Law Commons^™

Justice Ginsburg, Civil Procedure Professor And Champion Of Judicial Federalism, Rodger D. Citron

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No abstract provided.

Gender Justice: The Role Of Stories And Images, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi

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In this book chapter, Professor Berger argues for thoughtful metaphor-making and storytelling in legal writing. Exploring legal rhetoric with an eye for gender justice, she argues metaphor and narrative shape perspective and ask the reader to join the writer in the imaginative work of seeing one thing as another. The same shift in perspective that leads to re-conception—a shift that takes advantage of metaphor and narrative’s ability to say what only they can say—is what writers aim to achieve when they use metaphor and narrative for feminist and social justice advocacy.

When Less Is More: An Ideological Rhetorical Analysis Of Selected Aba Standards On Curricula And Faculty, Linda L. Berger

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This chapter undertakes an ideological rhetorical analysis of several key provisions of Chapters 3 and 4 of the American Bar Association’s Standards for Approval of Law Schools, specifically, the interrelated provisions that regulate the curriculum and specify the required conditions of employment for the faculty of a law school. The analysis of selected ABA Standards regulating curricula and faculty supports rhetorical analyst Sonja Foss’s conclusion that the “dominant ideology controls what participants see as natural or obvious by establishing the norm. . . . [and] provides a sense that things are the way they have to be as it asserts …

Writing For A Mind At Work: Appellate Advocacy And The Science Of Digital Reading, Mary Beth Beazley

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Professor Beazley explores the future implications to appellate advocacy as we move into the digital age. Understanding how that digital world affects legal reading is vital to understanding the future of appellate advocacy. Lawyers need to understand some of the science of how people read and interact with the written word; unfortunately, we have been slow to grasp the importance of this science. She defines and explains the concepts of "Active Readers" and "Knowledge Work." She then addresses some of the issues that arise as active readers transition from paper to digital platforms. Professor Beazley concludes by describing some of …

Communicating With The Impatient, Skeptical Legal Reader: The Thesis Sentence, Michael J. Higdon

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No abstract provided.

Employment Discrimination In Legal Education: Selected Readings Relating To Women, Minorities, And Legal Writing, Lucille Jewel

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This bibliography is a collection of selected readings that address discrimination issues and attitudes relating to the employment of women and minorities in legal education.

Say The Magic Word: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Contract Drafting Choices, Lori D. Johnson

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Drafters of complex contracts often face a thorny dilemma – determining whether to retain “magic words” included in form documents, especially when considering the advice of current contract style scholars advocating for the removal of all traditional contract prose. But the drafter need not remove all terms that serve as elegant shorthand for more convoluted legal concepts, particularly where the inclusion of the term advances client interests. The application of rhetorical criticism – the analysis of methods of communicating ideas – to drafters’ use of the term “time is of the essence” sheds light on the dominant motivations of drafters …

Book Review: “The Good Lawyer: Seeking Quality In The Practice Of Law”, Linda H. Edwards

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In their first collaboration, The Happy Lawyer, the writing team of Nancy Levit and Doug Linder tackled a crucially important subject: how to have a happy life in the law. As part of that project, they interviewed more than two hundred lawyers about what makes them happy in their jobs. Levit and Linder noticed that happy lawyers nearly always talked about doing good work. Curious about the connection, the authors turned to recent research in neuroscience and learned, not to their surprise, that a key to a happy life is, indeed, the sense of doing good work. It is …

The Doctrine Of Legal Writing - Book Review Of Linda H. Edwards's Readings In Persuasion: Briefs That Changed The World, Lucille Jewel

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In legal education, the word “doctrinal” is most often used to refer to courses such as Contracts, Torts, Property, and Criminal Procedure. Doctrinal has long been used as a descriptive adjective, but also as a word of exclusion. We often hear that legal writing courses are not substantive and not as significant as doctrinal courses. Linda Edwards’s new book, Readings in Persuasion: Briefs that Changed the World, persuasively challenges this view.

This paper evaluates what we mean when we use the term doctrinal in a legal education context and considers six powerful descriptors for the doctrine of legal writing, all …

Legal Form, Style, And Etiquette For Email, George Kuney

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No abstract provided.

The Legal Reader: An Exposé, Michael J. Higdon

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John Steinbeck once said, “Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out the person — a real person you know, or an imagined person — and write to that one.” For legal writers, however, this advice is somewhat difficult to follow as their documents are likely to be read by many different kinds of audience members. In this Article, however, I mean to focus specifically on one particular kind of reader: the legally-trained reader or, more simply, the legal reader. After all, the majority of lawyers will find themselves communicating most often …

Legal Writing: A Doctrinal Course, Linda H. Edwards

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Legal writing instruction in American law schools has come a long way. Although scattered experiential courses and co-curricular activities have existed since legal education moved into a university setting, the modern era of skills education began in the 1950s and 1960s, with the creation of live-client clinics at many law schools. Early legal writing programs soon followed, moving into the main stream of curricular reform during the 1980s and 1990s. As these new courses and new instructors moved into the academy, the language of legal education naturally changed. Law faculties found themselves wanting to describe these new additions to the …

Across The Curriculum: Integrating Transactional Skills Instruction, Jean M. Whitney, Lori D. Johnson, Richard A. Rawson

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No abstract provided.

