Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Focus On The Crucial Issue, Myron H. Bright

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

A Senior Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit addresses the importance of saving valuable time by focusing on the core issues when arguing a case. The essay also provides guidance on identifying core issues.

The Uncertain Status Of Citation Reform: An Update For The Undecided, Coleen M. Barger

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Semiotics, Analogical Legal Reasoning, And The Cf. Citation: Getting Our Signals Uncrossed, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Bluebook’s introductory citation signals are essential to effective legal discourse. The choice of signal can influence not only the interpretation of cited cases, but also the path of the law. In this Article, Professor Ira Robbins examines one commonly used signal: the cf. After exploring its semiotic function, he details the multitude of ways in which this signal has been used and misused. He argues that lawyers’ and judges’ careless use of the cf. leads to confusing and often incoherent developments in the law, and concludes by proposing a precise working definition for this irksome, but potentially powerful, citation …

The Bard And The Bench: An Opinion And Brief Writer's Guide To Shakespeare, Robert Peterson

Faculty Publications

This work is a legal brief writer's and opinion drafter's guide to Shakespeare. It collects and catalogues by topic citations to plays, poems, or passages that are actually found in judicial opinions. This essay also suggests a few uncited orphans deserving a home in brief or opinion. The catalogue is web based; the reader may search it in its electronic format or download it for old-fashioned browsing.

Resisting The Allure Of Better Rule Of Law, Gary J. Simson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Closing One Gap But Opening Another?: A Response To Dean Perritt And Comments On The Internet, Law Schools, And Legal Education, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Applying New Rhetoric To Legal Discourse: The Ebb And Flow Of Reader And Writer, Text And Context, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

Applying New Rhetoric to law school pedagogy, this article suggests an ebb and flow of reader and writer, text and context drawn from New Rhetoric theory, research, and teaching practices. Almost all legal writing scholarship now focuses on some aspect of New Rhetoric. Yet it is likely that the product approach still prevails in the places where the papers are graded, in part because it is the more familiar and straightforward way that papers have always been graded. What follows is an initial attempt to more fully apply New Rhetoric theory and research to the teaching of legal reading and …

Three's A Crowd: Law, Literature, And Truth, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Researching In An Imperfect World, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Responding to a request for assistance in using Legal Resource Index leads the author to ponder how the imperfections in the reference tools we use on a daily basis lead to the inescapable conclusion that intelligent, informed compromise is an inherent part of research.

Golf Buddy Reference Questions, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Responding to a reference question that began as a casual dispute between a golfer and his buddy about legal procedure leads Ms. Whisner to consider the appropriate way to respond to inquiries from public patrons.

Commenting On Student Writing, Beth Cohen, Jocelyn Cuffee, Harris Freeman, Jeanne Kaiser, Myra Orlen

Media Presence

This Article, written by the five-person faculty in the legal research and writing program at Western New England College, discusses the process of critiquing student work. They share some ideas they have discussed in order to promote good legal writing.

English Ideas On Legal Education In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

In 1700 the only methods of legal education in England and Virginia were apprenticeship to a practising lawyer, either a barrister, a solicitor or a court clerk, and independent reading of law books; most persons seeking active membership in the legal profession did an apprenticeship supplemented by reading and observing the courts in action. In 1700 the inns of court had long since ceased to provide legal instruction, and the universities in England and Virginia had not yet begun to do so. The obvious importance of legal education was, however, not overlooked on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Apparently Substantial, Oddly Hollow: The Enigmatic Practice Of Justice, Heidi Li Feldman

Michigan Law Review

The Practice of Justice: A Theory of Lawyers' Ethics, by William H. Simon, is one of the most thoughtful and important books in legal theory - not just legal ethics - published in the past ten years. Like David Luban's seminal contribution to legal ethics, Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study, published a decade ago, Simon's book is a deliberate rival to accounts of lawyers' professional responsibility that begin with a command to zealous advocacy, end with a prohibition on outright illegal conduct, and offer nothing in between. Authors and commentators have grown increasingly dissatisfied with this as the basic …

Commenting On Student Writing, Beth Cohen, Jocelyn Cuffee, Harris Freeman, Jeanne M. Kaiser, Myra G. Orlen

Faculty Scholarship

The Authors from Western New England College School of Law discuss perspectives on and approaches to responding to student writing.

What Law Librarians Collect, Penny Hazelton

Articles

No abstract provided.

The West Digest System: The Ninth Circuit And The Montana Supreme Court, Fritz Snyder

Faculty Law Review Articles

This article analyzes the West Digest System. The article first describes the West Digest System. Next, the article compares Montana jurisprudence with that of the Ninth Circuit in light of numerical analysis of the West Digest System. Then the article discusses certain digest topics as reflections of American law. Finally, the article examines the curious symbiotic relationship between the West Digest System and the growth of American jurisprudence.

Content And Quality Of Legal Information And Data On The Internet With A Special Focus On The United States, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the United States today, digital versions of current decisions, bills, statutes and regulations issued by federal and state governments are widely available on publicly accessible Web sites. Worldwide, official (defined as “authoritative,” or “the official” word of the law) legal information issued by international organizations and foreign governments is also becoming available on the Web. However, there are currently no standards for the production and authentication of digital documents. Moreover, the information is sometimes available only for a short time and then disappears from the site. No guidelines exist either to promote a uniform way to cite to digital …

The Importance Of Being Empirical, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal scholarship is becoming increasingly empirical. Although empirical methodologies gain important influence within the legal academy, their application in legal research remains underdeveloped. This paper surveys and analyzes the state of empirical legal scholarship and explores possible influences on its production. The paper advances a normative argument for increased empirical legal scholarship.

