Legal Education Commons^™

An Experiment In Integrating Critical Theory And Clinical Education, Margaret E. Johnson

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Critical theory is important in live-client clinical teaching as a means to achieve the pedagogical goals of clinical education. Feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and poverty law theory serve as useful frameworks to enable students to deconstruct assumptions they, persons within institutions, and broader society make about the students' clients and their lives. Critical theory highlights the importance of looking for both the "obvious and non-obvious relationships of domination." Thus, critical theory informs students of the presence and importance of alternative voices that challenge the dominant discourse. When student attorneys ignore or are unaware of such voices, other voices …

Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller

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The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …

The Future Of The Casebook: An Argument For An Open-Source Approach, Matthew T. Bodie

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Despite dramatic technological change, the thick, attractively bound casebook remains ensconced as the written centerpiece of legal education. That will soon change - but its replacement has not been established. This paper argues that the legal academy should take this opportunity to implement an open source approach to future course materials. Guided by analysis and examples of commons-based peer production such as open source software, professors could establish electronic commons casebooks with a myriad of materials for every course. These joint databases would unshackle individual creativity while engendering collaboration on levels previously impossible. Although there may be concerns that such …

Approaches To Brown V. Board Of Education: Some Notes On Teaching A Seminal Case, Joel K. Goldstein

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During the past year, dozens of American law schools commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.¹ The attention was appropriate because Brown is one of the Supreme Court’s seminal decisions. By all appearances, the fiftieth anniversary of Brown attracted much more attention than did, say, the 200th anniversary of Marbury v. Madison² in 2003 or the centennial of Lochner v. New York³ this year. Brown’s unique significance resides in part in the fact that it changed America’s constitutional norm regarding race, our most embarrassing and vexing problem. In effectively overturning the doctrine of Plessy …

Telling Stories About Health Insurance: Using New Films In The Classroom, Elizabeth Pendo

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In keeping with the Symposium theme, "The Mass Media's Influence on Health Law and Policy," this essay is designed to share my experience using clips from three recent popular films as a method of enhancing coverage and discussion of legal and policy issues surrounding the private health insurance system, and to provide some practical advice for others interested in doing the same. Specific topics include the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance, continuation of private coverage under COBRA and HIPAA, public health care programs, physician incentives, the uninsured and access to care and legal remedies for claim denial. This essay builds …

The Five Stages Of Law Review Submission, Brannon P. Denning, Miriam A. Cherry

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"The Five Stages of Law Review Submissions," is a humorous look at the law review submissions process from the author's perspective. My colleague Miriam Cherry and I suggest that the process of submitting to law reviews tracks Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's "five stages of grief."

The New Japanese Law Schools: Putting The Professional Into Legal Education, James Maxeiner, Keiichi Yamanaka

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In April 2004, more than sixty law schools began operation in Japan. Legal education, previously treated as a combination of undergraduate education in law and extra-university training in professional skills, will now be concentrated in new professional law schools. The reforms of Japanese legal education are intended both to produce more attorneys in a nation that has a shortage of legally trained professionals, and to help increase the role of law in Japanese society generally.

In order for Japan's new Jaw schools to achieve their educational objectives, they must successfully address a host of conceptual, pedagogical and organizational challenges. Foremost …

A Tax Teacher Tries Law And (Dramatic) Literature, Jeffrey G. Sherman

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No abstract provided.

Leadership Opportunities Hiding In Plain View (With Harold J. Krent), Ronald W. Staudt

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No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Law In The Reform Of Legal Education: Teaching The Legal Mind In Japanese Law Schools, James Maxeiner

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• a. The Rule of Law is at the heart of the present legal reform.
• b. There is an international consensus about basic elements of the Rule of Law.
• c. Legal methods are central to the Rule of Law. But different legal methods are used to realize the Rule of Law.
• d. Teaching legal methods, i.e., teaching to think like a lawyer, is at the heart of that which is professional in legal education.
• e. The present legal reform invites Japanese law schools to teach legal methods.

Embracing The Writing-Centered Legal Process, Suzanne Ehrenberg

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No abstract provided.

Leadership Opportunities Hiding In Plain View (With Ronald W. Staudt), Harold J. Krent

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No abstract provided.

Understanding Family Law In Context: The Court Observation Assignment, Jane C. Murphy

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No abstract provided.

A Tyrannosaurus-Rex Aptly Named 'Sue': Using A Disputed Dinosaur To Teach Contract Defenses, Miriam A. Cherry

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This piece focuses on the discovery of a T-Rex skeleton, and the contract formed between the private fossil collectors and the Native American rancher who ostensibly owned the land where the fossil was situated. Although the fossil was eventually sold at auction for over eight million dollars, the fossil collectors paid the rancher only $5,000 for its excavation. In addition to the rancher, the Sioux tribe and the Department of Justice also became involved in the case.

As described in my work, the law school Socratic method has come under attack in recent years. In response to such criticisms, the …

Are Your Click-Wrap Agreements Valid?—Internet Contracting In The Global Electronic Age: Comparative Perspectives For Taiwan, James Maxeiner

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Addresses the issue of standard terms in click-wrap and shrink-wrap licenses generally and in some detail how the laws of Taiwan, Germany, the European Union, the United States and Japan.

"Quick-Takes" On A Few Recent Decisions In Evidence Law ... And Rule 5-407, Lynn Mclain

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Handout from the State and Local Government Law Institute covering recent (2003) Maryland evidence cases.

