Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

How Judges, Practitioners, And Legal Writing Teachers Assess The Writing Skills Of New Law Graduates: A Comparative Study, Susan Hanley Kosse, David T. Butleritchie

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Features: Taking Globalization Seriously: Michigan Breaks New Ground By Requiring The Study Of Transnational Law, Mathias Reimann

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Taking globalization seriously: Michigan breaks new ground by requiring the study of transnational law. The faculty acted on the conviction that a fundamental understanding of how law works in the global context must be part of every lawyer's toolkit.

A Footnote For Jack Dawson, James J. White, David A. Peters

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In the jointly-authored section below, "I" refers to Professor James J. White and "we" refers to White and co-author David A. Peters.

Jack Dawson, known to many at Michigan as Black Jack, taught at the Law School from 1927 to 1958. Much of his work was published in the Michigan Law Review, where he served as a student editor during the 1923-24 academic year. We revisit his work and provide a footnote to his elegant writing on mistake and supervening events.

In Part 1, we talk a little about Jack the man. In Part II, we recite the nature …

A Taxing Settlement, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Citizens sue industries for tort injuries. That is familiar. Governments sue the same industries for costs suffered in ameliorating or preventing those injuries. That is unfamiliar. This new pattern of litigation and settlement inherently puts the government in competition with its citizens.

How Well Does The Wto Settle Disputes?, Susan Esserman, Robert L. Howse

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Last fall, a judicial panel of the WorldTrade Organization (WTO) issued a controversial ruling in a high-stakes corporate tax dispute between the United States and the European Union. Paying scant attention to the complexities of the case, the panel authorized Brussels to implement retaliatory sanction of $4 billion - an unprecedented sum - against Washington. Notably, around the same time the United States and its European allies were also making headlines with another fierce legal battle: over the authority of the International Criminal Court to prosecute American soldiers for alleged misdeeds committed abroad.

(Un)Examined Assumptions And (Un)Intended Messages: Teaching Students To Recognize Bias In Legal Analysis And Language , Lorraine Bannai, Anne Enquist

Seattle University Law Review

This article discusses how law school, specifically through legal writing courses, can address cultural bias and its effect on legal analysis and language. Part I addresses why the law school curriculum should aid students in recognizing expressions of bias in legal analysis and language. Part II discusses how bias typically appears in legal language, as well as how it may infect legal analysis and argument, and suggests ways of teaching students to recognize it in a legal writing course. Part III addresses challenges that may be faced in teaching the material, including suggestions for handling discussions of potentially sensitive subjects.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

In Support Of A Unitary Tenure System For Law Faculty: An Essay, Nina W. Tarr

William Mitchell Law Review

[L]aw faculties are made up of diverse groups of people who contribute to the academic mission in a variety of ways. Given this, there is no reason to isolate one subset--those who teach in the clinic--and treat them differently when it comes to influence, power, autonomy, access to resources, security, or remuneration. In short, to give them a different “status” has become a historical anachronism.

From Journal To Review: Ualr's Student Legal Publication Comes Of Age, 1998-99, Patrick W. Mcalpine

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Obscure But Interesting: Remembering Volume 1, Number 2, Vic Fleming

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Join Or Not To Join - A Law Review Reflection, Donna Galchus

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

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.

The Shape Of The Universe: The Impact Of Unpublished Opinions On The Process Of Legal Research, William R. Mills

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Paradigm Lost: Recapturing Classical Rhetoric To Validate Legal Reasoning, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At the inception of their careers, most lawyers have little or no background in classical rhetoric. Many law students enter law school thinking that they will receive formal training in either logic or rhetoric, but very few law schools even teach classes in these subjects. In the absence of any formal training, most lawyers learn to write persuasively by imitating “good” legal writing. The consequence for the legal profession is an abundance of legal writing that is not grounded conceptually in the rhetorical tradition from which it is derived. The principal problem with legal writing is not that lawyers cannot …

Exam Writing As Legal Writing: Teaching And Critiquing Law School Examination Discourse, Adam Todd

