Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Disrupting Carceral Logic In Family Policing, Cynthia Godsoe

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, By Dorothy Roberts.

Policing Queer Sexuality, Ari Ezra Waldman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life Before Stonewall. By Anna Lvovsky.

Status Manipulation In Chae Chan Ping V. United States, Sam Erman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Chae Chan Ping v. United States. By Rose Cuison-Villazor in Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law 74, 84. Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R.A. Lenhardt and Angela Onwuachi-Willig.

Beyond “Big Government”: Toward New Legal Histories Of The New Deal Order’S End, Gabriel L. Levine

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism. By Paul Sabin.

The Geography Of Unfreedom, Ann M. Eisenberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia. By Judah Schept.

The Indian Child Welfare Act In The Multiverse, M. Alexander Pearl

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl By Matthew L.M. Fletcher and Kathryn E. Fort, in Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law 452, 471. Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R.A. Lenhardt and Angela Onwuachi-Willig.

Disabling Lawyering: Buck V. Bell And The Road To A More Inclusive Legal Practice, Jacob Izak Abudaram

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be and Ally. By Emily Ladau and Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell By Paul A. Lombardo.

Introduction: Three Responses To Rewritten Opinions In Critical Race Judgments, Gabe Chess, Elena Meth

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law. Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R.A. Lenhardt and Angela Onwuachi-Willig.

The Fraternity Of Legal Style, Alexa Z. Chew

Faculty Publications

This article reports the findings of an empirical study of writing experts mentioned in popular legal style books. The study shows that these experts are overwhelmingly men. This study complements the many other studies showing that gender and racial bias exists throughout the legal profession, but it focuses on one area that has not yet been examined: bias in books that give writing advice to lawyers. I call these books “legal style books.” The area of legal writing advice books is admittedly niche. However, it is worth studying because writing is central to lawyering.

Peer Review In Advanced Legal Writing Course, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

This Article adds to the conversation about peer review, discussing specifically the numerous benefits peer review brings to an advanced legal writing course. The Article illustrates how to effectively integrate peer review into an advanced legal writing course. Peer reviews can support student learning and improve students’ legal analysis and writing, among other things. Thus, the Article encourages law professors to experiment with peer review exercises and incorporate them into their advanced legal writing courses.

Integration & Transformation: Incorporating Critical Information Literacy And Critical Legal Research Into Advanced Legal Research Instruction, Courtney Selby

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Legal research is not a separate and distinct endeavor from legal analysis and advocacy. These activities are inextricably intertwined in the practice of law. Few would suggest that advocacy includes the process of applying rules to situations in a vacuum without reference to context and consequences. Yet we often see this assumption about the legal research process. Many students presume that conducting legal research is a neutral endeavor, and that when done properly, it delivers the universe of relevant authorities to the researcher. This essay is about my experience integrating critical perspectives into an existing advanced legal research course …

The Beauty Of Shorts: Ten Tips On Writing A Publishable Short Piece, Robin Boyle-Laisure, Brooke J. Bowman

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Based upon our experience serving on editorial boards of peer-reviewed law journals for over twenty years combined, we encourage faculty who teach legal research and writing to write short scholarly pieces. While books have been written on how to write scholarly articles, and law schools offer students courses on writing journal articles, there is little information about how to write a scholarly piece that is short. This Essay fills that gap and provides advice for constructing a publishable short.

Integrating An Oral Presentation Assignment Into A Course On Drafting Contracts, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Law schools have a critical responsibility to train students in effective oral communication skills. Indeed, the American Bar Association’s Standard 302 requires that law schools establish learning outcomes that include student “competency” in, among other things, “[l]egal analysis and reasoning, legal research, problem-solving, and written and oral communication in the legal context.” Yet, apart from clinical and externship offerings, where students can regularly interact with clients, lawyers, judges, and others, and courses like trial or appellate advocacy, which focus on essential courtroom communications, students generally have limited opportunities to practice oral communication skills in a traditional law school classroom. …

Didn’T I Cover That In Class? Low-Stakes Technique Of Quizzing To The Rescue, Robin Boyle-Laisure

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

We all have had those moments when students’ papers do not reflect an important lesson covered in class. For instance, if teaching persuasive writing, you have likely instructed your students to use a full sentence for their point headings in their briefs, only to find phrases where sentences should have been used. Consequently, you find yourself making the same written comments on papers or verbal comments in conferences with students, beginning with, “As I had instructed in class…” In his groundbreaking book, Experiential Learning, researcher and theorist David Kolb introduced the concept of “deep learning,” which can remedy …

Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Front Matter

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Volume 18 (2023).

