Legal Education Commons^™

Professor Jonathan I. Charney: Commitment Underpinned By Conviction, James R. Mchenry, Iii

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

When I was asked to speak on behalf of the students regarding Professor Charney's contributions to the Law School, I did initially wonder how closely my relationship with him mirrored the experiences of other students. I worked for him for almost two years as a research assistant for the American Journal of International Law; I spoke with him frequently, either in person or via e-mail, about various international legal issues; and he advised me on both my student note for the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law and on my PhD dissertation. Thus, I knew the image that I had of …

Serving Pro Se Patrons: An Obligation And An Opportunity, Kerry Fitz-Gerald

Faculty Articles

Historically, non-lawyer patrons in law libraries have been viewed with discomfort, and library services, even in libraries open to the public, have been geared toward members of the legal community. However, changes in both the needs of the public and in the demographics of library patrons are challenging the traditional allocation of services in public law libraries. This article discusses the reasons for the traditional allocation of services, the cultural and economic forces that are bringing the public to law libraries in greater numbers, and new modes of service that can better meet the needs of public patrons.

Employing Active-Learning Techniques And Metacognition In Law School: Shifting Energy From Professor To Student, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Teaching a law school class, whether it is doctrinal or skills-based, can be a tiring experience. At the conclusion of class, law professors often experience fatigue, partly from coming to a calm after being on-stage and partly from expending excessive energy lecturing or engaging students with the Socratic method. Law professors who are exhausted after a sixty or ninety-minute class, while their students sit passively except for random one-on-one questioning, are overworking. Chances are the majority of the students are under-performing because they are probably similar in their learning-style to students at other law schools, who do not learn …

Leveling The Playing Field: Federal Rules Of Evidence 412 & 415: Evidence Class As A Platform For Larger (More Important) Lessons, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Teachers often approach Federal Rules of Evidence 412 and 415 with trepidation. After all, it means that a law teacher will have to talk about sex, with a group (often a large group) of law students - many of whom are in their early twenties and have never had a non-peer conversation about sex. It looks like a recipe for disaster. Let me suggest just the opposite - it offers the law teacher an opportunity to address perhaps one of the most important lessons of law school: the law only works if there is a level playing field.

Legal Separation: The Relationship Between Law School And The Central University In The Late Nineteenth Century, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Using Yale Law School as an example, this Article describes the interaction between university-affiliated law schools and the larger university during a crucial period in the development of legal education: the last third of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the Article contrasts Yale with other law schools of the day to show what made Yale unique and how Yale’s nineteenth-century idiosyncrasies would come to shape legal education at other schools in the twentieth century. Part I examines the university administration’s attitude toward the law school and how it typified law school-university relations in the late nineteenth century. Part …

Elucidating The Elephant: Interdisciplinary Law School Classes, Kim Diana Connolly

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A Normative Analysis Of The Rights And Duties Of Law Professors To Speak Out, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

As lawyers and members of a profession dedicated to equal justice under law and public service, many law professors have stepped out of the classroom and out of traditional academic scholarship to address perceived injustices in society through efforts such as pro bono litigation and legislative drafting. However, the amount of legally-related public service work by law professors is thought to be quite modest. This article analyzes the normative bases for the rights and duties of law professors to speak out on issues of public concern. It addresses laws that affect the right of a law professor to participate in …

An Ethics Critique Of Interference In Law School Clinics, Robert R. Kuehn, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

Law school clinics play an important role in training future lawyers and in providing legal assistance to traditionally under-represented individuals and groups. In addition to facing the legal issues present in any law practice, law clinic students and faculty are often confronted with ethical issues that lawyers representing poor and unpopular clients sometimes face - outside interference in case and client selection. This article explores the ethical considerations raised by interference in law school clinic case and client selection and limitations on the means of representation lawyers may employ in representing their clients. The article's analysis provides a useful framework …

Teaching Law Students To Be Self- Regulated Learners, Michael Hunter Schwartz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae On Behalf Of A Committee Of Concerned Black Graduates Of Aba Accredited Law Schools: Vicky L. Beasley, Devon W. Carbado, Tasha L. Cooper, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Shavar Jeffries, Sidney Majalya, Wanda R. Stansbury, Jory Steele, Et Al., In Support Of Respondents, Mary Mack Adu Esq.

