Academic Questions, Adam Smith, Albert Venn Dicey, Alliance Defense Fund, Aquinas, Baudrillard, Blackstone, C.S. Peirce, Camille Paglia, Carl Schmitt, Carol Iannone, Charles E. Rounds, Chaucer, Chief Justice John Roberts, Daniel J. Kornstein, David F. Forte, David French, Derrida, Emerson, Eve Sedgwick, Foucault, Freud, George W. Dent, Grotius, Hayek, Hobbes, Hudson Institute, James Kent, Jeremy Bentham, John Austin, John Dewey, Jr., Judith Butler, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Kafka, Kant, Law School, Legal Education, Lino A. Graglia, Locke, Louis Menand, Machiavelli, Marx, Mel Bradford, Michael I. Krauss, Milton, National Association of Scholars, Nietzsche, originalism, Richard Hooker, Richard Weaver, Robert H. Bork, Shakespeare, Stanley Fish, William James
In Arts & Letters, Humanities, Law, Legal Education & Pedagogy, Pedagogy, Teaching, Writing on July 27, 2011 at 2:23 pm
The latest issue of Academic Questions (Summer 2011: Vol. 24, No. 2) devotes most of its content to legal education. Published by the National Association of Scholars, Academic Questions often features theme issues and invites scholars from across the disciplines to comment on particular concerns about the professoriate. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the NAS.) Carol Iannone, editor at large, titles her introduction to the issue “Law School and Other Tyrannies,” and writes that “[w]hat is happening in the law schools has everything to do with the damage and depredation that we see in the legal system at large.” She adds that the contributors to this issue “may not agree on all particulars, but they tell us that all is not well, that law school education is outrageously expensive, heavily politicized, and utterly saturated with ‘diversity’ mania.” What’s more, Iannone submits, law school “fails to provide any grounding in sound legal doctrine, or any moral or ethical basis from which to understand principles of law in debate today.” These are strong words. But are they accurate? I would say yes and no.
Law school education is too expensive, but its costs seem to have risen alongside the costs of university education in general. Whether any university or postgraduate education should cost what it costs today is another matter altogether.
There is little doubt that law schools are “heavily politicized,” as even a cursory glance at the articles in “specialized” law journals would suggest. These journals address anything from gender and race to transnational law and human rights.
But how can law be taught without politicizing? Unlike literature, which does not always immediately implicate politics, law bears a direct relation to politics, or at least to political choices. The problem is not the political topics of legal scholarship and pedagogy so much as it is the lack of sophistication with which these topics are addressed. The problem is that many law professors lack a broad historical perspective and are unable to contextualize their interests within the wider university curriculum or against the subtle trends of intellectual history.
In law journals devoted to gender and feminism, or law journals considered left-wing, you will rarely find articles written by individuals with the intelligence or learning of Judith Butler, Camille Paglia, or Eve Sedgwick. Say what you will about them, these figures are well-read and historically informed. Their writings and theories go far beyond infantile movement politics and everyday partisan advocacy. Read the rest of this entry »
“This Wooden Shack Place”, Discourse, Glynda Hull, Interpretation, Interpretive Community, Mike Rose, Reading, remedial writing programs, rhetoric, students, Teachers, Writing
In Arts & Letters, Communication, Humanities, Information Design, Legal Research & Writing, Pedagogy, Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Communication, Teaching, Writing on July 20, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Based on their research of remedial writing programs, Glynda Hull and Mike Rose conclude in “This Wooden Shack Place” that students of writing often offer arguments that at first seem wacky or wrong, but that are actually logical and coherent. These students give unique and insightful interpretations that teachers, fixed in their privileged and heavily conditioned interpretive communities, cannot always realize or appreciate. Hull and Rose treat this student-teacher disjuncture as revealing as much about the teacher as it does about the student. Finally, Hull and Rose conclude that student readings that seem “off the mark” may be “on the mark” depending on where the interpreter—the teacher or student—is coming from or aiming.
Along these lines, Hull and Rose describe “moments of mismatch between what a teacher expects and what students do.” These moments demonstrate that teachers and students come to writing with different values and assumptions shaped by various experiences. Hull and Rose focus on one student, whom they call “Robert,” to substantiate their claims that students respond to literature based on cultural history and background.
