Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Law Journals have been under heavy criticism for as long as we can remember. The criticisms come from all quarters, including judges, law professors, and even commentators at large. In an address at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference almost a decade ago, for example, Chief Justice Roberts complained about the “disconnect between the academy and the profession.” More pointedly, he continued, “[p]ick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was …

Toward A Writing-Centered Legal Education, Adam Lamparello

Res Gestae

The future of legal education—and experiential learning—should be grounded in a curriculum that requires students to take writing courses throughout law school. Additionally, the curriculum should be one that collapses the distinction between doctrinal, legal writing, and clinical faculty, as well as merges analytical, practical, and clinical instruction into a real world curriculum.

The justification for a writing-intensive program of legal education is driven by the reality that persuasive writing ability is among the most important skills a lawyer must possess and a skill that many lawyers and judges claim graduates lack. Part of the problem is that law schools …

A Little Birdie Said, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Shareholders are organizing and mobilizing on new social media platforms like Twitter. This changes the dynamics of shareholder proxy contests in ways that favor shareholders over management. Disruptive technology may bring about a shareholder revolution, which may not be in shareholders’ best interests, at least from the perspective of shareholder wealth maximization, and it also has powerful implications for the future of corporate social responsibility.

Teaching Remedial Problem-Solving Skills To A Law School's Underperforming Students, John F. Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

This article describes a course called the "Art of Lawyering" developed by the Texas A&M University School of Law to help the bottom quarter of the 2L class develop the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills they should have learned in their first year of law school. Students in the bottom quarter of the class at the beginning of their 2L year are most at risk for failing the bar exam after graduation. The Art of Lawyering gives these students the structural framework necessary to solve problems like a lawyer, improve their performance in law school, and pass the bar exam.

The …

"Too Many Notes"? An Empirical Study Of Advocacy In Federal Appeals, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The warp and woof of American law are threaded by the appellate courts, generating precedents on constitutional provisions, statutory texts, and common-law doctrines. While the product of the appellate courts is regularly the subject of empirical study, less attention has been given to the sources and methods of appellate advocacy.

Given the paramount place of written briefs in the appellate process, we should examine seriously the frequent complaint by appellate judges that briefs are too long and that prolixity weakens persuasive power. In a study of civil appeals in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, we …

Law Library Blog (September 2015): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Reasoned Awards In International Commercial Arbitration: Embracing And Exceeding The Common Law-Civil Law Dichotomy, S. I. Strong

Michigan Journal of International Law

Unlike many types of domestic arbitration where unreasoned awards (often called “standard awards”) are the norm, international commercial arbitration routinely requires arbitrators to produce fully reasoned awards. However, very little information exists as to what constitutes a reasoned award in the international commercial context or how to write such an award. This lacuna is extremely problematic given the ever-increasing number of international commercial arbitrations that arise every year and the significant individual and societal costs that can result from a badly written award. Although this Article is aimed primarily at specialists in international commercial arbitration, the material is also useful …

Trending @ Rwulaw: Lorraine Lalli's Post: Coming Home, Lorraine Lalli

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Possible Futures For The Legal Treatise In An Environment Of Wikis, Blogs, And Myriad Online Primary Law Sources, Peter W. Martin

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Major law publishers have begun producing ebook versions of some of the legal treatises they own. Despite asserted advantages over both print and online versions of the same content, these represent a step back from what treatises have become within the major online services and even further from what they might become now that numerous sources of primary law are directly accessible via the Internet.

The article traces the corporate and technological developments that have placed existing treatises in their present posture. Drawing upon the author’s own work preparing a legal treatise designed for digital rather print delivery, it reviews …

Law Library Blog (August 2015): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

A Response To Douglas J. Feith's Law In The Service Of Terror - The Strange Case Of The Additional Protocol, Waldemar A. Solf

Akron Law Review

In the article mentioned in the title, Douglas J. Feith, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Negotiation, characterizes the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions as a "pro-terrorist treaty masquerading as humanitarian law."

Persuading Quickly: Tips For Writing An Effective Appellate Brief, Jane R. Roth, Mani S. Walia

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Effective Appellate Advocacy Before The Federal Circuit: A Former Law Clerk's Perspective, Rachel Clark Hughey

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Preface, Robert S. Shafer

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Law Reviews And The Migration To Cyberspace, M. Ethan Katsh

Akron Law Review

I am very pleased to contribute an introduction to this issue of the Akron Law Review, the first to appear both in print and on the World Wide Web. There are very few law reviews that have surfaced, thus far, on the World Wide Web. The editors who decided to take this step deserve our respect and admiration. Their decision reflects an understanding that the world of publishing and distributing information has begun to change, and begun to change in a significant way.

The History And Influence Of The Law Review Institution, Michael L. Closen, Robert J. Dzielak

Akron Law Review

The "academic scholarship" to which Cardozo referred related principally to the articles appearing in law reviews of the law schools during that period in time. Almost immediately upon their establishment, the student-edited law reviews became a significant and lasting feature of legal education in the United States. Since the publication of the first student-edited law review in the 1870s, the law review institution has advanced to the stage where today, more than 400 such periodicals are published. Their history, though interesting in itself, provides many insights into the development of legal education generally.

Creac In The Real World, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article will examine the extent to which common legal writing paradigms such as CREAC are used by attorneys in the "real world" of practice when writing on the kinds of issues law students may encounter in the first-year legal writing classroom. To that end, it will focus on the analysis of two factor-based criminal law issues: whether a defendant was in custody and whether a defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy. In focusing on "first-year" issues, the article seeks not to examine whether organizational paradigms are used at all in legal analysis, but to discover whether and how …

Is The Albert H Kritzer Database Telling Us More Than We Know?, Thomas Neumann

Pace International Law Review

This article is the first in a series of articles attempting to provide a geographical and temporal overview of the application practice of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). In this first article, the success of CISG is explored. The article develops the idea of using the Albert H. Kritzer Database to achieve an overview of the success of the Convention in practice. It is argued that the success of the Convention is useful to measure by its uniformity in practice, and therefore a set of criteria relating to the Convention’s application by …

Foreword, Senator Ted Cruz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Open Access Advantage For American Law Reviews, Carol Watson, James M. Donovan, Caroline Osborne

Presentations

Open access within legal academia provides a case study for the effective use of digital formats to promote scholarship. The presenters review the background historical developments in this field, and consider the benefits and rationales for providing open access to legal scholarship, including the special faculty concerns arising from SSRN and its relationship to the institutional repository. Results from the presenters’ recent empirical study of the citation advantage for open access scholarship in American law reviews will be discussed and placed in broader context of the benefits of open access scholarship.