Legal Education Commons^™

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 …

Can Do: Training Lawyers To Be Effective Counselors To Entrepreneurs, Anthony J. Luppino

Faculty Works

This Report is the result of a grant to the University of Missouri-Kansas City from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to research and describe current methods of training law students and lawyers destined to represent entrepreneurs, and to identify promising pedagogy in pursuit of the goal of educating effective counselors to entrepreneurial clients. Entrepreneurs clearly need help in dealing with a multitude of increasingly complex laws and regulations. They may also require counsel in obtaining financing and negotiating their transactions, within the bounds of the applicable rules, to achieve their goals. The research reflected in this Report indicates that there …

Exporting American Legal Education, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

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 …

Legal Research And Legal Education In Africa: The Challenge For Information Literacy, Vicki Lawal

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This paper analyses legal research within the context of legal education in Africa, it examines some of the challenges of electronic legal research in view of the influences of online legal electronic resources and Computer Assisted legal Research (CALR) and the importance of information literacy in addressing some of the issues raised especially with regards to undergraduate legal education.

Keynote Address: Remarks At The Workshop On Tapping Into The World Of Electronic Legal Knowledge , Muna Ndulo

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

Professor Muna Ndulo of Cornell Law School presented the keynote address at the 2007 Starr Workshop, “Tapping into the World of Electronic Legal Knowledge.” The workshop took place at Cornell Law School October 7-10, 2007 and was co-sponsored by the Starr Foundation, New York University Law Library, and Cornell Law Library.

Professor Ndulo addresses the topic of new information technologies and their importance to legal research and teaching.

U.S. Law And Legal Research, Pat Court

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This presentation on the basics of U.S. law offers a general outline of the fundamental sources of U.S. law. With a foundation in the three branches of government and the laws, court decisions, and regulations that flow from them, the speaker demonstrated free and fee-based electronic resources frequently used for legal research. The focus is on Westlaw, LexisNexis, PACER the Public Access to Court Electronic Records), GPOAccess, and the official U.S. Supreme Court web site. While the web has made it possible for universities, governments, courts, and others to put user-friendly law on the web for free, the most extensive …

The Advocate Vol. 12 No. 2

The Advocate

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, July 2007, Section 2

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, July 2007, Section 1

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Integrating The Complexity Of Mental Disability Into The Criminal Law Course, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Moot Court In Global Language Of Trade, Mark R. Shulman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, February 2007, Section 1

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, February 2007, Section 2

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Bias, The Brain, And Student Evaluations Of Teaching, Deborah J Merritt

ExpressO

Student evaluations of teaching are a common fixture at American law schools, but they harbor surprising biases. Extensive psychology research demonstrates that these assessments respond overwhelmingly to a professor’s appearance and nonverbal behavior; ratings based on just thirty seconds of silent videotape correlate strongly with end-of-semester evaluations. The nonverbal behaviors that influence teaching evaluations are rooted in physiology, culture, and habit, allowing characteristics like race and gender to affect evaluations. The current process of gathering evaluations, moreover, allows social stereotypes to filter students’ perceptions, increasing risks of bias. These distortions are inevitable products of the intuitive, “system one” cognitive processes …

Creeping Impoverization: Material Conditions, Income Inequality, And Erisa Pedagogy Early In The 21st Century, Maria O'Brien Hylton

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay argues that the current trend focusing on the law and economics theory does a disservice to the full-spectrum of legal issues. Law and economics, according to the author, is a value -neutral approach to the law. It fails to take into account poverty and other social values when thinking about the law. Finally, law schools should recalibrate their approach and, in some instances, take social values into account when teaching the law.

Re-Conceptualizing Poverty Law Clinical Curriculum And Legal Services Practice: The Need For Generalists, Jonel Newman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay argues that law schools should adopt a program for training more legal generalists, especially in the field of poverty law. Furthermore, poverty law clinics should be the vehicle used to train these generalists.

Musical Chairs And Tall Buildings: Teaching Poverty Law In The 21st Century, Amy L. Wax

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay examines the evolution, demise and focus of welfare law courses in law school. It examines the content of these courses in an attempt to understand why these courses are not as popular as they once had been. Finally, it looks at the goals of welfare policy and what welfare law courses should teach.

The Pendulum Swings Back: Poverty Law In The Old And New Curriculum, Martha Davis

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay seeks to answer the question "'What is Poverty Law'?" It does this in two parts. First, it examines the surge in property law courses in the 1960's and 70's and "the purpose these early courses were intended to serve." In the second section the Essay asks and the author asks "what the history suggests about poverty law in the law school curriculum today and in the future."