School of Law Faculty Publications

This article adds to the growing body of scholarship on legal writing and its role in the legal academy. It addresses an area of legal discourse that is of importance to law students, the legal academy and the bar admissions process, yet has been neglected in legal scholarship. The article is a call for legal writing faculty members and other legal writing specialists to become more involved in the process of teaching about and critiquing the discourse involved in traditional end-of-semester doctrinal law school exams. This article suggests how law school legal writing programs, by deliberately teaching about exam writing, …

A Reply--The Missing Portion, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Generation X In Law School: The Dying Of The Light Or The Dawn Of A New Day, Tracy L. Mcgaugh

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Test Suites: A Tool For Improving Student Articles, Eugene Volokh

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Teaching Lawyers How To Perform: Legal Citation In Montana, Stacey L. Gordon

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of Constitutional Law, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

I spend much of my time dealing with Supreme Court opinions. Usually, I download and read them the day that they are announced by the Court. I edit them for my casebook and teach them to my students. I write about them, lecture about them, and litigate about them. My focus, like I am sure most everyone's, is functional: I try to discern the holding, appraise the reasoning, ascertain the implications, and evaluate the decision's desirability. Increasingly, though, I have begun to think that this functional approach is overlooking a crucial aspect of Supreme Court decisions: their rhetoric. I use …

Joining Forces: The Role Of Collaboration In The Development Of Legal Thought, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For every reason to believe that collaboration has been influential... there is a countervailing reason to believe that it has played a minor role in the evolution of legal thought. It may be easy to bring to mind a handful of prominent collaborations, but most law review articles seem to be written by one author (notwithstanding their lengthy acknowledgment footnotes, suggesting that even single-author works are shaped by the insights and input of multiple scholars). And while it is true that legal scholars often collaborate on their practically oriented works, scholarly articles might not be well suited to collaboration.

Foreword, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

Why celebrate? Some people hate law reviews. They would think it unseemly to celebrate a centennial such as this. They might compare it to a 1448 celebration of the first hundred years of the Bubonic Plague. Their criticisms are familiar. Why do we entrust the development of the scholarly canon to second- and third-year law students? Why do law reviews publish really bad things and reject really good things? Why do they encourage a style of argument in which each article must begin by summarizing all that has been written before? Why do they insist that any assertion of fact, …

Foreword: Interdisciplinarity, Kathleen M. Sullivan

Michigan Law Review

In the beginning, there was law. Then came law-and. Law and society, law and economics, law and history, law and literature, law and philosophy, law and finance, statistics, game theory, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, critical theory, cultural studies, political theory, political science, organizational behavior, to name a few. The variety of extralegal disciplines represented in the books reviewed in this issue attests to this explosion of perspectives on the law in legal scholarship. This development makes clear that the vocation of the legal scholar has shifted from that of priest to theologian. No longer is a law professor successful by virtue …

Learning More Than Law From Maryland Decisions, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Electronic Resources: Criteria Used By Librarians, Robert J. Weiner Jr.

College of Law - Law Library Staff Scholarship

Librarians use a variety of criteria when evaluating research databases for potential purchase or subscription. The development of a systematic approach to making library purchasing decisions can ensure that an informed decision-making process is used in library database collection building.

Does Information And Agreement Equal Informed Consent?, Carl E. Schneider, Michael H. Farrell

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is based on a talk delivered last summer in England and on the chapter "Information, Decisions, and the Limits of Informed Consent," in (Michael Freeman and Andrew D. E. Lewis, eds.) Law and Medicine: Current Legal Issues 2000, Volume 3 (Oxford University Press, 2000). This version appears with permission of the publisher.

For many years, a principal labor of bioethics has been to find a way of confiding medical decisions to patients and not to doctors. The foremost mechanism for doing so has been the doctrine of informed consent. Anxious as bioethicists and courts have been to …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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.

Building A Foreign Law Collection At The University Of Michigan Law Library, 1910-1960, Margaret A. Leary

Articles

Ms. Leary describes the vision, energy, imagination, and techniques of the dedicated people who built an eminent foreign law collection at the University of Michigan Law Library. She also uses Michigan as an example to illustrate the development of libraries and librarianship nationally.