Legal Education Commons^™

Freedom To Do What? Institutional Neutrality, Academic Freedom And Academic Responsibility, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Our topic is whether law schools should remain institutionally neutral, presumably concerning the fundamental political and moral issues that besiege our society. The answer depends on several competing considerations, including one's concept of the university as either ivory tower or critical force obligated to serve the society that sustains it. I opt in the direction of the university as social force while also accepting the validity of the passive mode and seeing the dispassionate search for knowledge as a means to serve important human needs. The abstract formulation of the university as institutionally neutral is in many ways illusory because …

Nurturing The Impulse For Justice, Lynne N. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Mind In The Major American Law School, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholarship is significantly, even qualitatively, different from what it was some two or three decades ago. As with any major change in intellectual thought, this one is composed of several strands. The inclusion in the legal academic community of women and minorities has produced, not surprisingly, a distinctive and at times quite critical body of thought and writing. The emergence of the school of thought known as critical legal studies has renewed and extended the legal realist critique of law of the first half of the century. But more than anything else it is the interdisciplinary movement in legal …

Clerks In The Maze, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Lawyer Competence: Perceptual Prisms, Self-Scrutiny, And The Looking Glass, Jonathan K. Stubbs

Law Faculty Publications

In recent years legal academia has begun to reimbrace in its scholarship an old and effective teaching device: narrative. This Essay respectfully tips its analytical mortar board in the direction of this venerable tradition passed down through countless generations of teachers and learners, inside the academy and out, and acknowledges a literary "debt" to Lewis Carroll as we consider a classic exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty. ...

New York Law School Reporter, V. 10, No. 1, October 1992, New York Law School

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Prelicensure Legal Internship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Again, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the wisdom of imposing an internship requirement on aspiring lawyers as a prerequisite for licensure. It is my position that such a requirement can be beneficial to the new attorney, to the profession, and to the public and should thus be mandated for all those who seek admission to the practice of law. This Article begins by briefly examining the history in the United States of law-office, apprenticeship as a means of legal education. I then proceed to an examination of modern internship requirements in England and Canada. There follows a discussion of some of the more …

Madame Justice Wilson: Trailblazer For Justice, Brian Dickson

Dalhousie Law Journal

Mr. Dean, Mme Justice Wilson, Mrs. Read, other distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: May I say first of all that I am deeply honoured to have been invited to give the Horace E. Read Memorial Lecture for 1991, inaugurated in memory of the distinguished Dean of Dalhousie Law School who served in that capacity from 1950 to 1964. Dean Read's contribution to legal education and to legal scholarship in general was a massive one, encompassing as it did law reform, legislation and the legislative process, conflict of laws, labour law and legal education. Horace Read acquired an enviable international reputation …

Legal Research In A Social Science Setting: The Problem Of Method, T Brettel Dawson

Dalhousie Law Journal

As part of its ongoing process of curriculum development, the Department of Law at Carleton University decided in 1988 that a compulsory course in legal research methods was long overdue in the B.A. Honours degree in Law. Fortified with interest nurtured by methodological debates in feminist scholarship,' experience devilling' for a barrister pending my call to the bar, and practice from instructing a course in legal research and writing while a graduate student, I set about developing the proposed course. No guidelines existed for such a course, beyond the logic that it should complement the socio-legal or legal studies focus …

A Law & Economics Perspective On A "Traditional" Torts Case: Insights For Classroom And Courtroom, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is from a symposium, "Five Approaches to Legal Reasoning in the Classroom: Contrasting Perspectives on O'Brien v. Cunard S.S. Co. Ltd.," 57 Missouri L. Rev. 345 (1992). The symposium contains five articles that analyze this case from, respectively, traditionalist, Law & Economics, Critical Legal Studies, Feminist, and Critical Race Theories perspectives.