Legal Writing In The New Millennium: Lessons From A Special Teacher And A "Special Classroom", Kenneth F. Ripple

Journal Articles

After receiving the invitation to address this conference, I found my thoughts often returning to my own education in legal writing. As I recall, my legal writing experience in law school was not a very intensive—or positive—one. As was quite typical in that era (almost thirty-three years ago), the program at my law school was not very extensive: we wrote a memorandum of law and a brief under the guidance of a graduate law student.

My real legal writing education took place in the study of the Chief Justice of the United States. For the better part of five years, …

Sailing Through Designing Memo Assignments, Lorraine K. Bannai, Anne Enquist, Judith Maier, Susan Mcclellan

Faculty Articles

Sailing and designing memo assignments have a lot in common. At first, both can seem overwhelming - so much to learn, so much to organize sequentially, and so much to get right in a short period of time. Mistakes mean instability, lost time, and possibly capsizing. Avoiding the mistakes, a good skipper can break through to clean water and good air, and teaching writing can be exhilarating. The students and teacher both benefit from and enjoy working with an ideal memo assignment. The process is critical, but the destination is key. No memo assignment is effective if it results in …

A History Of Writing Advisors At Law Schools: Looking At Our Past, Looking At Our Future, Anne Enquist, Jessie Grearson

Faculty Articles

The authors, themselves writing advisors at The John Marshall Law School and Seattle University School of Law respectively, have recently surveyed both Directors of Legal Writing and Writing Advisors across the country to learn more about the phenomena of Writing Advisors in law schools. This article will report the results of that survey. First, however, the authors will give a brief history of the events surrounding the arrival of Writing Advisors at law schools, including the rise of the writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) movement, and then they will describe how these events set the stage for Writing Advisors at law schools. Second, …

Direct Democracy In America, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

The phrase "laboratories of democracy," as applied to the states, seems most often to mean something more like "democratic laboratories" - democratic testing grounds for various approaches to social problems. What sort of welfare reform will be most effective? Let Wisconsin try out Plan A, while Michigan experiments with Plan B. What combination of tort liability rules will achieve desired levels of compensation and deterrence? Let the states experiment with strict liability, comparative negligence, or various nofault schemes. It is also true, however, that the states are literally laboratories of democracy - arenas in which democratic institutions are themselves experimented …

Interactive Class Editing, Kathleen Elliott Vinson

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

Legal writing is a process. Writing, however, is not a process that occurs in a straight line. An important part of the writing process is editing. Editing during different stages of the writing process can reveal organizational as well as analytical problems, in addition to grammatical and spelling mistakes. As Justice Brandeis said, "[t]here is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting.” The time and extent spent on editing skills conveys the importance of editing. Devoting class time to editing and making it interactive allows students to focus on editing and practice their editing skills. In …

Critiquing And Evaluating Law Students' Writing: Advice From Thirty-Five Experts, Anne Enquist

Seattle University Law Review

While there are some differences of opinion about what is the best way to comment on and grade law students' writing, a consensus seems to be developing based on the experience and insights of those in the profession who have done the job the longest and survived to tell about it. To help articulate this consensus, I selected thirty-seven experienced legal writing professors and asked them to respond to a questionnaire about critiquing and evaluating law students' writing. My goal was to gather and record their wisdom, insights, and experience for other legal writing professors, particularly those who are new …

Legal Writing Scholarship: Point/Counterpoint, Jan M. Levine, Grace C. Tonner

Articles

Perhaps because the field of legal writing has now matured enough so that we professors constitute a critical mass of experienced teachers and scholars, we find ourselves frequently embroiled in debates about legal writing scholarship. What is it? Can we do it? Should we do it? Should it be considered part and parcel of our responsibilities as members of the law school world? To help us better present our shared view that legal writing professors not only can but should produce scholarship, we sought first to take on the role of devil’s advocate, presenting all the rationales we have heard …

"Meet My Mentor": A Collection Of Personal Reminiscences, Frank G. Houdek, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

Contributors describe the mentoring they received as law librarians. Individually the pieces offer fascinating glimpses of individuals and relationships. Collectively, they demonstrate how important - and how varied - the process of mentoring has been and continues to be for the growth and evolution of the profession.

The Richness Of Contract Theory, Randy E. Barnett

Michigan Law Review

When I teach the doctrine of good faith performance, I assign an exchange between two distinguished contracts scholars, Robert Summers and Steven Burton, that has come to be known as the "Summers-Burton" debate. This debate is interesting not only for the contrasting views of its protagonists concerning the doctrine of good faith, but also because of the generational shift in modes of scholarship it represents. In the 1950s and 1960s, contracts scholars, like so many others, rejected so-called "conceptualist" or "formalist" approaches that attempted to dictate the outcome of cases with general concepts and rules. Contracts scholarship was dominated by …

Meet My Mentors -- Janet Wallin And Caroline Heriot, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

In this article, Dean Ed Edmonds describes his relationship with two people who mentored him in his career as a legal librarian.