Law Commons^™

Law And The Wisconsin Idea, Erika Lietzan, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Publications

We recall a summer of contentment when American law was suffused with optimism, a season ending a long winter of despair and disorder. For the first fifteen years of this century, many (and perhaps most) American lawyers were filled with confidence that America had healed the wounds of civil war and was healing those of class struggle. We could, and we would, overcome all obstacles to peace and prosperity, not only for our people but for all mankind. This, it was widely believed, would be our century. As early as 1879 Daniel Coit Gilman, the premier educator of his time, …

Inclusive Teaching Methods Across The Curriculum: Academic Resource And Law Teachers Tie A Knot At The Aals, Fran Ansley

Scholarly Works

In September 1996, Laurie Zimet, Director of the Academic Support Program at the University of California at Hastings College of the Law, proposed to the rest of us – four law professors and two other academic support teachers – that we plan the Academic Support Section presentation at the 1997 Association of American Law Schools Annual Conference. Our panel topic, “Inclusive Teaching Methods Across the Curriculum,” would draw deeply from our common passion for the subject and from our diverse experiences in innovative pedagogy. But could seven of us, three of us speaking one dialect of legal education (academic support …

Innovative Teaching Methods And Practical Uses Of Literature In Legal Education, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Because I believe a breadth of reading enhances one's ability to think and write, throughout the years I have tried to encourage extra curricular and diversified reading to be done in conjunction with my Legal Writing class. Unfortunately, yet understandably, law students generally only do the required work, but not more. As a consequence, I have discovered, over time, that the "readers" in my classes continue to read while the "non-readers" never take the opportunity to discover what advantage there might be in taking my advice. Because no change has occurred in students' overall attitudes, I decided to make life …

An Analysis Of Gender In Admission To The Canadian Common Law Schools From 1985-86 To 1994-95, Brian M. Mazer

Dalhousie Law Journal

Using statistical data covering a ten year period, this study examines the issue of gender representation in admissions to first year law study at common law schools in Canada. After addressing three identifiable steps in the admission process-applications, offers and registration-the author concludes that while there has been progress and the gap has narrowed, the problem of gender inequality persists.

A Case For Compulsory Legal Ethics Education In Canadian Law Schools, Jocelyn Downie

Dalhousie Law Journal

The author presents principled arguments, consequentialist arguments, arguments by analogy and arguments by authority in support of her conclusion that Canadian law schools should have compulsory legal ethics education. Among other things, she argues that legal ethics education is an imperfect but essential way to meet the obligations that arise from the public trust placed in the legal profession. She also explores a number of benefits that can accrue to students, law schools, the legal profession and society in general when ethics is a compulsory component of legal education.

Researching For Democracy And Democratizing Research, Fran Ansley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Does Law Teaching Have Meaning? Teaching Effectiveness, Gauging Alumni Competence, And The Maccrate Report, Daniel Gordon

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article examines law school teaching evaluation techniques and probes the use of a law school alumni survey to measure teaching effectiveness. The Article focuses on a survey of St. Thomas University School of Law graduates. The Article also examines teaching effectiveness in the context of the MacCrate Report and the so called gaps between legal education and law practice it identified. The Article argues that the MacCrate Report was incomplete in its coverage of teaching effectiveness, and that much of the discord it created can be overcome by focusing on teaching effectiveness.

Foreword: Under Construction- Latcrit Consciousness, Community, And Theory, Francisco Valdes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Why Are U.S. Lawyers Not Learning From Comparative Law?, Ernst C. Stiefel, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Address the problem of comparative law in the United States. Explains why comparative law matters. Gives reasons why U.S. lawyers are not learning from comparative law. These include lack of skills, lack of institutional supports, and legal structures that resist comparative law and an attitude that comparative law has little to teach.

Hiram F. Stevens And The Founding Of The St. Paul College Of Law, Douglas R. Heidenreich

Faculty Scholarship

The St. Paul College of Law, one of William Mitchell College of Law's predecessor institutions, was established by five attorneys in 1900. Especially prominent among these attorneys was Hiram F. Stevens (1852-1904), who served as the first dean and was also a legislator, teacher, scholar, popular orator, and a founding member of the American Bar Association.