Robert and his peers read a poem that Hull and Rose have reproduced in their essay: “And Your Soul Shall Dance for Wakako Yamauchi.” Working together, the student-readers agreed on certain interpretive generalizations but failed to reach consensus about particular lines and meanings. Some students “offered observations that seemed to be a little off the mark, unusual, as though the students weren’t reading the lines carefully.” Robert, a polite boy with a Caribbean background and Los Angeles upbringing, was one of these students. He commented about the poem in a way that troubled Rose—until, that is, Rose pressed Robert about the poem during a student-teacher conference, which Rose recorded. Robert challenged and surprised Rose at this conference by offering a plausible reading, which Rose had not considered. Read the rest of this entry »
A Plea for Positivism, Bradley C. S. Watson, Claremont Review of Books, Conservatism, Constitution, Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law, Edwin Meese, Fred Hutchison, Hadley Arkes, III, jurisprudence, law, Michael M. Uhlmann, Murray Rothbard, Natural Law, Natural Law Man, positive law, Robert P George, The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism
In American History, Arts & Letters, Conservatism, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Legal Education & Pedagogy, News and Current Events, Politics on July 14, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Three days ago, the Claremont Review of Books posted two interesting reviews on jurisprudence. The first, “Natural Law Man,” is a reprint of a piece that appeared in the Winter/Spring 2010-11 issue. Here, Michael M. Uhlmann praises Hadley Arkes’s Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law. In the second review, “A Plea for Positivism,” Bradley C. S. Watson comments on Gary L. McDowell’s The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism. (Click here to read McDowell’s discussion of the book with Edwin Meese, III.) Both reviews situate their subjects alongside conservative theory. Both books are worth reading.
The prevailing tendency among some uncritical commentators is to binarize natural law theory and positive law theory as polar opposites. That’s understandable if the terms “natural law” and “positive law” are reduced to cliché. But cliché, although helpful to students first getting introduced to concepts, doesn’t do justice to the complexities and challenges of natural law or positive law jurisprudence. In any event, it is curious that both natural law theorists and positive law theorists claim to have influenced, and to have been influenced by, conservatism. That fact alone suggests that natural law theory and positive law theory are complicated. Here are some readings that will complicate the complicated: Murray Rothbard’s excerpts “Introduction to Natural Law” and “Natural Law versus Positive Law,” F. Russell Hittinger’s short pieces “Natural Law” and “The Rule of Law and Law of Nature,” Robert P. George’s “Witherspoon Lecture,” and Fred Hutchison’s overview “Natural Law and Conservatism.”
Allen Mendenhall, Appalachia, bobbie ann mason, Conversation on a Rail, cultural traditions, heritage, language, Shepherd University, storytelling, The Anthology of Appalachian Writers
In Art, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Creative Writing, Creativity, Fiction, Humanities, News Release, Poetry, Writing on July 12, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Below is a news release for a volume that features my poem “Conversation on a Rail.”
News Release: The third volume of The Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Bobbie Ann Mason edition, is now for sale at the Shepherd University Book Store (see http://www.shepherdbook.com/). This newest book in the collection presents a selection of stories, essays, poetry, and photographic art, which provide readers with an extraordinary look at the language, storytelling, cultural traditions and heritage of Appalachians—Appalachians working and living in the region today and yesterday.
As with each previous volume, a common center is provided by the literary art and talent of the 2010 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University and recipient of the Heritage Writer’s Award—Kentucky writer Bobbie Ann Mason. Mason’s work brings to literary life the common folk and the everyday working classes—living, learning, and trying to cope and survive in the complex world they find before them.
