Law Commons^™

A Heuristic Approach To Solving Complex Litigation Problems, Melanie L. Oxhorn

University of Cincinnati Law Review

This Article’s purpose is to propose a heuristic for effectively resolving complex litigation problems that are not clearly or concisely defined, do not present any immediate solutions, frequently involve novel situations or applications of legal doctrine, and suggest a var­­­­iety of possible approaches. The features of this heuristic are derived from and compatible with what we know about good scientific theories and cognitive studies on acquiring knowledge and expertise in any area. As proposed herein, students and less experienced practitioners should focus on developing “critical thinking” skills allowing them to use their training and experience to become adept at identifying …

The Role Of Scientific Research In The Development Of Legislation, منصور الصرايرة

Jerash for Research and Studies Journal مجلة جرش للبحوث والدراسات

This research dealt with issues related to the role of scientific research in the development of legislation, and the research aimed to clarify the concept of scientific research, its importance in preparing and drafting legislation, and clarifying its role in linking jurisprudence and legislation and the extent to which its theories are implemented in the field of legislation.

The problem of the research was the extent to which the national legislator adopted or ignored the opinions of legal scholars and commentators and their points of view in the legislation that the legislator is enacting or amending, hence the importance of …

On Bringing Alternative Methods To Legal Research Instruction, Tanya M. Johnson

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Legal research is typically taught in a predictable, traditional way, but this doctrinal approach does not provide the skills and techniques needed for research in support of social justice efforts. This essay discusses a legal research course that I teach called Research for Social Justice, which incorporates critical and alternative methodologies that are not usually taught in legal research classes. After describing the content of the course, I focus on explaining what alternative legal research would entail, including a discussion of some alternative methods and strategies that I teach in my course with the goal of introducing students to a …

Notes For A New Legal Research Pedagogy, Nicholas Mignanelli

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Do societal power structures shape the organization of legal information? Do they embed biases in legal research tools? If so, how can the insights of critical legal theory assist us in contending with this phenome-non? An entire body of scholarly literature using the lenses of critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, and Critical Race Theory to examine legal information and the legal research process has grown up around answering these questions. However, the theories, methods, and strategies proffered by the scholars writing in this area are rarely taught in the legal research classroom.

I begin this Essay with a discussion …

Integration & Transformation: Incorporating Critical Information And Literacy And Critical Legal Research Into Advanced Legal Research Instruction, Courtney Selby

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Today’s law students exist in an information ecosystem where access to information is plentiful. Between the open web and the proliferation of databases offering countless research resources, retrieving potentially relevant search results is relatively easy. The struggle for our students is filtering through seemingly endless search results to find the best resources for the legal problem at hand. For many of us, the summer of 2020 was a watershed moment, not because of the pandemic, but because of the brutal murder of George Floyd. Make no mistake, there was a genuine need for CIL and CLR in our legal research …

Covid, Climate Change, And Transformative Social Justice: A Critical Legal Research Exploration, Nicholas F. Stump

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article explores intertwined contemporary crises via the Critical Legal Research framework (“CLR”), as initially developed by the critical legal scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. CLR as conceived of in this Article entails a truly radical approach to the legal research and analysis regime. While the traditional research regime—as taught in law schools and utilized in practice—functions to homogenize research outcomes towards hegemonic ends, a critically “reconstructed” approach to legal and broader socio-legal research permits more transformative futures. Specifically, CLR as deployed within such modes as radical cause lawyering can help engender genuine systemic “re-formations” of the ecological political …

Research Across The Curriculum: Using Cognitive Science To Answer The Call For Better Legal Research Instruction, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The American Bar Association (ABA), law students, and employers are demanding that law schools do better when teaching legal research. Academic critics are demanding that law professors begin to apply the lessons from the science of learning to improve student outcomes. The practice of law is changing.

Yet, the data shows that law schools are not changing their legal research curriculum to respond to the need of their students or to address the ABA’s mandate. This stagnation comes at the same time as an explosion in legal information and a decrease in technical research skills among incoming students. This article …

Adding Legal Research To The Bar Exam: What Would The Exercise Look Like?, Patrick J. Meyer

Akron Law Review

Various authors have criticized the current bar exam format for not testing law practice skills. This is in spite of the ground-breaking MacCrate Report, the seminal publication of the practice-ready movement, which nearly 30 years ago listed ten fundamental practice skills. One of these ten Fundamental Lawyering Skills is legal research, which is still not tested on bar exams. The focus of this article will be on deficiencies pertaining to a lack of legal research readiness in the practice of law. My proposal is to add an interactive legal research exercise to the Multistate Performance Test (MPT), requiring applicants …

Digital Pro Bono: Leveraging Technology To Provide Access To Justice, Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Samantha A. Moppett

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Article explores the United States justice system’s failure to adequately serve all people irrespective of wealth and position. Next, Part II discusses the ABA’s call to leverage technology to increase access to justice. Part III explores ABA Free Legal Answers Online, the program that the ABA pioneered to help confront the justice gap in the United States. Subsequently, Part IV illustrates how law schools can leverage technology to increase access to justice for low-income communities while providing pro bono opportunities for attorneys and students in their state. This Part highlights Massachusetts as an example of …

Fake News, Alternative Facts, And Disinformation: The Importance Of Teaching Media Literacy To Law Students, Marin Dell

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Access To Justice Starts In The Library: The Importance Of Competent Research Skills And Free/Low-Cost Research Resources, Deborah K. Hackerson

Maine Law Review

Access to justice is an important aspirational goal for everyone in the legal profession. Lawyers, however, cannot provide access to justice without adequate practical skills and the tools necessary to complete their work. Lawyers and law students provide many hours of public and pro bono service every year. With the current state of the economy and the record jobless rate, it is likely that the need for low cost and free legal services will continue to grow. In order to carry out the mission of continuing to provide services to those in need, law students must prepare learn the practical …

Surveying The Landscape As Technology Revolutionizes Media Coverage Of Appellate Courts, Howard J. Bashman

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Juvenile Justice Research To Policy And The Case Of Fines, Alex R. Piquero

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Bibliography, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

This bibliography is a comprehensive list of all of Professor Calvin Massey’s scholarship. Unless otherwise indicated, each title was written exclusively by Professor Massey. We have not, however, included every edition of each title; rather, where multiple editions were published, we reference only the first edition. We have also omitted supplements written by Professor Massey to his own casebooks.

