For One Semester Or A Full Academic Year, Kele Stewart

Kele Stewart

Calls for legal reform, most notably the Carnegie Report, create an imperative that law schools provide more clinical opportunities to law students. In a world with limited resources, this potentially creates a tension between providing a clinical opportunity to all (or most) students versus providing a deeper clinical experience to those who take clinics to increase the likelihood that they are competent to practice upon graduation. While clinical scholars recognize that the decision to offer a clinic for one semester or the full academic year is an important consideration in clinic design, there has been little analysis of how this …

Painting Beyond The Numbers: The Art Of Providing Inclusive Law School Admissions To Ensure Full Representation In The Profession, Paula Lustbader

Paula Lustbader

The issue of increasing diversity in the profession and the law schools is still timely. In his column for the March 2011 American Bar Association Journal, the ABA President calls for more “to be done to make the legal profession more fully reflect the communities it serves.” In addition, the Society of American Law Teachers is currently preparing to proposal to make to the ABA Accreditation Committee regarding the use of Law School Admission Tests scores and minimum Bar Passage Rates requirements. Many law schools and other institutions of higher learning are wrestling with the issue of diversity and admissions …

The New Legal Writing: The Importance Of Teaching Law Students How To Use E-Mail Professionally, Kendra H. Fershee

Kendra H Fershee

In the past ten to fifteen years, the use of e-mail in a professional setting has become commonplace. Lawyers, clerks, and even judges use e-mail routinely to discuss important legal matters. In fact, there is a debate ongoing regarding whether the objective memo should even be taught in law school any more, because sharing legal analysis via e-mail has become so much more common than writing objective memos. Because of the rising frequency of the use of e-mail in a professional setting, it is important that law students receive instruction about how to communicate professionally via e-mail. This short piece …

What Are Professional Skills And Why Should Law Schools Teach Them?, Donald G. Gifford

Donald G Gifford

No abstract provided.

How Does The Dean Resemble The Islets Of Langerhans?, Donald G. Gifford

Donald G Gifford

In this essay, I suggest an admittedly bizarre analogy between the roles played by an effective dean and the functions of an obscure component of the human body.

Hard Lessons: The Role Of Law Schools In Addressing Prosecutorial Misconduct, Lara Bazelon

Lara A. Bazelon

This Article approaches prosecutorial misconduct from a pedagogical perspective by exploring the ways in which law school clinicians can teach their students how to confront the problem proactively and in-the-moment, with an eye toward reducing its rate of occurrence and blunting its corrosive effect. Prosecutorial misconduct is a serious problem that strikes at the heart of a criminal defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. More broadly, it has the potential to impact the integrity of the criminal justice system as a whole. Educating law school students in criminal clinics about this issue before they become prosecutors and criminal defense …

The Role Of The Apprenticeship And Clinics In Legal Education And Legal Culture In The Netherlands, Richard J. Wilson

Richard J. Wilson

Taking Note Of Notes: Student Legal Scholarship In Theory And Practice, Andrew Yaphe

Andrew Yaphe

In recent decades, an inconclusive (even by the standards of academia!) debate has intermittently flared up within the legal academy, as professors, judges, and practitioners have gone back and forth as to what legal scholarship ought to be. This article makes no contribution whatsoever to that debate. Instead, it looks at student legal scholarship, which has gone unnoticed while the larger debate about legal scholarship simpliciter simmered on. The article does two things, neither of which appears to have been attempted by anyone hitherto. First, it offers an extensive critique of the leading guidebooks for aspiring student authors (e.g. Eugene …

Educating Lawyers With A Global Vision, Phoebe Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

This article is based on a presentation made at Justice & the Global Economy, a conference celebrating the appointment of Phoebe A. Haddon as the ninth Dean of the University of Maryland School of Law, October 3, 2009.

Back To The Future In Law Schools, William Reynolds

William L. Reynolds

This paper first argues for the maintenance of the traditional first-year curriculum. It does so in the context of an examination of what most lawyers do in practice and, therefore, what most lawyers should know. This portion includes a defense of the Socratic Method. The paper then addresses contemporary concerns about legal education, including the devaluation of courses in the private law curriculum, and considers why legal academics are not interested in private law.