This article analyzes the O'Brien case from a Law & Economics perspective. It does so in a manner suitable for presentation in a Torts class or a Law & Economics class. It explains the basic terminology and approach. It analyzes the economics underlying the vaccination requirement, whether …

The Faces Of Law In Theory And Practice: Doctrine, Rhetoric, And Social Context, Richard C. Boldt, Marc Feldman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Lsat: Narratives And Bias, Leslie G. Espinoza

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Say It Ain't So, Lewis--The Agony Of A New Legal Method Professor, James F. Kagan Jr.

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

Simulated Legal Education: A Template, Thomas A. Robinson

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Justice Mission Of American Law Schools, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The scholar's dilemma, particularly those scholars in disciplines such as law that are irreversibly linked to the operation of power and implicit willingness to do violence if necessary, is that societies require shared consensus far more than truth. Negative truths about the scientifically unsupportable premises of our fundamental beliefs might interfere with the quality of the operating consensus, at least for those satisfied with their lot. The stark truth about opportunity, fairness, racial and gender bias, about who receives economic benefits and so forth would not be knowledge that “sets us free” but “sets us at each other's throats”. If …

Hidden Messages In The Required First-Year Law School Curriculum, Leslie Bender

Cleveland State Law Review

The traditional required first-year law school curriculum transmits powerful hidden messages. The hidden messages contained within this required core tell students what is most important for all lawyers to know. I am going to suggest a proposed required first year curriculum as a heuristic model for examining hidden messages in curricula generally. The proposed curriculum tells students from the day they receive their registration packets that issues of justice, truth, equality and freedom are important to all lawyers. By the organization of the curriculum, we tell them that these values (or their absence) animate doctrine and process, rather than the …

The Justice Of Life And Death: Problems And Perspectives In Teaching Capital Punishment Law, Victor Streib

Cleveland State Law Review

Please use this brief sketch to think along with me as I struggle with my continuing problems in teaching an upper-level law school course on capital punishment. Although I have been teaching it for six years, I continue to have serious doubts about my ability to do it. If I can intrigue you enough with my quandary, maybe I can squeeze out of our encounter a few insights to allow me to do better, or at least to keep me searching for answers. In return, maybe I can suggest some limitations on the justice mission of law faculty. Should the …

Problems With The Structure Of Casebooks And Instruction, John Makdisi

Cleveland State Law Review

The case method of instruction has served to instruct generations of students from the time of its introduction by Christopher Langdell at the Harvard Law School. It has much to recommend it inasmuch as the lawyers who have been trained to think, analyze and solve problems by analyzing cases include some of the best minds in the country. However, this time-honored method of instruction contains some major flaws and it is time that we reexamine a pedagogic approach satirized for its punishing role in The Paper Chase. A pedagogic approach to law training that focuses on problem solving is not …

An Agenda For Social Justice Through Law, Norman Dorsen

Cleveland State Law Review

It will not surprise many of you that, in defining social justice, I start from the policies of the ACLU. These value free expression, religious liberty, separation of church and state, due process, privacy, and the fair treatment of those that need special protection such as people with disabilities, poor people, gay people, nonwhite people, and women. In general, that is what I have in mind when I think about social justice. But the topic today is the agenda for social justice through law. We are not talking about theory or doctrine, but action. The title of this conference, "The …

Advice For The New Law Professor: A View From The Trenches, Susan J. Becker

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

A decade ago, Professor Douglas Whaley published an essay that offers comfort and advice to those commencing the metamorphosis from practitioners, judicial clerks, and students into professors of law. The purpose of this article is twofold: to offer a confirmation from the trenches of many of Professor Whaley's observations and to supplement his suggestions with some of my own.

Teaching About Justice And Social Contributions, Talbot D'Alemberte

Cleveland State Law Review

I have tried to state, in very brief outline, my case that the law schools and the large law firms have thrived on the “Paper Chase” model and that they are not fulfilling the mission which I will, without apology, call the seminary mission. They are not teaching us about justice. Each of us is at this conference because we are concerned with the way legal education operates today and most of us believe that it can be improved. Before this is over, I hope you design a grand agenda for change and I feel privileged to help begin that …

