Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Data, Data, Data, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

The legal profession often requires extensive data for everything from simple statistical questions to large-scale empirical research projects. Ms. Whisner discusses some of her favorite sources for finding and evaluating statistics.

On Specialized Legal Research, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Ms. Whisner describes what specialized legal research is and how students are initially exposed to the various topics that fall within the category, including taxation, intellectual property, and health law. She then provides strategies for learning about specific bibliographic sources and about the specialized vocabulary used to perform the necessary research.

Minimizing Probate-Error Risk, Mark Glover

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Probate-error risk is the possibility that a court will incorrectly assess the authenticity of a will. By prescribing the method courts use to evaluate the authenticity of wills, the law of will-execution allocates probate-error risk between false-positive outcomes and false-negative outcomes. When a court validates an inauthentic will, it creates a false-positive outcome. When a court invalidates an authentic will, it creates a false-negative outcome. Because false-positive outcomes result in the admission to probate of inauthentic wills and false-negative outcomes result in the denial of probate of genuine wills, both can be characterized as probate errors. This framework has been …

Think Of The Children: Using Iied To Reformulate Disturbing Speech Restrictions, Richard Lorren Jolly

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Colorado State Court of Appeals recently upheld an injunction restricting public displays of aborted fetuses. The court held that the restriction passed strict scrutiny because the state had a compelling interest in protecting children from the psychological harm of “disturbing images” and the injunction was narrowly tailored. This marked the first time an injunction had been upheld on this rationale. This Note critiques that holding and others. It contends that while some federal and state courts have recognized the interest in protecting the psychological wellbeing of children from disturbing speech as compelling, the interest is not supported by precedent. …

Student-Edited Law Reviews Should Continue To Flourish, Sudha Setty

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virtual Liquid Networks And Other Guiding Principles For Optimizing Future Student-Edited Law Review Platforms, Donald J. Kochan

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Paperless Chase, Steven J. Mulroy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Law Review Editor And Faculty Author Learn To Speak Honestly, Dan Subotnik

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Law Reviews: Online-Only Journals, Katharine T. Schaffzin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Contested Value Of Normative Legal Scholarship, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Legal scholarship, under attack from critics both inside and outside the legal academy, is on the horns of a “normativity” dilemma. To some critics, legal scholarship isn’t scholarship, because it’s too normative; while to others, it may be scholarship, but it’s not legal because it’s not normative enough.

In this article, I address one side of this issue, what I call the anti-normativity complaint: to wit, that legal scholarship is somehow not “true scholarship” because so much of it is overtly normative. Legal scholarship, according to this strand of criticism, isn’t true scholarship because of the dominance of “ought” …

Joseph Story, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Joseph Story (1779-1845) was one of the greatest and most influential American lawyers of all time. Both as a Supreme Court Justice and as a professor at Harvard Law School, his work and thought were, and still are, of great importance. Today’s private international law would look different without him, both in the United States and in the rest of the world. At the same time, his approach to the field cannot be properly understood unless placed within his broader work on law, and the specific American background against which it was developed.

Work With Me Here: Collaborative Learning In The Legal Research Classroom, Susan Azyndar

Journal Articles

From the Article

This article seeks to contribute to this pedagogical project by seeking out links between Millennial student needs, legal workplace expectations, and thoughtful pedagogical strategies; it centers on the important legal skill of collaboration.

Can't Get There From Here: Recalculate Into Better Legal Writing, Heather Ridenour

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Reading, Riting, And Rithmetic, Shannon M. Roddy

Newsletters & Other Publications

Law Library Lights, vol. 60, issue 1

A New Model Of Sovereignty In The Contemporary Era Of Integrated Global Commerce, Kevin Sobel-Read

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Existing legal scholarship does not offer an effective or comprehensive definition of sovereignty. Sovereignty, however, matters. Indeed, many have lived and died for it; the term likewise appears with remarkable frequency in both academic and popular discourse. But, sovereignty is not what it used to be. The evolution of globalization generally, and transformations in global commerce specifically, have sutured together the peoples of the world-conventional nation-states and Indigenous groups alike--permanently altering the sovereignty of each. These developments make it that much more imperative to incorporate a functional definition of sovereignty into legal scholarship. But, given the complexities of sovereignty, the …

Student-Edited Law Reviews Should Continue To Flourish, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the Author opines that the institution of the student-edited law review could no doubt be improved upon in a number of ways, but the existence of the student-edited journal should be sustained, nurtured, and grown by law school administration and faculty. Helping student-edited law reviews improve and flourish should be part of the mission of teachers, scholars, and lawyers committed to providing a skills-based education, for an intellectual discourse, and a service to the legal community.

Assignments With Intrinsic Lessons On Professionalism (Or, Teaching Students To Act Like Adults Without Sounding Like A Parent), Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

There is little question that law schools ought to teach their students professionalism – indeed, they are required to do so to maintain accreditation. And there is little question that the required legal writing and research course is one of the places it ought to be taught. But teaching students to adopt the norms of professional behavior — both in law school and after graduation — is a challenge to law faculties, and particularly to the experiential learning faculty who frequently are on the front lines of teaching professionalism. While there are many ways to teach students what professional and …

When Should We Teach Our Students To Pay Attention To The Costs Of Legal Research?, Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

It is axiomatic in legal research pedagogy that law schools should teach students how to conduct cost-effective legal research. To do that, we need to teach students to consider the amount of time and money their research requires, how paid legal research platforms like Westlaw and Lexis charge for their services, and how to research in an efficient and cost-sensitive way. But we shouldn’t do those things. Or at least, we shouldn’t do them at first. Instead, we should tell students not to worry about the costs of legal research during their first year of law school—with the possible exception …

Justice Scalia's Bottom-Up Approach To Shaping The Law, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Justice Antonin Scalia is among the most famous Supreme Court Justices in history. He is known for his originalism and conservative positions, as well as his witty and acerbic legal opinions. One of the reasons Justice Scalia's opinions are so memorable is his effective use of rhetorical devices, which convey colorful images and understandable ideas. One might expect that such powerful opinions would be effective in shaping the law, but Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy was often too conservative to persuade a majority of his fellow Justices on the Supreme Court. Further, his regular criticisms of his Supreme Court colleagues were …

Crowdsourcing Legal Research: The Opportunities And Challenges, Pat Newcombe

Faculty Scholarship

Crowdsourcing legal research has the potential to change how legal information is accessed and shared by providing free and value-added resources to the legal community. This Article explores legal crowdsourcing attempts, focusing on Casetext and Mootus. Although the ideal crowdsourcing legal research site has yet to be realized, crowdsourcing has a future because it embodies the concept of social justice and the next generations of attorneys will likely be open to collaboration.