Proposed Ninth Circuit Split. The Icebox Cometh: A Former Clerk\u27s View of the Proposed Ninth Circuit Split

Most academic commentators oppose splitting the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. They argue that the court\u27s size is a virtue and either deny that the court has size-related problems, such as workload, consistency, and reversal rate, or claim that a split would not address these problems. The U.S. Congress, however, is less sure. It has appointed the Commission on Structural Alternatives for the United States Courts and asked it to study a possible Ninth Circuit split. This Article provides an insider\u27s view, that of a former elbow clerk, and reveals that a split would significantly decrease the court\u27s workload and increase its consistency and predictability. The so-named icebox split, which would sever Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington from the Ninth Circuit and create a new Twelfth Circuit, would best improve the administration of justice without violating other important policies governing circuit boundary setting for a definable group of Americans knit together by common interests. This Article concludes that the Ninth Circuit should be split and a new circuit created from the icebox states

SPIRALS AND SCHEMAS: HOW INTEGRATED LAW SCHOOL COURSES CREATE HIGHER-ORDER THINKERS AND PROBLEM SOLVERS

As legal educators continue to shift focus to preparing students for practice, they should put integrated first-year courses and curricula into the top tier of potential reform vehicles. Integration refers to the extent to which a course or curriculum blurs disciplinary boundaries as well as boundaries between doctrine and authentic learning activities. Integrated courses promote active, deep learning that facilitate orderly knowledge construction and reveal more connections between vital legal concepts. The authenticity of integrated courses improves students’ retention and transfer of knowledge. Such accessible, interconnected knowledge in such a vital learning environment is like intellectual rocket fuel to law students as they hone higher-order thinking and problem-solving capacities, especially those emerging from sixteen years of passive education. Best of all, integration brings all of these elements into the doctrinal classroom where they belong. The article starts with established learning theory about how and what students learn to explain why the traditional first-year curriculum is inadequate to many students’ needs and schools’ practice-oriented missions. It then provides a high overview of what is meant by “integrated courses and curricula” and what they can and should achieve pedagogically. After zooming in, the article shows what particular integrated curricula, courses and activities that law schools could insert into their catalogs and syllabi today would look like. Finally, the article examines both anecdotal evidence and scholarly studies of outcomes from students educated with an integrated curriculum. The article concludes optimistically that integrated first-year courses and activities have enough potential to make transformative pedagogical improvements in legal education that they to demand further consideration as a framework for reform

IT\u27S ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE: HIERARCHY, NETWORKS AND TEACHING ASSISTANTS IN A CIVIL PROCEDURE CLASSROOM COMMUNITY

In Spring 2009, I embarked on a project to introduce the students in my first year, six-credit Civil Procedure sequence to the ife of the lawyer in community, representing people, as most of them would ultimately live it.\u27 My inipiration was my eghtyear practice experience in Owensboro, Kentucky (pop. 50,000).\u27 My tools were course desgn elements rooted in the lived experiences of individual itgants and prior students\u27 contributions, which would demonstrate that our classroom was a community of memory with a past, present, and future. Result: My most engaged class yet; vibrant reforms of m course desgn and delivey; improvements in my own knowledge; and many students who have remained closely attached to me even after graduation. I did not expect that in creating community we would upend the classroom hierarchy and create dense, complicated interpersonal networks. The teaching assistants and prior students who participated in class activities demonstrated that the past and therefore the future were verj real. Thej shortened the distance between the classroom organization \u27 status tiers and formed dnamic multjplex relationships with students. Our community became a livng, breathing, evolvin institutionjust like the communities I had hoped to mimic