From Grimm to Glory: Simulated Oral Argument as a Component of Legal Education\u27s Signature Pedagogy

The past two years have been a period of landmark transformation in legal education. With the issuance of the Carnegie and Best Practices for Legal Education Reports, law schools and law professors have revisited the essential process of analyzing and transforming legal pedagogy. This widespread reexamination of the law school curriculum has yielded two important changes in legal education; first, law schools-including those in the top tier-have begun radically to amend their curricular goals and structures; and, second, legal scholars have begun to turn their attention to the theory and implementation of better legal education. As Carnegie and Best Practices note, this nascent metamorphosis in scholarly thought about legal education has the potential to transform both the law school and the law practice experience, as well-grounded pedagogy will remove the barriers to learning that some law students have historically experienced while better preparing them to practice law. This Article represents one of the first concrete responses to Carnegie and Best Practices. In proposing that law professors regularly use simulated oral argument exercises to supplement traditional Socratic dialogue, it meets head on the concerns expressed by Best Practices and Carnegie that over-reliance on the Langdell method neither mimics law practice nor nurtures student learning. It also responds directly to the suggestion in both Reports that simulation exercises may yield better legal analysis and knowledge. Finally, this Article advances a novel theory directly related to the objectives and conclusions of the Reports: namely, thatfor experienced advocates and law students alike, practice oral argument may be a starting point, rather than a mere end point, for teaching, learning, and executing the fundamentals of legal analysis. In the style of the transcribed classroom conversations of the Carnegie Report, it discusses and demonstrates by example a simulation exercise designedfor professors to use in introducing this teaching methodology. The exercise, based on seven fairy tales used as precedent cases, provides a familiar, non-threatening technique for students to learn about rule synthesis, weight of authority, analogy and distinction, and theme through oral argument

Agree on much, except it is time for change

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Coming off the Bench: Legal and Policy Implications of Proposals to Allow Retired Justices to Sit by Designation on the Supreme Court

In the fall of 2010, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a bill that would have overridden a New Deal-era federal statute forbidding retired Justices from serving by designation on the Supreme Court of the United States. The Leahy bill would have authorized the Court to recall willing retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices. This Article uses the Leahy bill as a springboard for considering a number of important constitutional and policy questions, including whether the possibility of 4-4 splits justifies the substitution of a retired Justice for an active one; whether permitting retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices would violate Article III\u27s requirement that there be one supreme Court ; and whether the ethical limitations on extrajudicial activities should be the same for active and retired judges and Justices. In addition to relying on published material, we draw on information gleaned from our interview with retired Justice Stevens, who was the original source of the Leahy proposal

Coming off the Bench: Legal and Policy Implications of Proposals To Allow Retired Justices To Sit By Designation on the Supreme Court

In the fall of 2010, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a bill that would have overridden a New Deal-era federal statute forbidding retired Justices from serving by designation on the Supreme Court of the United States. The Leahy bill would have authorized the Court to recall willing retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices. This Article uses the Leahy bill as a springboard for considering a number of important constitutional and policy questions, including whether the possibility of 4-4 splits justifies the substitution of a retired Justice for an active one; whether permitting retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices would violate Article III\u27s requirement that there be one supreme Court ; and whether the ethical limitations on extrajudicial activities should be the same for active and retired judges and Justices. In addition to relying on published material, we draw on information gleaned from our interview with retired Justice Stevens, who was the original source of the Leahy proposal