New Wine In Old Wineskins: Metaphor And Legal Research, Amy E. Sloan, Colin Starger

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Essay argues that conceptualizing emerging legal technologies using inherited research metaphors is like pouring new wine in old wineskins—it simply doesn’t work. This Essay proposes to replace outdated research metaphors with updated metaphors that can provide the fresh wineskin to conceptualize current research challenges.

The Future Of Law Reviews: Online-Only Journals, Katharine T. Schaffzin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Law Review Platforms, Andrea Charlow

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Student-Edited Law Reviews Should Continue To Flourish, Sudha Setty

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Paperless Chase, Steven J. Mulroy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virtual Liquid Networks And Other Guiding Principles For Optimizing Future Student-Edited Law Review Platforms, Donald J. Kochan

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Forty-Two: The Hitchiker's Guide To Teaching Legal Research To The Google Generation, Ian Gallacher

Akron Law Review

This article is a meditation on contemporary legal research and possible changes in the way the subject should be taught. Absent from this article is any mention of the importance of teaching students about the mechanical workings of the various tools lawyers use to conduct legal research. It seems so resoundingly obvious that law schools should be doing this that any discussion of the issue would appear contrived and sterile. The much more interesting, and more difficult, questions to answer are what else law students should learn, who should teach it to them, and why they should learn it. These …

In Memoriam: Peter S. Nycum, David B. Rosengard

Animal Law Review

No abstract provided.

"I See And I Remember; I Do And Understand": Teaching Fundamental Structure In Legal Writing Through The Use Of Samples, Judith B. Tracy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Out Of The Shadows: What Legal Research Instruction Reveals About Incorporating Skills Throughout The Curriculum , Barbara Glesner Fines

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The article first examines the politics of curricular reform. Before a law school will be able to increase or improve any skills instruction, the targeted skill must be important to enough to affect the curriculum. For example, sometimes law schools send inconsistent messages about the importance of legal research instruction. While external voices such as ABA accreditation standards and surveys of the practicing bar have long-recognized importance of the skills of legal research, evidence of the importance of the skill in the law school curriculum is mixed. If asked, most faculty members will agree that a given skill, such as …

Lost Laws: What We Can't Find In The U.S. Code, Will Tress

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article looks at the development of the U.S. Code as the primary expression of federal statutory law and at those features which detract from its usefulness in that role. To provide background, some defmitions of terms pertaining to codes are provided, followed by a history of the U.S. Code, a description of appropriations riders as a source of uncodified law, and a look at some of the agencies that create and maintain the Code. The Analysis section discusses particular problems with the current Code. Special attention is paid to enacted law relegated to footnotes and appendices of the Code, …

Context Of Ideology: Law, Politics, And Empirical Legal Scholarship, The, Carolyn Shapiro

Missouri Law Review

In their confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Sotomayor both articulated a vision of the neutral judge who decides cases without resort to personal perspectives or opinions, in short, without ideology. At the other extreme, the dominant model ofjudicial decisionmaking in political science has long been the attitudinal model, which posits that the Justices' votes can be explained primarily as expressions of their personal policy preferences, with little or no role for law, legal reasoning, or legal doctrine. Many traditional legal scholars have criticized such scholarship for its insistence on the primacy of ideology in judicial decisionmaking, even as …

Crowdsourcing And Open Access: Collaborative Techniques For Disseminating Legal Materials And Scholarship, Timothy K. Armstrong

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Dog That Didn't Bark: Stealth Procedures And The Erosion Of Stare Decisis In The Federal Courts Of Appeal, Amy E. Sloan

Fordham Law Review

Informal en banc review is a procedural expedient that nine of the the thirteen federal circuits use to circumvent the requirements of formal en banc review. Panels invoke informal en banc review to overrule prior panel precdent in contravention of the law of the circuit rule, as well as to take other actions normally reserved for the full court sitting en banc. The circuits taht use informal en banc review say the procedure is to be used rarely. In practice, however, the frequency of informal in banc review is significant when compared with formal en banc review. Informal en banc …

C. English, Ed., Essays In The History Of Canadian Law, Volume Ix: Two Islands: Newfoundland And Prince Edward Island, R Blake Brown

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History has played a vital role in encouraging legal history research in Canada, and one of its most important programs has been the Essays in the History of Canadian Law series. Canada lacks a legal history journal, but since 1981 the Osgoode Society has provided an opportunity for scholars to publish their work in one of its collections. Two Islands is the ninth such edited volume by the Osgoode Society that bears the title Essays in the History of Canadian Law. The first two volumes, published in 1981 and 1983, were general collections containing …

When Do Facts Persuade? Some Thoughts On The Market For “Empirical Legal Studies”, Elizabeth Chambliss

Law and Contemporary Problems

Chambliss talks about how Marc Galanter has devoted himself to combating the "jaundiced view" of the civil-justice system. Armed initially with great faith in the power of social science, Galanter and other socio-legal scholars of his generation, as well as many who have followed, have tried to combat misinformation in law and policy with the findings from systematic research--as if the facts would speak for themselves.