Homer Simpson Meets the Rule Against Perpetuities: The Controversial Use of Pop-Culture in Legal Writing Pedagogy

Imagine that you have returned to your first year of law school. In your legal writing course, you are required to finish the year with an extensive brief analyzing a legal problem. After months in your doctrinal courses dealing with mind-bending legal issues such as liquidated damages, substantive due process, felony murder, personal jurisdiction, and shifting executory interests, you are ready to sink your teeth into a challenging legal writing assignment. You want to show your stuff and prove that your writing is law review caliber. Your assignment starts as follows: Greenacre is a parcel of land bounded on three of its sides by Redacre. James Green, your client, owns Greenacre. Steve Red owns Redacre. Red and Green have been disputing the rights of Green to maintain a dirt road leading from Greenacre through Redacre, which leads to Highway 109. . . . Fascinating stuff, no? This problem, while possibly viable as a device for inculcating legal writing skills, could nonetheless use some zest. One way to improve its readability and interest level might be to use familiar or humorous character names from pop-culture. The claim has been made, however, that the use of such names in legal research and writing ( LRW ) pedagogy is inappropriate. The argument is that students should take these assignments seriously, and populating one\u27s writing problem with characters from pop-culture makes it less likely that they will do so. But is this position truly defensible? Do students really take these assignments less seriously if a challenging legal issue happens to be in an amusing context? On the other hand, are there any justifications for the use of pop-culture references in legal writing pedagogy? If so, does the upside outweigh the downside? This article analyzes the issue whether teachers of legal research and writing should dare to go where our sisters and brothers of the doctrinal faculty have gone for years - into the realm of designing writing assignments using pop-culture references as characters as a means by which to balance doctrinal learning with heightened interest. Put quite simply: does a little sugar indeed help the medicine go down

Alternative Justifications for Law School Academic Support Programs: Self-Determination Theory, Autonomy Support, and Humanizing the Law School

This Article examines a problem that exists in law school academic support programs. While many schools now include extensive academic support opportunities within their curricula, some schools make the choice that more modest investments in these programs are warranted. Obviously, funding such programs is expensive, and law school administrations understandably are reticent to finance such endeavors absent guarantees of results. As such, scholars have attempted to prove, empirically, that law school academic support programs (ASPs) lead to demonstrable results in terms of improvements in student performance in law school and on the bar exam. Setting aside that important project, I suggest that other justifications exist for committing to academic support other than GPA and bar passage. My thesis is two-fold. First, I contend that ASPs help law schools satisfy conditions of “self-determination theory” and, relatedly, provide “autonomy support.” Self-determination theory, roughly, is a meta-theory of educational motivation that contends that optimal learning occurs when students perceive competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Autonomy support, in turn, asserts that educators must provide choice, rationale-provision, and perspective-taking in order to support students\u27 learning. As such, if an ASP enhances self-determination and autonomy support, it will provide an increased likelihood of real learning. Second, I argue that ASPs contribute to the law school humanizing movement. By providing a source of encouragement and assistance in an environment too often devoid of significant positive support, ASPs can leave students feeling that their law school actually cares whether they succeed. For those in academia who believe that providing a more humane law school environment is an admirable and worthwhile goal, this Article will serve to prove that ASPs do assist to providing that environment. This Article analyzes exactly how the methods of ASP fulfill the goals of the humanizing movement, provide self-determination, and lead to an increase in perceived autonomy support in students. The piece concludes that more schools should adopt or expand ASPs, and it introduces an empirical study (which I shall publish in a subsequent piece) testing the dual theses of this Article

Of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and Legal Expressivism: Why Massachusetts Should Stand its Ground on Stand Your Ground

This essay suggests that the expressive impact of Stand Your Ground laws alters the shared norms governing our collective understanding of the moral limits of “self-defense.” The essay argues that the theory of Legal Expressivism can explain the widespread misunderstanding of the limits of self-defense, as demonstrated by the institutional and popular reactions to the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. To support this thesis, the piece briefly explains Stand Your Ground statutes and legal expressivism. It then details the nature of the expressive function of these statutes and asserts that Massachusetts, which recently considered the adoption of such a provision, should reject this change principally to rebuff the symbolic message these laws convey

Balancing Law Student Privacy Interests and Progressive Pedagogy: Dispelling the Myth that FERPA Prohibits Cutting-Edge Academic Support Methodologies

Controversy exists over whether the Family Education Records Privacy Act prohibits certain progressive law school academic support methodologies. This Article analyzes these claims, using the text of the statute, the related regulations, case law from the Supreme Court of the United States and other federal courts, and statements from the Department of Education. The thesis of this Article is that most academic support methods are perfectly lawful and that FERPA and progressive pedagogy can peaceably coexist