Bad News, Good News: The Justice Mission Of U.S. Law Schools, Haywood Burns

Cleveland State Law Review

I attempt to address what is wrong with law schools and how to fix it. First of all, with respect to the issue of the justice mission, one of the things that is wrong is that most law schools do not even recognize they have a mission. Secondly, there is the issue of what gets taught in the curriculum. Furthermore, the justice mission calls for us to reexamine the way in which we approach the question of admissions. The question not only whom do we teach but who teaches is also of great concern to us. How we teach has …

Clinical Scholarship And The Justice Mission, Robert D. Dinerstein

Cleveland State Law Review

To many people, the relationship between clinical programs and the justice mission of American law schools is so clear as to be self-evident. These programs may pursue justice on behalf of individual clients or for groups of clients through class-action or other impact litigation. Moreover, clinical teachers frequently discuss with their students the need for the latter to serve justice in their legal careers, whether as the principal focus of their legal work or through pro bono publico activities. Indeed, for many law students, the law clinic may be the only place in which concerns about justice are discussed and, …

Teaching Appellate Advocacy In An Appellate Clinical Law Program, J Thomas Sullivan

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Distinction Between Lawyers As Advocates And As Activists; And The Role Of The Law School Dean In Facilitating The Justice Mission, James Douglas

Cleveland State Law Review

When David Barnhizer invited me to be involved in the Justice Mission conference I jumped at the opportunity; because justice is an issue that is extremely important to me, especially being a person of color in America. In presenting my ideas about the justice mission, I will be talking about two distinct concerns. One is the role of the law school dean in facilitating the justice mission in the law schools. The second is related but applies even more broadly since it draws upon the experiences of lawyers both in their roles as practitioners and as social activists. The point …

Building Bridges Between Theory And Practice, Scholarship And Activism, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Cleveland State Law Review

The recent events of the last few weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings concerning Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, and Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, have shaken the nation and I'm sure all of us in this room. These events underscore the urgency and challenge of the justice mission of legal education. In these remarks, I will briefly explore a critical dimension of this mission, the building of bridges between theory and practice, scholarship and activism, in American legal education. Our presence here signifies our commitment to the idea that law schools have a …

Advocacy Strategies In Social Welfare Policy: Homelessness, Barbara Sard

Cleveland State Law Review

I currently direct the homelessness unit at Greater Boston Legal Services after having been a welfare lawyer for fifteen years. When I first started teaching at Harvard about six years ago, I taught a course on Welfare Law. There is a value in teaching homelessness law as a discrete topic rather than lumping it under the traditional topics of welfare law or housing law. Initially, when I started teaching at Harvard, my goal was to impress the students with the fact that a poverty law subject like Welfare Law was as complicated doctrinally as anything else that they might learn. …

Teaching Morality, Robert A. Solomon

Cleveland State Law Review

Students come to law school filled with passion, with morality, with a sense of justice, and we, the law school itself, spends three years doing our best to crush them under the weight of the rule of law instead of helping them to integrate their ideas and values with the law. To the extent students are looking at clinics, they are not only looking at them as a means of touching reality. They are looking at clinics as a furlough from prison. In this conference we are talking about our goal as being that of trying to teach justice. I …

Nurturing The Impulse For Justice, Lynne Henderson

Cleveland State Law Review

By dwelling on doctrine and appellate case analysis we too often lose sight of the underlying assumptions behind the law and the social consequences of the law. By doing so we fail to give students even a glimmer of understanding as to what they need to know to fight injustice effectively. We spend much classroom time rationalizing the real and evading difficult questions of social justice. We do almost nothing to help our students develop any sense of justice or injustice or ways of identifying how the law produces justice and injustice. Let me work through an example of how …

Law Schools Should Be About Justice Too, Henry Rose

Cleveland State Law Review

Millions of low and middle-income Americans face legal problems every day. Most cannot afford an attorney. What is remarkable about these legal problems is that they are ignored by legal educators. American law schools, the training ground for our lawyers, do not focus on the civil legal problems of low and middle income persons. American law students are taught to focus on the legal problems of persons or entities able to pay for legal services. Not only are the common legal problems of Americans not studied in our law schools, the maldistribution of legal services in the society is barely …