Law Commons^™

Post-Tenure Scholarship And Its Implications, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

Periodically in the popular press and even in academic circles, the question arises of whether professors should be granted lifetime employment contracts based on a sample of four to six years of a probationary period. Further clouding the issue of how easily tenure should be granted is the question of what determines tenure. Is it a reward for past efforts or based on a forecast of future productivity? These concepts may seem like the same thing but they are not. Accordingly, the huge commitment of resources that occurs when tenure is granted paired with the Author's observations of pre-tenure scholars …

"Ph.D. Lite": A New Approach To Teaching Scholarly Legal Writing, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Most American law schools require the satisfaction of an upper level writing requirement, usually in the form of a seminar paper, or “Note”, for graduation. The problem for many students is that the J.D. is not generally geared towards learning scholarly writing. In recent years, the author has experimented with reformulating a seminar class as a “writing workshop” in order to focus on the scholarly writing process. In so doing, she has drawn from experiences supervising legal research degrees in other countries where research-based LL.M. degrees and Ph.D. degrees in law are the norm. This essay details her approach – …

The Temptation Of Common Sense, Curtis E.A. Karnow

Curtis E.A. Karnow

The fallacies of invoking arguments from ‘common sense’ in legal briefs.

“Clear Beyond The Peradventure Of A Doubt,” Or, Plain English, Curtis E.A. Karnow

Curtis E.A. Karnow

The article urges judges and lawyers to write briefs and opinions in plain English. This outreach from the legal world to the public is important. As the public understands what courts do, the public will be increasingly supportive of the courts, more likely to comply with courts directives, and more likely to engage in meaningful debate concerning the justice system. In this sense, writing in plain English is a civic duty.

Writing Across Gaps: Negotiating Places Of Uncertainty, Catherine Mckinnon

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Humans are the only animals that attempt to make sense of their lived experiences through story. In Six Walks In The Fictional Woods, Umberto Eco says: ‘to read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world’ (1998: 87). In recent years there has been a spate of novels that attempt this negotiation through multi-narrations that surf time, genre hop and shift geographical location. In the March 8th Book Review section of the New York Times (2012: 11), critic Douglas Coupland coined …

Texting And The Friction Of Writing, Lindsey P. Gustafson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Walking, Writing And Dreaming: Rebecca Solnit’S Polyphonic Voices, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

American writer Rebecca Solnit has published 17 books since 1990, ranging from biography to cultural histories and art criticism to personal essays. Because her work is not easily classified and because she sits at the intersection of a number of different fields, her work provides a particularly interesting case study of hybrid practices in contemporary non-fiction. This article argues that her work is a form of literary journalism: polyphonic open journalism. Solnit’s work demonstrates traces and practices arising from her training as a journalist that she has combined them with writerly and activist practices that produce a distinctive open form …

Gleams Of Light: Evolving Knowledge In Writing Creative Arts Doctorates, Diana Wood Conroy

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

From the mid-1980s to the present, art schools have embedded themselves within university structures in Australia. Around 35 universities now offer research degrees in creative arts (Baker and Buckley, 2009). Accompanying this development, the teaching of art practice and theory has followed the humanities in embracing philosophies of semiotics and post-structuralism from Europe and America through the lenses of feminism and postcolonialism.

Getting My Hands Dirty: Research And Writing, Shady E. Cosgrove

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Biographical note:

Shady Cosgrove is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong. Her novel What the Ground Can’t Hold (Picador 2013) tells the story of a group of people stranded in the Andes, all of whom have links to Argentina’s Dirty War. Her memoir She Played Elvis (Allen and Unwin, 2009) was shortlisted for the Australian Vogel Literary Prize, and her short stories and articles have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Antipodes, Southerly, Overland, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age. She has also written about the ethics of representation and teaching of creative writing. For further information …