Keynote Address: Redefining Our Roles In The Battle For Inclusion Of People Of Color In Legal Education, Phoebe A. Haddon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching In The Shadow Of The Bar, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Essay is a memorial tribute to Professor Trina Grillo. Trina took seriously what many of us know but find too hard to remember: the student who is academically disqualified or who fails the bar examination might be the most brilliant in the class or the most needed within the profession. When we conceive of the bar exam as a particularly grueling and potentially unfair rite of passage between law school and the practice of law, we collude in hiding the pervasive and often negative power of the bar exam. The bar examination permeates and controls fundamental aspects of legal …

Comparing United States And New Zealand Legal Education: Are U.S. Law Schools Too Good?, Gregory S. Crespi

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article offers a thoughtful comparison of the legal educational systems of the United States and New Zealand. The author highlights the significant differences between these two legal educational systems by contrasting their admissions policies, clinical programs, "law-and-economics" electives, and staffing of required courses. Based on this analysis, the author concludes that although U.S. law schools are clearly "better," such superiority may have been achieved at too high of a cost, in terms of both the substantial resources now devoted to legal education which could otherwise be applied to alternative uses and the problematic effects of the stratified legal educational …

Preface: Law In (Case)Books, Law (School) In Action: The Case For Casebook Reviews, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

In the aggregate, these casebook reviews demonstrate the significance of the casebook, with its strengths and weaknesses, not just in shaping the temporary experience of students and teachers in the law school classroom but more profoundly for the longer-term development of the legal profession. Because casebooks still maintain the center of gravity in legal education, they serve as the vehicle through which each succeeding generation of lawyers is socialized into patterns of thinking about law and legal practice. Ironically, any single popular casebook probably has a more direct and profound influence on the legal culture than all of the other …

Of Ivory Columns And Glass Ceilings: The Impact Of The Supreme Court Of The United States On The Practice Of Women Attorneys In Law Firms Comment., Nancy L. Farrer

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Commentary examines the effect United States Supreme Court decisions on sex discrimination in the legal profession. Discrimination against women currently appears to be alive and well in the legal field. Decisions like Bradwell v. Illinois and In re Lockwood frustrated women attorneys for over a century, allowing states to determine women were unfit for occupations in areas like law. Hishon v. King & Spalding, and later, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, applied Title VII protections to evaluations of potential law firm partners—a process previously closed and unassailable for most of the history of the legal profession. More recently, Harris v. …

Reconstructing Langdell, W. Burlette Carter

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article traces the development of the modern American law school curriculum including the case method, as designed by Christopher Columbus Langdell and the Socratic method as implemented by James Barr Ames; discusses early tensions between law schools and the American Bar Association and the ultimate triumph of law schools as the primary method of law study and frames the Langdell legacy for a modern time.

Protecting Intellectual Property Rights Through Civil Litigation: A Symposium, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

On September 30, 1996, nineteen lawyers, law professors and judges from the People's Republic of China began a six-week program of classroom study, practical experience, and scholarly exchange that focused on the American system of protecting intellectual property rights through civil litigation. The program was funded by a $107,000 grant from the United States Information Agency's Office of Citizen Exchange Programs to the University of Baltimore's Center for International and Comparative Law, in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

The initial, two-week phase of the program included field trips to the U.S. Copyright Office, the Patent …

Striving To Teach “Justice, Fairness, And Morality”, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The MacCrate Report has reinvigorated legal education by identifying fundamental skills and values that are essential to effective lawyering. As we go through the process of ensuring that we train students in these fundamentals, we should not ignore the values identified in the report. At the heart of these values is the injunction that lawyers should strive to promote justice, fairness, and morality. Law schools and law teachers can play a significant role in instilling in our students a passion to ensure justice.

