Legal Education Commons^™

Three Ways Of Looking At A Health Law And Literature Class, Jennifer Bard, Thomas W. Mayo, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

The authors of this Article participated in a panel at the American Society of Law, Ethics & Medicine Conference in 2008 that discussed the use of literary materials in law school to teach medical ethics (and related matters) in a law school setting. Each author comes at the topic from a different perspective based on his or her own experience and background. This Article and the panel on which it was based reflect views on how literature can play a valuable role in helping law students, as well as medical students, understand important legal and ethical issues and concepts in …

Teaching Problem-Solving And Preventive Law Skills Through International Labour And Employment Law, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

This essay describes how problem-solving and preventive law principles apply in the teaching of international labor and employment law. This is because the subject itself crosses disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Students are taught about the importance of the lawyer's role as a counselor, rather than simply a litigator, which is at the center of the model of the lawyer as a problem solver.

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

Scholarly Works

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, …

Vico And Imagination: An Ingenious Approach To Educating Lawyers With Semiotic Sensibility, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Law is a specialized semiotic realm, but lawyers generally are ignorant of this fact. Lawyers may manage meaning, but they also are managed by meaning. Seemingly trapped by the weight of pre-existing signs, their attempts to manage these meanings generally are limited to technical interventions and instrumentalist strategies. Signs have power over lawyers because they are embedded in narratives, a semiotic economy that confronts the lawyer as ‘‘given’’ even though it is dynamic and constantly under construction. Most lawyers do not make meaning through legal narratives; rather, they parrot bits of the controlling narratives in response to certain problems. Because …

Salt 2008 Awards Dinner Program, Society Of American Law Teachers

Meetings & Events

No abstract provided.

Step Away From The Case Book: A Call For Balance And Integration In Law School Pedagogy, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Recruiting Sexual Minorities And People With Disabilities To Be Dean, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

As our day-to-day work lives make abundantly clear, a law faculty is a many-headed creature: an assortment of people with a variety of interests, strengths, foibles, personalities, and identities. Within the legal academy, a dominant consensus acknowledges that a strong faculty embodies diversity along multiple axes, including, for example, race, gender, religion, age, political ideology, research and teaching methodologies, and subject matter expertise.

The dean, however, stands alone, and stands above. Thus, issues of expectation, representation, comfort with and fear of difference operate quite differently when deans are selected, and when they do their jobs. The dean exercises authority over …

Vico, Llewellyn And The Task Of Legal Education, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Legal education fails students by not appreciating the rhetorical basis of legal reasoning and argumentation. I draw from Vico's "On the Study Methods of Our Time" and Llewellyn's legal realism; both argued that law and legal reasoning are exemplary sites of rhetoric. I suggest that contemporary cognitive studies of the metaphorical structure of human understanding and the initiatives of the "new legal realism" carry forward the insights of Vico and Llewellyn. This re-orientation corrects the shallow and instrumentalist outlook of most lawyers.

Perelman In Legal Education: Recalling The Rhetorical Tradition Of Isocrates And Vico, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This paper was presented on October 14, 2008 as part of a panel addressing "The Influence of Perelman in Legal Philosophy" at a conference hosted by the Perelman Center for the Philosophy of Law, Free University of Brussels.

I argue that Perelman's philosophy is connected with legal practice, but that he never made the connections between his philosophy and legal education explicit. I refer to the work of Isocrates and Vico, and conclude that Perelman's philosophy can teach us much about contemporary legal education as we strive to address the questions raised by the Carnegie Report.

Justice Education And The Evaluation Process: Crossing Borders, Martin A. Geer, Margaret Martin Barry, Catherine F. Klein, Ved Kumari

Scholarly Works

If social justice is a teaching goal, how do we effectively assess it? An analysis of a multi-cultural teaching workshop and lessons learned and unanswered.

Law On The Street: Legal Narrative And The Street Law Classroom, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

This Article argues that the failure of anti-discrimination law to address the problems of subordination reflects the hegemonic perspective in legal narratives. For the lawyer concerned with social change, it is imperative to identify these narratives and the ways in which they not only inhibit deep social change, but may perpetuate the conditions of subordination. Yet, law school polices against the consciousness necessary for the lawyer to identify the hegemonic narrative in the law, and often instills attitudes, which are antithetical to the project of social change. In this context, Street Law - a practical law course taught by law …

Vico's "Ingenious Method" And Legal Education, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Contemporary discussions about the need to reform legal education, culminating in the 2007 Carnegie Report, should be put into a broader historical, philosophical and ethical perspective. Three hundred years ago the Italian humanist, Giambattista Vico delivered his famous oration, "On the Study Methods of Our Time," in which he lamented the rise of Cartesian critical philosophy at the expense of the cultivation of imagination, prudence and eloquence. Vico discussed law and legal education as his primary example, and his oration therefore provides an incredible resource for our contemporary deliberations.

Part One considers the literature addressing the demise of legal professionalism …

Salt 2007 Awards Dinner Program, Society Of American Law Teachers

Meetings & Events

No abstract provided.

Functional Neuroimaging Information: A Case For Neuro Exceptionalism?, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

The field of neuroethics has been described as an amalgamation of two branches of inquiry: “the neuroscience of ethics” and “the ethics of neuroscience.” The neuroscience of ethics may be described as “a scientific approach to understanding ethical behavior.” The law and ethics of neuroscience is concerned with the legal and ethical principles that should guide brain research and the treatment of neurological disease, as well as the effects that advances in neuroscience have on our social, moral, and philosophical views. This Article is a contribution to the law and ethics of neuroscience.