American Law Schools As A Model For Japanese Legal Education? A Preliminary Question From A Comparative Perspective, James Maxeiner

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Law faculties in Japan are asking whether and how they should remake themselves to become law schools. One basic issue has been framed in terms of whether such programs should be professional or general. One Japanese scholar put it pointedly: "[a] major issue of the proposed reform is whether Japan should adopt an American model law school, i.e., professional education at the graduate level, while essentially doing away with the traditional Japanese method of teaching law at university." American law schools are seen as having as their fundamental goal "to provide the training and education required for becoming an effective …

The Professional In Legal Education: Foreign Perspectives, James Maxeiner

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Japan is about to change its system of legal education. In April 2004 Japan will introduce law schools. Law schools are to occupy an intermediary place between the present undergraduate faculties of law and the national Legal Training and Research Institute. The law faculties are to continue to offer general undergraduate education in law, while the law schools in combination with the national Institute are to provide professional legal education. A principal goal of the change is to produce more lawyers. Law schools are charged with providing "practical education especially for fostering legal professionals." But just what is professional legal …

Introduction, Joel K. Goldstein

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The Richard J. Childress Memorial Lecture has become the highpoint of the academic year at Saint Louis University School of Law. The Lecture, which honors the memory of a long-time dean and member of our faculty,[1] has been delivered each fall beginning in 2000 by a distinguished scholar on an important legal subject. Dean Jeffrey Lewis’s vision of the program was not simply to produce a typical speech on an academic topic, but to commission a preeminent scholar to write a substantial article on a critical issue and to invite responses from other thoughtful scholars and activists. Our Law Journal …

Law Schools Explore Three-Semester Writing Programs, Eric Easton

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No abstract provided.

An Introduction To The Rules Of Evidence Applicable To Collection Cases In Maryland Trial Courts, Lynn Mclain

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This class handout introduces students to the basic concepts of evidence using examples and language from the Maryland Rules of Evidence.

Introduction To Erasing Lines: Integrating The Law School Curriculum, Amy E. Sloan

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Our goal at this conference is to begin the process of erasing the often artificial lines that presently exist between "doctrinal" and "skills" courses, between education focused on the acquisition of knowledge and education focused on the practical application of that knowledge. The lines that have been drawn are more a matter of perception than reality. If we were to deconstruct the pedagogical goals in both of these types of courses, we would find that they have as many similarities as they have differences.

Business Lawyer, Woman Warrior: An Allegory Of Feminine And Masculine Theories, Barbara Ann White

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The first part of this essay is a discourse on how two of the last half century’s most influential contributions to legal thinking: Law and Economics Jurisprudence and Feminist Legal Theory, whose adherents are normally adversaries, can function synergistically to create a greater analytic power. Using business law issues as an example - historically law and economics’ terrain but recently explored by feminism - I comment on how each can unravel different knots but each standing alone leave other conundrums unresolved.

Expanding on the feminist concept of “masculine thinking,” I discuss how, just as law and economics’ analytic style (i.e., …

Taking Legal Communications Seriously, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Teaching First-Year Civil Procedure And Other Introductory Courses By The Problem Method, Stephen J. Shapiro

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I have been teaching the first-year course in Civil Procedure for twenty years, first for five years at Ohio Northern University, and for the last fifteen years at the University of Baltimore, where I also teach a required second-year course in Evidence. When I first started teaching Civil Procedure, I used a fairly typical case method. I was never very happy with this approach for teaching a course in which one of my major goals was getting the students to learn to read, interpret and apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Federal Rules”). Gradually, I began to develop sets …

The Incredible Shrinking Law School, Phillip J. Closius

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The University of Toledo College of Law faculty and administration performed a task that may be unprecedented in modern American legal education. During a series of luncheon meetings we focused on the topic of enrollment--what size student body should we have given the realities of our market and the pedagogical goals we wish to achieve. We analyzed this issue without either an extensive reliance on our revenue stream or the risk of losing resources if we admitted fewer students. Since we administer both a full- and part-time (mainly evening) program, we also discussed our obligation to serve our metropolitan community …

Evidentiary Considerations In Civil Cases, Lynn Mclain

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Handout from a presentation at the Maryland Judicial Institute outlining character evidence and providing the text of the applicable Rules.

My First Grade Teacher, Jeffrey G. Sherman

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No abstract provided.

What Law Schools Are Doing To Accommodate Students With Learning Disabilities, Donald H. Stone

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The year 2000 marks the tenth anniversary of the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). It also marks a quarter century since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (“EAHCA”). The EAHCA opened the doors for disabled children to receive a free and appropriate education. As a result of this special education law, many disabled young people were able to succeed and are now knocking at law schools' doors seeking admission.

On July 26, 1990, Congress enacted the ADA, a landmark civil rights bill designed to open up all aspects of American life to …

The Legal Duty Rule And Learning About Rules: A Case Study, Joel K. Goldstein

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Early in their law school careers, most students find that the notions they brought with them about law clash with the ideas encountered there. As a traditional first semester course, Contracts is one arena in which students experience most acutely that tension between expectation and reality.
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/="/">Most new law students probably expect law school professors to spend more time teaching basic legal rules.[1] They anticipate the education in black letter law that is the distinctive trait of bar review courses. They are, therefore, surprised by their professors’ suggestion, whether explicit or implicit, that being a good lawyer is …