The Impact Of The Americans With Disabilities Act On Legal Education And Academic Modifications For Disabled Law Students: An Empirical Study, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

Law schools face the challenge of providing disabled students with reasonable accommodations in their academic setting in a fair and equitable manner. Disabled law students continue to demand academic modifications in course examinations by claiming to be persons with mental or physical disabilities. Law schools are also beginning to see requests for extension of time for degree completion, priority in course registration, and authorization to tape record classes, all by virtue of an entitlement under the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Persons with a wide range of disabilities are seeking academic modifications from their law schools. What …

The Revolving Door Part I: A Federal Prosecutor Returns To School, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Law teaching is hard work. To my trial lawyer friends who expressed envy at the easy life I must be enjoying, I often said they should imagine having to prepare and present five or six oral arguments a week, every week, for months on end. To the novice teacher presenting several courses for the first time, the task often feels just that daunting. As practicing lawyers, we flatter ourselves that we are "experts" in our fields, and thus that it would be a simple matter to step over to the local law school and, with minimal preparation, unburden ourselves of …

Teacher Power In The Law School Classroom, Julie Macfarlane

Dalhousie Law Journal

Law teachers make choices over syllabus material, teaching methods and assessment formats, and thus inevitably exercise some control over what and how students learn. The actualpowerof each individual law professor will depend on the context of her particular classroom and her perceived credibility, generally defined by the university as the demonstration of a particular (rationalist) model of subject expertise. The intrinsic hierarchies and highly competitive culture of law school sustain this traditional model of knowledge along with its congruent image of the professor as autonomous, powerful and the focus of the classroom. Feminist law teachers and others who wish to …

The Use And Effectiveness Of Various Learning Materials In An Evidence Class, Stephen J. Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

Like many law teachers, I take reasonable care in selecting the outside materials I require my students to use (or recommend to them) in preparing for class and studying for the exam. I base my choice on my own notions of what would be most helpful to them in learning the material, preparing for class, succeeding on the exam, and preparing to be lawyers. I carefully weigh such matters as length of assignment, interest to the students, and active versus passive learning.

My assessment, however, is based almost entirely on my own notions of what the students will find most …

5, Amy D. Ronner

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Simple Truths" About Moral Education , Eleanor W. Myers

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Searches, Seizures, Confessions, And Some Thoughts On Criminal Procedure: Regulation Of Police Investigation -- Legal, Historical, Empirical, And Comparative Materials, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal procedure casebooks densely populate the market but rarely are reviewed. In Criminal Procedure: Regulation of Police Investigation-Legal, Historical, Empirical, and Comparative Materials, Christopher Slobogin copes with the anxiety of influence by writing a different sort of text. Simply put, the book is outwardly somewhat homely. Aesthetics aside, the book is mostly excellent and astonishingly so for a first edition. As the subtitle promises, the book has something for everyone: historians, empiricists, comparativists, theoreticians, case-crunchers, and practitioners. This review essay tracks the book's crowning achievement-the refreshing and inventive "perspectives" chapter that opens the book. The essay then reflects on …

How We Teach: A Survey Of Teaching Techniques In American Law Schools, Steven I. Friedland

Seattle University Law Review

A person's law school teaching is predicated on or supported by one or more learning theories, therefore, Part II of this Article discusses cognitive and developmental learning theories and how they relate to law school teaching methods. Part III explains the teaching survey that was sent to the law schools, including the questionnaire used and the type of respondents who answered. Part IV of the Article reproduces the questionnaire results. Part V analyzes those results. This Article concludes that teaching methods should be consciously related to the learning process. Only by focusing on how students learn can a teacher truly …

“Some Kind Of Lawyer”: Two Journeys From Classroom To Courtroom And Beyond, Terry Birdwhistell

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In January 1996 a panel of the American Bar Association released a report concluding that "discrimination continues to permeate the structures, practices and attitudes of the legal profession." It has been a long journey in women's efforts to obtain equity in both law schools and in the legal profession generally. This article is composed of two interviews with University of Kentucky College of Law graduates: Norma Boster Adams (’52) and Annette McGee Cunningham (’80). Twenty-eight years separated Norma Adams and Annette Cunningham at the College of Law. They faced different obstacles and chose varied paths to success. While each can …

Books Vs. Non-Book Information, Betty W. Taylor

UF Law Faculty Publications

Book survival, particularly in the field of law, is faced with various challenges in this modern age of computer technology." Are law librarians at the crossroads where we have chosen non-book resources over books because of their superiority in content and value? Will books survive? Will only some types of books survive? These questions serve as fodder for futurists, happy solutions for financial woes of administrators, and concern of librarians about service, space, and, perhaps most important of all, their own survival.

Russian Women Lawyers In Post-Soviet Russia, Phoebe W. Brown

Georgia State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Development Of Law Firm Training Programs: Coping With A Turbulent Environment, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.