No longer new or emerging, the burgeoning …

Imaging Body Structure And Mapping Brain Function: A Historical Approach, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Now in its second decade, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizes changes in blood oxygenation that occur in the brain when an individual performs a mental task. Physicians and scientists use fMRI not only to map sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, but also to study the neural correlates of a range of sensitive and potentially stigmatizing conditions, behaviors, and characteristics. Poised to move outside the traditional clinical and research contexts, fMRI raises a number of ethical, legal, and social issues that are being explored within a burgeoning neuroethics literature. In this Article, I place these issues in their proper historical …

Not Quite "Them," Not Quite "Us": Why It's Difficult For Former Deans To Go Home Again, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

Here is the final version of the article that discusses the many lessons I learned while serving in the administration of three different law schools. Among other things, the article discusses the problems with shared governance and with linking rights and responsibilities of faculty members. Comments are always welcome

Colloquy, Transactional Economics: Victor Goldberg’S Framing Contract Law, Keith A. Rowley, Mark P. Gergen, Victor Goldberg, Stewart Mcaulay

Scholarly Works

Panel discussion among law faculty who teach contracts of 2007 book authored by Victor Goldberg, which suggests that an economic approach to contract interpretation is appropriate.

Salt 2006 Awards Dinner Program, Society Of American Law Teachers

Meetings & Events

No abstract provided.

Salt Membership Pamphlet Circa 2006, Society Of American Law Teachers

Other Documents

No abstract provided.

Eating Our Cake And Having It, Too: Why Real Change Is So Difficult In Law Schools, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay discusses the experiences of one law school trying to integrate the rankings into its strategic plan. It discusses the intersection of considerations designed to improve the rankings with considerations designed to improve the school as a whole, and it mentions the difficulties inherent in strategic planning in an academic environment.

Reflections Of A Former Dean, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

law school admininstration, higher education governance, dean, deaning

Toward A New Student Insurgency: A Critical Epistolary, Rachel J. Anderson, Marc-Tizoc Gonzalez, Stephen Lee

Scholarly Works

Taking the form of an epistolary (a collection of letters), this law review article explores the relationship between law and social change in the context of student activism at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law formerly Boalt). The author’s contribution to this essay examines the simultaneously linear and circular history of social justice activism at Berkeley Law and discusses the relationship between social crises and resurging waves of activism, focusing on student activism in the sphere of legal scholarship.

Scholarship By Legal Writing Professors: New Voices In The Legal Academy, Linda H. Edwards, Terrill Pollman

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In this Article, the authors explore the questions of whether legal writing topics are subjects fit for scholarship and whether scholarship on these topics could support promotion and tenure. The authors examine the scholarship of today’s legal writing professors—what they are writing and where it is being published—and they define the term “legal writing topic,” identifying major categories of legal writing scholarship and suggesting criteria for evaluation in this emerging academic area.

The Study Of Intellectual Property At The William S. Boyd School Of Law, Mary Lafrance

Scholarly Works

This article discusses the intellectual property program at William S. Boyd School of Law.

Disabilities To Exceptional Abilities: Law Students With Disabilities, Nontraditional Learners, And The Law Teacher As A Learner, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cool Data On A Hot Issue: Empirical Evidence That A Law School Bar Support Program Enhances Bar Performance, Linda Jellum, Emmeline Paulette Reeves

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Who Next, The Janitors? A Socio-Feminist Critique Of The Status Hierarchy Of Law Professors, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Scholarly Works

This paper is an invitation to those in the legal academy who self-identify as egalitarian, as feminist, or as otherwise committed to equality in the law and the legal profession. The essay asks feminists and egalitarians to notice and resist the institutionalized and illegitimate status hierarchy operating in American law schools. Like any status hierarchy, its boundaries are well defined and well enforced. Additionally, and perhaps not surprising to feminists, this hierarchy is gendered, with the lowest rank overwhelmingly composed of women and the highest rank overwhelmingly composed of men. The players in this status hierarchy are the faculties and …

Dealing With Hate In The Feminist Classroom, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Scholarly Works

The goals of this essay are two-fold. First, by describing the experience I had in Law and Feminism, the essay will show how hateful and harassing speech in a seminar devoted to issues of gender, race and sexuality can rob students of important educational experiences. The story of my class is meant to remind legal educators and administrators of the concrete harm, both personal and educational, of hate speech. Too often the hate speech debate focuses on the theoretical and the abstract; participants forget that the principles at stake have demonstrable consequences for real people.

Second, while this essay does …

Incorporating Literature Into A Health Law Curriculum, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Literature has had a long relationship with medicine through literary images of disease, literary images of physicians and other healers, works of literature by physician-writers, and the use of literature as a method of active or passive healing. Literature also has had a long relationship with the law through literary images of various legal processes, lawyers, and judges, works for literature by lawyer-writers, and the use of literature as therapy. At last count, eighty-four law schools in the United States and Canada reported offering some variations of a “law and literature” course and recent scholarship demonstrates that literature increasingly is …

Decanal Haiku, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

Musings on the life of a law school dean.