The book also contains stories by two winners of the 2010 West Virginia Fiction Competition selected by Mason. Mason wrote of Natalie Sypolt’s “Save the Lettuce”: “This is a tight, controlled, powerful story. Nothing is overdone.” Like Mason’s award-winning novel In Country, Sypolt’s short fiction piece is a powerful story about war without the war. Read the rest of this entry »
Aristotle, Auburn University, Bioethics, Brookings Institution, Children, Cloning, Composition, English Departments, Eric Cohen, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Forensic Discourse, Health & Medicine, Hoover Institution, James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions, law, Malpractice, Organ Transplants, Pedagogy, Physician Assisted Suicide, Princeton University, Problems and Possibilities of Modern Genetics, Robert P George, Surrogacy, Teaching, The Constitution, The New Atlantis, Writing
In Advocacy, Arts & Letters, Bioethics, Communication, Creative Writing, Creativity, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Law-and-Literature, Legal Education & Pedagogy, News and Current Events, Pedagogy, Politics, Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Communication, Teaching, Writing on July 6, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Last fall, I was assigned to teach a course called “Health & Medicine.” Because I know little about health or medicine, I was concerned. The subject of the course was writing, so I decided to craft a syllabus to facilitate classroom discussion and textual argument. Here is the course description as stated on my syllabus:
Forensic discourse is one of three forms of classical rhetoric as defined by Aristotle. It focuses on the relationship between language and law. This semester we will explore forensic discourse in the context of health and medicine and consider the relationship of law to such issues as physician assisted suicide, surrogacy, cloning, informed consent, malpractice, and organ transplants. Readings on ethics and philosophy will inform the way you think about these issues.
Your grade will not depend on how much you learn about law, but on how you use language to argue about and with law. Because the facts of any case are rarely clear-cut, you will need to understand both sides of every argument. Your writing assignments will require you to argue on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants (or prosecutors and defendants) and to rebut the arguments of opposing counsel. You will develop different tactics for persuading your audience (judges, attorneys, etc.), and you will become skilled in the art of influence.
During the semester, your class will interview one attorney, one judge, and one justice sitting on the Supreme Court of Alabama.
My students came from mostly nursing and pre-medical backgrounds. A few were science majors of some kind, and at least two were engineering majors.
The students were also at varying stages in their academic progress: some were freshmen, some were sophomores, two were juniors, and at least one was a senior. Throughout the semester, I was impressed by students’ ability to extract important issues from dense legal readings and articulate complicated reasoning in nuanced and intelligent ways.
I thought about this “Health & Medicine” class this week when I came across this article published by the Brookings Institution. The title of the article is “The Problems and Possibilities of Modern Genetics: A Paradigm for Social, Ethical, and Political Analysis.” The authors are Eric Cohen and Robert P. George. Cohen is editor of The New Atlantis and an adjunct fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Read the rest of this entry »
Caribbean, Colony, Early American Literature, Legal Discourse, Nicole N. Aljoe, Project Muse, Rule of Law, slave narratives, Slavery, Slavery and the Law, Testimony, University of North Carolina Press, West Indian Slave Narratives
In Advocacy, American History, Arts & Letters, Civil Procedure, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Law-and-Literature, Laws of Slavery, Literary Theory & Criticism, Nineteenth-Century America, Politics, Rhetoric, Slavery, The West Indies on July 5, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Nicole N. Aljoe has published an intriguing article in Volume 46 (issue no. 2) of Early American Literature (2011), which is published by the University of North Carolina Press. The article is titled “‘Going to Law’: Legal Discourse and Testimony in Early West Indian Slave Narratives.” It is available here on Project Muse. The abstract is below:
Despite the fact that the courts had not proven consistently helpful in their quests for freedom, British West Indian slaves frequently consulted them in order to invoke the rule of law and pursue their rights. Several Caribbean historians have documented the ways in which slaves in the West Indies participated in formal legal arenas almost from the initial days of colonization and claimed the courts as one of their own forums for resolving disputes and asserting those few rights written into the various parliamentary acts intended to ameliorate the conditions of the enslaved and passed in England and its Caribbean colonies from 1788 onward. Indeed, slaves in the West Indies participated in the courts systems as plaintiffs as well as defendants more frequently than previously thought. And although the courts were certainly used by those in power to oppress slaves, women, children, and the poor, as well as to “legitimate [the] blatantly repressive regime” of slavery, they nevertheless provided a forum for those who did not write the laws in question to use the courts to ensure the legal protection of their “natural rights” (Lazarus-Black, “John Grant’s” 154). Thus, in another of the seemingly endless paradoxes inherent to the British imperial slave system, slaves—objects of property, yet human subjects—could, in certain situations, use the courts in the West Indies and in England on their own behalf, as legal agents to affirm their status as legal subjects deserving of the law’s unbiased protection, and judgment.
The Literary Lawyer: A Forum for the Legal and Literary Communities 