The Pedagogy of "Yes We Can": Teaching Reformative Legal Justice in the Age of Obama (original) (raw)

The Case Method in Legal Education

Asian Journal of Legal Education, 2018

Each doctrine has a history. In the case of law, Langdell has argued that students would be better educated if they were asked to draw their own conclusions about the meaning of judicial decisions. Case studies provide students with an overview of the main issue; background of the institution, industry and individuals involved; and the events that had led to the problem or decision. Faculty may assign questions prior to class to facilitate the students to focus on certain important issues. Principles of law are taught by making the students analyse abridgments of appellate cases in combination with the Socratic method.

Philosophical and cultural basis of the main methods of legal education in the USA

Opolskie Studia Administracyjno-Prawne

The article aims to provide an overview of the most popular law teaching methods in the USA (Langdell’s Case Study together with Socratic Method, Clinical Legal Education, and Problem Solving Method) with reference to the cultural context and philosophical background. First, the characteristic features of the American legal culture with regard to teaching law and ideological grounds of the American legal education are presented. Then the methods are discussed together with the context in which they were developed and the arguments for implementing them.

The genesis of the Case method and its Impact on the american Philosophy of law

The genesis of the Case method and its Impact on the american Philosophy of law, 2018

The article discusses the Case Method-the dominant method of teaching in American law schools, based on an analysis of judicial decisions, created in the 1870s by Christophus Collumbus Langdell. Langdell perceived law as a science similar to physics or chemistry, and hence as an ordered system of objective knowledge , and the method of teaching that he created was intended to educate people dealing with law in a scientific manner. The article presents Langdell's concept of law and the impact of his teaching method on the trends in American legal philosophy classical jurisprudence and legal realism.

The Politics of Law (Teaching)

The satiric novel, as a “message” novel, can provide unvarnished truths about the object of satire. Institutions of higher learning, particularly law schools, and the denizens of those institutions, are prime subjects for satire because they take themselves so seriously. Unfortunately, though, The Socratic Method by Michael Levin takes itself as seriously as the law school it is criticizing. One of the hazards of the satiric novel is that the message may overwhelm the plot and characterization. Levin, in his zeal to awaken the reader to the torture of the law school, and particularly the torture of the law school variant of the socratic method of pedagogy, has failed to avoid this hazard. All the characters are two-dimensional, and the story line is picked up and laid down seemingly at random. Still, it is possible to capsulize what Levin believes is wrong with the present structure of the law school based on this novel, and to critique legal education based on the picture Levin creates. Though Levin’s story line and character development suffer for the message he is attempting to convey, he has an excellent point to make about the failure of legal education.

Beyond the Socratic Method: Exploring Alternative Theories in Legal Education

Scholars International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 2022

Legal education has changed very little over the last century. At the same time, there have been significant advances in the field of education leading to several theories. The following will examine the five leading theories of education: connectivism, humanism, constructivism, cognitivism, and behaviorism. Each of these will be evaluated next to the Socratic Method, which is the primary method employed by law school instructors. Specific examples of how some of these theories have surfaced in law school and how the Socratic Method embodies other theories will be noted. The effect of technology on law school instruction will also be addressed. The overall goal of this article is to reveal how these theories can be utilized in the law school setting to produce highly competent graduates who will improve the efficacy of the field as a whole. Anecdotal example from North American and African law schools will underscore the notions put forth in this article.

Inside the Law School Classroom: Toward A New Legal Realist Pedagogy

Vanderbilt Law Review, 2007

Recent years have seen renewed interest in empirical research on law. Variously described as a "new legal realism" or as "empirical legal studies," this return to a focus on the social sciences in many ways echoes an earlier era of legal realism in American law " with some important differences. At the same time, there has also been growing interest in introducing possible reforms to the U.S. system of legal education. This article combines these two themes -- empirical research on law and careful re-examination of legal education. It reports on an empirical study of legal education (conducted at the American Bar Foundation). After discussing that study, the article considers the implications of the research for law teaching. How does law work when it translates information about society " from social science findings to the nitty-gritty details of plaintiffs' and defendants' lives? I argue for a more rigorous approach to conceptualizing and teaching this process of legal translation, and I contend that this kind of rigor should be central to any new legal realist or empirical project in the legal academy.

The Purpose of Legal Education

California Law Review, 2023

When President Donald Trump launched an assault on diversity training, critical race theory, and The 1619 Project in September 2020 as “divisive, un-American propaganda,” many law students were presumably confused. After all, law school has historically been doctrinally neutral, racially homogenous, and socially hierarchical. In most core law school courses, colorblindness and objectivity trump critical legal discourse on issues of race, gender, or sexuality. Yet, such disorientation reflects a longstanding debate over the fundamental purpose of law school. As U.S. law schools develop anti-racist curricula and expand their experiential learning programs to produce so-called practice-ready lawyers for the crises exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars continue to question whether and how, if at all, the purpose of law school converges with societal efforts to reckon with America’s legacy of White supremacy. This Article argues that the anti-racist, democratic, and movement lawyering principles advocated by progressive legal scholars should not be viewed merely as aspirational ideals for social justice law courses. Rather, querying whether legal systems and political institutions further racism, economic oppression, or social injustice must be viewed as endemic to the fundamental purpose of legal education. In so doing, this Article makes three important contributions to the literature on legal education and philosophical legal ethics. First, it clarifies how two ideologies—functionalism and neoliberalism—have threatened to drift law school’s historic public purpose away from the democratic norms of public citizenship, inflicting law students, law faculty, and the legal academy with an existential identity crisis. Second, it explores historical mechanisms of institutional change within law schools that reveal diverse notions of law school’s purpose as historically contingent. Such perspectives are shaped by the behaviors, cultural attitudes, and ideological beliefs of law faculty operating within particular social, political, and economic contexts. Third, and finally, it demonstrates the urgency of moving beyond liberal legalism in legal education by integrating critical legal theories and movement law principles throughout the entire law school curriculum.