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the Supreme Court of the United States. Barbara Grutter V. Lee Bollinger

Remarks On Jonathan I. Charney, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

I have been asked to speak for 10 to 15 minutes about a very dear friend and colleague of 25 years, Jon Charney, specifically about his contribution to Vanderbilt Law School. It is difficult to encapsulate any professor's contribution over the course of 30 years in mere minutes. This is especially difficult in Jon Charney's case, because in my opinion, Jon made an extraordinary, extensive, and enduring contribution that has earned him a place in the pantheon, among the giants in the history of this Law School.

This might seem an odd assertion to those who were acquainted with Jon. …

A Resident Of Evidenceland Defends His Turf, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

A few years ago, I wrote an essay welcoming Judge Richard Posner down from a star to Evidenceland, the sometimes obscure province occupied by evidence scholars.1 Although I criticized one of the points of his article on the economics of evidence law, I expressed the hope that he would remain in Evidenceland for an extended stay.2 I should have known that if he did so he would tell us long-term inhabitants what we have been doing wrong.

Teaching Adr In The Labor Field In China, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The editors have asked us to be quite personal in our ruminations on the future of comparative labor law and policy. For me, over the past several years, the focus has been on China. My first visit to China in 1994, purely as a tourist, was almost by accident. In late September of that year I attended the XIV World Congress of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security in Seoul, South Korea. In the second week of October, I was scheduled to begin teaching a oneterm course in American law as a visiting professor at Cambridge University …

Learning To Trust: Thoughts From A Law Clinic, David A. Santacroce

Articles

The State Bar Legal Education Committee is now the Legal Education and Professional Standards Committee. This marriage seems an apt occasion to raise, through the prism of students, the issue of trust in client relations, though not in the traditional sense of "getting the client to trust me." Rather, the more ignored "getting me to trust the client" is the focus.

A Reply--The Missing Portion, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Two Colored Women's Conversation About The Relevance Of Feminist Law Journals In The Twenty-First Century, Taunya Lovell Banks, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This is a critique by two non-white law professors in the form of a conversation about the relevance offeminist law journals on their lives and scholarship. We conclude that the impression that feministscholarship now is accepted in mainstream law reviews may be illusory and thus there is a continuing need for feminist law journals. In the past rather than creating a new type of journal, feminist law journals tend to replicate the traditional law journal model. Only the focus is different. Twenty years later not only do race and sexuality continue to separate us, but increasingly, careerism as well. The …

Teaching Civil Procedure Through Its Top Ten Cases, Plus Or Minus Two, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The thesis is that Civil Procedure teachers should give more attention to the subject's landmark cases. Law teachers' common sense and cognitive scientists' schema theory lend support to that thesis. The pedagogic implications of that thesis call for an enriched case method, the essence of which is teaching a slightly smaller number of cases and pausing on the key ones, thoroughly examining them in a rich context. The optimal sources of that context are written case studies, assigned as intermittent supplementation.

The Art Of Legislative Lawyering And The Six Circles Theory Of Advocacy, Chai R. Feldblum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A "legislative lawyer" is a person who exists in Washington, D.C., and in almost every city and state in this country where legislation and administrative regulations are developed. But most people do not know who that person is or what that person does. In fact, most advocacy organizations that should be hiring legislative lawyers have no idea who a legislative lawyer is.

The author coined the term "legislative lawyer" when she created a Federal Legislation Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. over a decade ago. The author needed to explain to her faculty colleagues what type …

The Joy Of Teaching Legislation, Chai R. Feldblum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I am going to talk about teaching legislation, a class I have taught several times at Georgetown University Law Center, as well as teaching a federal legislation clinic, which I founded ten years ago at the law school. Bill Eskridge has done a wonderful job laying out the different ways one can teach a course in legislation; you will see that my approach focuses on teaching the skills that, as Bill also correctly noted, all young lawyers will need when they start practicing.