Disrupting Data Cartels By Editing Wikipedia, Eun Hee Han, Amanda Levendowski, Jonah Perlin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Legal discourse in the digital public square is driven by memoranda, motions, briefs, contracts, legislation, testimony, and judicial opinions. And as lawyers are taught from their first day of law school, the strength of these genres of legal communication is built on authority. But finding that authority often depends on a duopoly of for-profit legal research resources: Westlaw and Lexis. Although contemporary legal practice relies on these databases, they are far from ethically neutral. Not only are these “data cartels” expensive-- creating significant access to justice challenges--they also are controlled by parent companies that profit by providing information to Immigration …

Editing, Vehicles In The Park, And The Virtue Of Clarity, Patrick Barry

Articles

What is the optimal amount of advocacy?

My law students and I face that question all the time. We face it when we’re drafting motions. We face it when we’re proposing changes to contracts. We even face it when putting together key emails, text messages, and social-media posts.

In all these situations and many more, we don’t want to oversell our arguments and ideas — but we don’t want to undersell them either. Instead, we hope to hit that perfect sweet spot known as “persuasion.”

We don’t always succeed, but one thing that has significantly increased our effectiveness is the …

Hierarchy, Race & Gender In Legal Scholarly Networks, Nicholson W. Price, Keerthana Nunna, Jonathan Tietz

Articles

A potent myth of legal academic scholarship is that it is mostly meritocratic and mostly solitary. Reality is more complicated. In this Article, we plumb the networks of knowledge co-production in legal academia by analyzing the star footnotes that appear at the beginning of most law review articles. Acknowledgments paint a rich picture of both the currency of scholarly credit and the relationships among scholars. Building on others’ prior work characterizing the potent impact of hierarchy, race, and gender in legal academia more generally, we examine the patterns of scholarly networks and probe the effects of those factors. The landscape …

Household Intimacy And Being Unmarried: Family Pluralism In The Novels Of Anthony Trollope, Linda C. Mcclain, Allison Anna Tait

Faculty Scholarship

Many critics rightfully claim that the marriage market and an inquiry into its innermost workings are at the heart of Anthony Trollope’s novels, but this Article argues that his novels also depict—on the periphery or sometimes just hiding in plain sight—a set of curiously nonmarital households. These households vary in form, but include widows and widowers living on their own, mothers and daughters living collectively, and male cousins sharing space and the work of daily living. Critics have debated whether Trollope was simply a realistic social historian—chronicling families as he found them— or whether he constructively used literary license to …

An Appeal To Books, Amir H. Ali

Michigan Law Review

This feels a fit, even urgent, moment to celebrate our books and the role they play vis-à-vis the law, the courts, and the truth.

As this issue goes to print, our nation’s highest court faces forceful criticism that some of its most significant decisions have been detached from objective fact. In recent Terms, the Supreme Court’s majority has doubled down on deciding major constitutional questions based on “history and tradition”—that is, the majority’s understanding of what the nation was like centuries ago. Just as quickly as these justices praised the objectivity of their fealty to history, they met widespread rebuke …

Allow Me To Transform: A Black Guy’S Guide To A New Constitution, Brandon Hasbrouck

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution. By Elie Mystal.

Mothers In Law, Melissa Murray

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality. By Tomiko Brown-Nagin.

Heeding The Voices Of Migrant Youth: The Need For Action, Randi Mandelbaum

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Unaccompanied: The Plight of Immigrant Youth at the Border. By Emily Ruehs-Navarro.

An Order, Most Fixed, Alexandra D. Lahav

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Rules: A Short History of What We Live By. By Lorraine Daston.

Sisters Gonna Work It Out: Black Women As Reformers And Radicals In The Criminal Legal System, Paul Butler

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom. By Derecka Purnell and a review of Progressive Prosecution: Race and Reform in Criminal Justice. Edited by Kim Taylor-Thompson and Anthony C. Thompson.

Beyond More Accurate Algorithms: Takeaways From Mccleskey Revisited, Ngozi Okidegbe

Michigan Law Review

A Review of McCleskey v. Kemp. By Mario Barnes, in Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law 557, 581. Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R.A. Lenhardt and Angela Onwuachi-Willig.