Effective Contract Drafting: Indentifying The Building Blocks Of Contracts, Lori D. Johnson

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No abstract provided.

Do Law Schools Mistreat Women Faculty? Or, Who’S Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Dan Subotnik

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No abstract provided.

Something Judicious This Way Comes... The Use Of Foreshadowing As A Persuasive Device In Judicial Narrative, Michael J. Higdon

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With the recent publication of Judge Richard Posner’s book “How Judges Think” and the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayer to the United States Supreme Court, there has been much discussion about the way in which judges decide cases. Although certainly an interesting (and important) discussion, what has so far gone largely ignored is the question of how judges, once they reach a decision, convince the legal audience that the decision is in fact correct. Thus, in my article, entitled Something Judicious This Way Comes . . ., I focus not on how judges think, but how they write. More specifically, …

When The Case Gives You Lemons ... Using Negative Authority In Persuasive Legal Writing, Michael J. Higdon

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No abstract provided.

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

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

Reproducing Gender On Law School Faculties, Ann C. Mcginley

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This article demonstrates that there is a gender divide on law school faculties. Women work in inferior sex-segregated jobs and teach a disproportionate percentage of female-identified courses. More than 80% of law school deans are men. Men teach the more prestigious male-identified courses. Women suffer from differential expectations from colleagues and students and often bear the brunt of their colleagues' bullying behaviors at work. Using masculinities studies and other social science research to identify gendered structures, practices, and behaviors that harm women law professors, this article provides a theoretical framework to explain why women in the legal academy do not …

How Embedded Knowledge Structures Affect Judicial Decision Making: An Analysis Of Metaphor, Narrative, And Imagination In Child Custody Disputes, Linda L. Berger

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We live in a time of radically changing conceptions of family and of the relationships possible between children and parents. Though undergoing "a sea-change," family law remains tethered to culturally embedded stories and symbols. While so bound, family law will fail to serve individual families and a society whose family structures diverge sharply by education, race, class, and income.

This article advances a critical rhetorical analysis of the interaction of metaphor and narrative within the specific context of child custody disputes. Its goal is to begin to examine how these embedded knowledge structures affect judicial decision making generally; more specifically, …

The Legal Reader, The Legal Writer And The All-Important Thesis Sentence, Michael J. Higdon

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No abstract provided.

From Simon Cowell To Tim Gunn: What Reality Television Can Teach Us About How To Critique Our Students' Work Effectively, Michael J. Higdon

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In an effort to illustrate and inform what makes for more effective critique of students' legal writing, this essay analogizes the various critiquing techniques currently taking place on the popular reality programs American Idol and Project Runway to the critiquing techniques used by legal writing professors.

[Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses And Misuses Of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing, Alex B. Long

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Legal writers frequently utilize the lyrics of popular music artists to help advance a particular theme or argument in legal writing. And if the music we listen to says something about us as individuals, then the music we, the legal profession as a whole, write about may something about who we are as a profession. A study of citations to popular artists in law journals reveals that, not surprisingly, Bob Dylan is the most popular artist in legal scholarship. The list of names of the other artists rounding out the Top Ten essentially reads like a Who's Who of baby …

Using Dvd Covers To Teach Weight Of Authority, Michael J. Higdon

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Using various examples, this essay explores how the movie critic quotes that companies select to grace the cover of DVDs (and ultimately help sell the product) can actually be used to teach students about weight of authority.

Generation X In Law School: The Dying Of The Light Or The Dawn Of A New Day, Tracy L. Mcgaugh

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No abstract provided.

A Reflective Rhetorical Model: The Legal Writing Teacher As Reader And Writer, Linda L. Berger

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Like most writing teachers, the legal writing teacher believes that his reading and response to student work is the most important thing he does, an importance that is underscored by the amount of time it takes. Yet, despite its importance and the hours it consumes, the rhetoric of teacher reading and writing remains relatively unexplored. This article proposes that we begin to apply what we have learned about student reading and writing to our own reading and writing. Our process of reading and responding to student work should be as reflective and rhetorical as the reading and writing process that …

Applying New Rhetoric To Legal Discourse: The Ebb And Flow Of Reader And Writer, Text And Context, Linda L. Berger

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Applying New Rhetoric to law school pedagogy, this article suggests an ebb and flow of reader and writer, text and context drawn from New Rhetoric theory, research, and teaching practices. Almost all legal writing scholarship now focuses on some aspect of New Rhetoric. Yet it is likely that the product approach still prevails in the places where the papers are graded, in part because it is the more familiar and straightforward way that papers have always been graded. What follows is an initial attempt to more fully apply New Rhetoric theory and research to the teaching of legal reading and …