The Bologna Process And Its Implications For U.S. Legal Education, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

Virtually all European countries are in the midst of a massive multi-year project intended to dramatically restructure higher education in Europe. This project, which is known as the Bologna Process or Sorbonne-Bologna, began less than ten years ago when four European Union (EU) countries signed a relatively vague agreement. The Bologna Process has now grown to forty-six countries, including all of the EU Member States and nineteen non-EU countries. The Bologna Process participants have agreed to form the European Higher Education Area or EHEA by 2010; among other goals, the EHEA is intended to help Europe better compete in the …

Calling For Stories, Nancy Levit, Allen Rostron

Faculty Works

Storytelling is a fundamental part of legal practice, teaching, and thought. Telling stories as a method of practicing law reaches back to the days of the classical Greek orators. Before legal education became an academic matter, the apprenticeship system for training lawyers consisted of mentoring and telling war stories. As the law and literature movement evolved, it sorted itself into three strands: law in literature, law as literature, and storytelling. The storytelling branch blossomed.

Over the last few decades, storytelling became a subject of enormous interest and controversy within the world of legal scholarship. Law review articles appeared in the …

The Interdisciplinary Turn In Legal Education , Anthony D'Amato

ExpressO

The nature of law and legal practice is changing with the addition of interdisciplinary scholars to law-school faculties and interdisciplinary studies to the law curriculum. However, the accessibility of non-law disciplinarians in the rest of the university raises the question of the cost-effectiveness and opportunity costs of importing them directly into the law school. This Article criticizes the interdisciplinary turn on three grounds. First is the unlikelihood that the joint-degreed persons who join the law faculty will happen to be the ones that their colleagues will end up collaborating with. Second is the even greater unlikelihood that any given discipline …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

The Case For American History In The Law-School Curriculum, Harold P. Southerland

ExpressO

This article argues for the teaching of American History throughout the first year of law school. I do not believe that students can fully understand the cases they are reading in other courses without a knowledge of environing context. Understanding American History -- which is many respects doesn't paint a flattering picture -- may also help students in making fundamental choices about what role they wish to play in their careers as lawyers. I believe it is time to recognize that too much of the profession is run as a business and not as a noble calling dedicated to helping …

The Reemergence Of Restitution: Theory And Practice In The Restatement (Third) Of Restitution, Chaim Saiman

Working Paper Series

The ALI’s Restatement (Third) of Restitution provides one of the most interesting expressions of contemporary legal conceptualism. This paper explores the theory and practice of post-realist conceptualism through a review and critique of the Restatement. At the theoretical level, the paper develops a typology of different forms of conceptualism, and shows that the Restatement has more in common with the high formalism of the nineteenth century than with contemporary modes of private law discourse. At the level of substantive doctrine, the paper explains why labels in fact make a difference, and assesses which recoveries are more (and less) likely under …

Classroom Conversations About Race, Poverty And Social Status In The Aftermath Of Katrina, Homer C. La Rue, Lela P. Love

Articles

This article addresses dialogue regarding issues of race, poverty and social inequalities in the wake of the New Orleans hurricane Katrina. Conversations were conducted in law school classrooms at Howard Law School and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law regarding the intersection of law and race, class, and poverty. The objective was not to have an abstract dialogue, but to help students develop a personal understanding of each student’s connection or lack of connection to the issues of race, class and poverty and their own choices about becoming a lawyer as it might relate to those issues. The goal was …

The Advocate Vol. 11 No. 2

The Advocate

No abstract provided.

Form And Substance: Standards For Promotion And Retention Of Legal Writing Faculty On Clinical Tenure Track, Melissa H. Weresh

ExpressO

This article compares standards for promotion and retention of legal writing faculty on a clinical tenure track. The article provides a brief history of legal writing professionals and examines specific employment criteria such as teaching, service, and scholarship. The article makes recommendations regarding those criteria based upon an assessment of institutional realities and the historical development of the profession.

Distance Education In Law School: The Train Has Left The Station, Diana L. Gleason

ExpressO

Distance Education in Law Schools: The Train has Left the Station posits the idea that law schools are getting left behind a national trend to add distance education to the higher education curriculum to the detriment of legal education and law students. Approximately half the article describes reasons for the growth in distance education in non-law academia, followed by reasons why distance education has not impacted law schools. The remainder of the article discusses three changes taking place that will bring distance education to law schools. Specifically, students expect more, students are seeking a less expensive alternative to the brick …

After The Gold Rush?: Grutter, Sander And ‘Affirmative Action’ “On The Run…” In The Twenty-First Century, Anthony Vincent Baker

ExpressO

No abstract provided.