Syllabus: Asian Americans And The Law, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

This is the accompanying syllabus to the essay by Professor Chang, “Teaching Asian Americans and the Law: Struggling with History, Identity, and Politics.” The article explores the goals and challenges in constructing a course on Asian Americans and the Law. In his course on Asian Americans and the Law, Professor Chang tries to include in the weekly reading packets history, narratives, and cases. Professor Chang includes the narratives because he has found that the students often have a difficult time relating to the history without them. After all, narratives bring life to history, making it easier for students to relate …

Teaching Asian Americans And The Law: Struggling With History, Identity, And Politics, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

In this brief article, Professor Chang explores the goals and challenges in constructing a course on Asian Americans and the Law. In his course on Asian Americans and the Law, Professor Chang tries to include in the weekly reading packets history, narratives, and cases. Professor Chang includes the narratives because he has found that the students often have a difficult time relating to the history without them. After all, narratives bring life to history, making it easier for students to relate to and/or identify with the historical persons who occupy very different subject positions with regard to race, nationality, immigration …

Whose Deal Is It? Teaching About Structural Inequality By Teaching Contracts Transactionally, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

Although Scott Burnham and others have urged the use of more contracts to teach Contracts for some time,'9 it is safe to say that the majority of Contracts courses in the United States do not put actual contracts front and center. While particular phrases or provisions surely are referenced in the steady diet of appellate decisions that comprise the first-year course, those decisions very rarely include the actual contract at issue for study. Moreover, in the increased compression of the first year course," few professors believe they can justify the time for transactional exercises or simulations in the rush to …

Remarks From The 75th Anniversary Luncheon, Barbara Aronstein Black

Faculty Scholarship

I will try to make this reasonably brief, though not as brief as a commencement address I was once asked to give. The invitation stated that I was to speak on any topic of my choice. Anything at all. For five minutes. Reporting this to one of my sons – I can't remember which one – I said, "They say it has to be no longer than five minutes. What can I possibly say in five minutes that's worth saying?" To which my son replied, "Did they say it has to be worth saying?"

Well, I'd like to say something …

Law As Social Work, Jane H. Aiken, Stephen Wizner

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In our work as lawyers for low income clients and as clinical teachers, we are sometimes told by our professional counterparts in private practice - especially those who work in large corporate firms - that what we do "isn't law, it's social work." Similarly, our students sometimes complain that the work they do on behalf of low income clients "isn't law, it's social work." In the past we have tended to respond to this "social worker" charge defensively. We insisted that what we and our students do is "law," that it is really no different from what private practitioners do …

Volume 27, No. 4

The Weldon Times

A student-run newspaper published at the School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors: Cheryl Woznica, Arlan Delisle, Ted Frankel, Andrea Huckins

An American Tale, Geoffrey Bennett

Journal Articles

How much influence should the legal profession in England and Wales have over law degree courses? Geoffrey Bennett says to consider the U.S. experience before ditching the idea.

Learning From Conflict: Reflections On Teaching About Race And Gender, Susan Sturm, Lani Guinier

Faculty Scholarship

In 1992 had been teaching for four years at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I taught voting rights and criminal procedure, subjects related to what I had done as a litigator. Preparing for class meant reading many of the same cases I had read preparing for trial. Some were even cases I had tried. Teaching offered me a fresh chance to read those cases with new interest. I could see the subtle linkages between cases that I had not previously noticed. From the distance of the academy, I observed the evolution of the doctrine without feeling overcome by the …

Cultural Projects And Structural Transformation In The Legal Profession, W. Wesley Pue

All Faculty Publications

This paper explores the history of professional formation amongst lawyers, pointing to the surprising conclusions that contemporary legal professionalism bears little continuity with supposed roots in British professionalism and that one of the major motors driving professionalism was related to a project of cultural transformation in state and society at large. Whilst legal professions appear exclusionary and xenophobic from an outside perspective, the desire to control difference has deeper, more fully cultural roots, than arguments from self-interest per se might suggest.

Teaching Government Law & Policy In Law School: Reflections On Twenty-Five Years Of Experience, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Further Thoughts On Better Writing, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

As writing teachers, we frequently witness the mystery of how writing and re-writing clarifies thinking. We teach our students to let the writing process show them the gaps in their reasoning. As student edit, they learn that paring away the superfluous allows us to see the line and structure of the argument. When a section or sentence “won’t write,” it is often because we are trying to ignore a flaw in our understanding. Form is related to content. The attempt to simplify out message teaches us what is it we have to say.