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

In recent years, the legal academy has been experiencing a strong renewed interest in empirical legal research. Referred to by various analysts as a new legal realism or as empirical legal studies, this restored focus on the social sciences in many ways echoes an earlier era of legal realism in American law, with some important differences.\u27 . . . This Article combines these two themes: empirical research on law and careful examination of legal education. It reports on an empirical study of legal education, which I have been conducting under the auspices of the American Bar Foundation (a research institute that also has been actively developing an interdisciplinary program of research on law for many decades).3 After discussing that study, I will consider its implications for the teaching of law. This Article raises the core issue of how law works when it translates information about the wider society into legal language, from social science findings to the nitty-gritty details of plaintiffs\u27 and defendants\u27 lives. For example, when attorneys ask expert witnesses questions about social science findings on the stand, they are using a legal framework that is often at odds with some of the basic assumptions of the social science discipline in question. Plaintiffs and defendants may understand the conflict addressed in court much differently than do the legal professionals who are translating their stories into legally- viable frames

Balanced Judicial Realism in the Service of Justice: Judge Richard D. Cudahy

There is a quiet irony to be found in scholarly writings about the judiciary, which often center around high-profile jurists selected as the “great” judges. But there are great judges who do not receive or even want such widespread recognition, and who do not discuss their philosophy of judging—they simply focus on the job in front of them. Judges who operate with humility can often be very quiet about their legacies—brushing the issue off, as if uncomfortable with the attention. Anyone who knew Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will recognize this description. In some ways, that kind of reticence makes writing about his jurisprudence more than a little challenging. But in other ways, it invites us to examine what this “judges’ judge” exemplified as he worked at his craft. In reflecting on this, perhaps we can understand that craft more deeply

Balanced Judicial Realism in the Service of Justice: Judge Richard D. Cudahy

There is a quiet irony to be found in scholarly writings about the judiciary, which often center around high-profile jurists selected as the “great” judges. But there are great judges who do not receive or even want such widespread recognition, and who do not discuss their philosophy of judging—they simply focus on the job in front of them. Judges who operate with humility can often be very quiet about their legacies—brushing the issue off, as if uncomfortable with the attention. Anyone who knew Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will recognize this description. In some ways, that kind of reticence makes writing about his jurisprudence more than a little challenging. But in other ways, it invites us to examine what this “judges’ judge” exemplified as he worked at his craft. In reflecting on this, perhaps we can understand that craft more deeply

Attorneys as Gatekeepers to the Court: The Potential Liability of Attorneys Bringing Suits Based on Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse

This Article examines the appropriate role of attorneys as gate­ keepers to the courts in suits involving recovered memories of child­ hood sexual abuse. Lawsuits brought by adults claiming that they had been sexually abused during childhood, but had forgotten the abuse until it emerged sometime later, are a relatively recent phenomenon. They surfaced only after the discovery of childhood sexual abuse and its construction as a social problem in the 1970s and 1980s and became feasible only when the legal system responded by extending the statutes of limitations applicable to such cases. Although many highly­ publicized cases have involved multiple victims who are young boys (in cases of sexual abuse by clergy, for example), others present the archetypal incest situation, shrouded in silence and involving a single, intra­family victim