Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Plenary Iii: Scholarship Featuring Linda Berger, Linda H. Edwards & Terrill Pollman With Kirsten Davis As Moderator; And Plenary Iv: Program Design Featuring Suzanne R. Rowe, Susan Hanley Duncan, & Eric B. Easton With Brooke Bowman As Moderator

Mercer Law Review

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship

A Symposium of the Mercer Law Review November 6, 2009

Afternoon Session

The Curse Of Tradition In The Law School Classroom: What Casebook Professors Can Learn From Those Professors Who Teach Legal Writing, M.H. Sam Jacobson

Mercer Law Review

The typical law school pedagogy suffers from a ham butt problem. As the story goes, a woman was preparing a ham dinner when she carefully cut off the ham butt before putting the ham in the oven to bake. A friend asked her why she did that. She said she did it because her mother did it. Why did her mother do it? She had no idea. So she asked her mother, why do you cut off the ham butt before putting it in the oven? Her mother said she did it because her mother did it. What was the …

Legal Writing: The View From Within, J. Christopher Rideout, Jill J. Ramsfield

Mercer Law Review

"[Wiriting is an act of identity . . . ."

We have seen that law professors systematically focus their students' attention on layers of textual and legal authority when deciphering the conflict stories at the heart of legal cases. But what happens to the people in these stories? What aspects of their identities and lives remain important when refracted through this legal lens? We can ask as well: What aspects of the law students' and professors' lives and experiences are considered to be salient during the conversation?

Why is writing hard to do? For lots of reasons, most people would …

Legal Writing Scholarship, Making Strange, And The Aesthetics Of Legal Rhetoric, Jack L. Sammons

Mercer Law Review

Some of the central issues addressed at the 2009 Mercer Law Review Symposium "Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Founding of the Legal Writing Institute" involved questions about the scholarship potential of the discipline of legal writing. Those on the fringe of the academy, as legal writing professors are now and as clinicians were in the 1960s, often offer the clearest perspective on it, and in the case of the legal academy, on the practice itself. What scholarship, I wondered as I listened to the speakers, would best take advantage of this privileged perspective and of legal writing's necessary focus …

Digitizing The World's Laws, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Where does one find the foreign investment laws of Botswana? What about the copyright law of the Netherlands, the corporation laws of Japan, or the English translation of the Egyptian Civil Code? Already back in 1991, just before the internet, Wallace Baker remarked that “foreign law has become the daily bread of lawyers everywhere who formally had totally domestic practices.” Since then, the need to access the content of foreign law has increased exponentially. The importance of global access to foreign laws on the internet and how to improve it was recently highlighted at an international Meeting of Experts on …

Making A Case For Legal Writing Instruction … Worldwide, Diane Edelman

Working Paper Series

This article discusses the merits of teaching legal analysis and writing and of developing a legal writing program at a faculty of law, and recommends that law faculties around the world incorporate this subject. Once absent from the American law school curriculum, this subject has become a required subject in all American law schools over the past 25+ years. The article suggests steps for implementing a legal writing course or program, and offers a variety of resources for doing so.

How To Use A Tube Top And A Dress Code To Demystify The Predictive Writing Process And Build A Framework Of Hope During The First Weeks Of Class, Camille Lamar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Synergistic Pedagogical Approach To First-Year Teaching, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The First “Colonial Frontier” Legal Writing Conference, held at Duquesne University School of Law, focused on Engendering Hope in the Legal Writing Classroom: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Attitude. This conference built on the foundational work of Allison Martin and Kevin Rand in which these scholars call for educators to engender hope in law students to prepare them for practice. Martin and Rand conclude that hope is a predictor of students’ academic performance and psychological health during the first semester of law school and recommend that law professors “maintain and creat[e] hope in law students” by embracing five core principles. Martin and …

A Tale Of One Cali Lesson: Librarians Share A New Approach, Terrance K. Manion, Ronald E. Wheeler

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Our Not-So-Great Depression, Craig Green

Michigan Law Review

A Failure of Capitalism by Richard Posner is not a great book, and it does not pretend to be one. Posner summarizes the economic crisis of 2008-09 and considers proposals to reduce current suffering and avoid future recurrence (p. xvi). But when the book's final edits were made in February 2009, it was still too soon for authoritative solutions or full accounts of what had happened. Instead, Posner wrote a conspicuously contemporary-and thus incomplete-description of the crisis as it looked to him at the time (p. xvii). Now one year later, readers may need a reminder about the value of …

Acknowledging Our Roots: Setting The Stage For The Legal Writing Institute, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article discusses the history and development of legal writing courses and the Legal Writing Institute.

The Language Of Supreme Court Briefs: A Large-Scale Quantitative Investigation, Brady Coleman, Quy Phung

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

How Courts Use Wikipedia, Joseph L. Gerken

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Changing Fashions In Advocacy: 100 Years Of Brief-Writing Advice, Helen A. Anderson

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Unified Business Laws For Africa: Common Law Perspectives On Ohada, Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nudge, Choice Architecture, And Libertarian Paternalism, Pierre Schlag

Michigan Law Review

By all external appearances, Nudge is a single book-two covers, a single spine, one title. But put these deceptive appearances aside, read the thing, and you will actually find two books-Book One and Book Two. Book One begins with the behavioral economist's view that sometimes individuals are not the best judges of their own welfare. Indeed, given the propensity of human beings for cognitive errors (e.g., the availability bias) and the complexity of decisions that need to be made (e.g., choosing prescription plans), individuals often make mistakes. Enter here the idea of the nudge-the deliberate effort to channel people into …

Rationalism In Regulation, Christopher C. Demuth, Douglas H. Ginsburg

Michigan Law Review

Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, by Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore, aims to convince those who favor more government regulation-in particular environmental groups-that they should embrace cost-benefit analysis and turn it to their purposes. Coauthored by a prominent law school dean and a recent student with a background in environmental advocacy, the book is a jarring combination of roundhouse political polemics and careful academic argument. Sweeping pronouncements are followed by qualifications that leave the sweep of the pronouncements in doubt- rather like the give-and-take of the law school classroom …

A Planet By Any Other Name…, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

Michigan Law Review

In case you haven't heard, Pluto isn't a planet anymore (and maybe it never was). In grade school, we all memorized the planets, giving little thought to what made something a planet besides revolving around the Sun and being part of some familiar mnemonic. However, scientific discoveries about Pluto and other parts of space led scientists to question Pluto's planetary status and ultimately, to strip Pluto of its standing among the planets. This leads to the inevitable question-what is a planet?-which turns out to be a more difficult and fascinating question than one might think. The Pluto Files grapples with …

A Portrait Of The Internet As A Young Man, Ann Bartow

Michigan Law Review

In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrain's 2008 book The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be "We have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature." Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes maximum stability, …

The Price Of Conflict: War, Taxes, And The Politics Of Fiscal Citizenship, Ajay K. Mehrotra

Michigan Law Review

This Review proceeds in four parts, paralleling the chronological organization of War and Taxes. It focuses mainly on the book's analysis of the leading modern American wars, from the Civil War through the global conflicts of the twentieth century, up to the recent war on terror. Part I contrasts the tax policies of the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War to show how the Lincoln Administration was able to overcome Yankee resistance to wartime tax hikes to wage a war against a Southern Confederacy that resolutely resisted any type of centralized taxation until, of course, it was too late. …