Using Science to Build Better Learners: One School\u27s Successful Efforts to Raise Its Bar Passage Rates in an Era of Decline

What measures can law schools take to improve student performance and bar passage? The answer is not what you think.Recent developments in the science of learning show that most law students learn wrong. In fact, ineffective methods of learning pervade all levels of education. We now know that widely accepted learning and study strategies that were once considered gospel are actually deeply flawed. Yet we still embrace and propagate those myths.Meanwhile, bar passage rates and law student performance are plummeting. Everyone in legal education is asking “what can we do?” But, “what can we do?” is the wrong question. The right question is to ask how students can capitalize on the science of learning to be more effective learners.In this essay, I discuss principles from the science of learning that law schools and students should embrace. In the context of the methods we have implemented at Florida International University College of Law, which had the highest bar passage rate in Florida for three consecutive exams, I detail the project of transforming the learning of law away from the ineffective methods of yore and towards effective strategies that can make a difference on student performance and bar passage.And it all has to do with science, not lore

Alternative Justifications for Academic Support II: How “Academic Support Across the Curriculum” Helps Meet the Goals of the Carnegie Report and Best Practices

In the wake of two momentous critiques of legal education, popularly known as the “Carnegie Report” and “Best Practices,” law schools are reconsidering certain basic assumptions about how we educate future lawyers. Even the most forward-thinking reformers, however, struggle with the details of how to implement many of the recommendations of those reports. Providing more formative assessment, for instance, is a laudable objective but one that has serious ramifications in terms of resource expenditures. This article seeks to provide a remedy for many of these struggles: “Academic Support Across the Curriculum.” This piece argues that the reconceptualization of an under-leveraged asset in many law schools, Academic Support Programs (ASPs), can help provide crucial improvements in legal education. By examining the reforms urged by the Carnegie Report and Best Practices, and by detailing the methods of certain exemplary ASPs throughout the country, this piece analyzes how ASPs just might be the answer to many tough questions

Transactional Law in the Required Legal Writing Curriculum: An Empirical Study of the Forgotten Future Business Lawyer

Legal Writing courses traditionally focus on litigation writing. The course usually includes assignments on writing interoffice memoranda, drafting trial or appellate briefs, and conducting oral arguments - all in the context of a lawsuit. But, how does this exclusive focus on litigation treat students with no interest in that subject? For future transactional lawyers, the dominance of litigation writing might seem to ignore their needs. Should they be learning how to draft contracts, create corporate documents, or write commercial leasing agreements? This Article examines whether legal writing courses, either in the first year of law school or later, sufficiently address the needs of future business lawyers. It first examines statistics describing current subjects covered in legal writing courses. This examination shows that while transactional writing instruction is increasing, it still is not as prevalent as litigation writing, especially in the first year. The paper then determines, by means of original empirical research (both quantitative and qualitative) the need - or market demand - for instruction in transactional writing. Because this need is so great, the paper concludes that law schools should focus more efforts on non-litigation writing instruction. It then canvasses several proposed methods by which to achieve this goal. Methodologies represented in these proposals include writing-across-the-curriculum, adding transactional subjects to the first-year course, adding transactional subjects to the upper-class curriculum, and a hybrid model which co-mingles instruction by transactional and writing faculty in the same course

Not Everyone Works for BigLaw: A Response to Neil J. Dilloff

In a law review article entitled The Changing Cultures and Economics of Large Law Firm Practice and Their Impact on Legal Education, DLA Piper partner Neil J. Dilloff details recent changes in the way that BigLaw does business. He then suggests a number of improvements in legal education ostensibly compelled by the new economic realities of large firm practice. While many of Attorney Dilloff\u27s suggestions make very good sense, several problems exist. In this short essay, we take the position that law schools should not pattern current reforms solely on the needs of BigLaw. Instead, we suggest that reforming legal education requires law schools to rethink the tradition of merely teaching students to think like lawyers. Rather than upholding the status quo of a generally liberal arts pursuit to the study of law, law school curricula, particularly in upper-division classes, should focus on producing lawyers ready and able to practice in a variety of contexts

Alternative Justifications for Academic Support III: An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Academic Support on Perceived Autonomy Support and Humanizing Law Schools

This article details the findings of a two-year empirical study on the impact of a law school academic support program (ASP) on law students. The hypothesis of the study was that as students\u27 participation in a well-resourced, open-access ASP increases, students\u27 perception of autonomy support and humanizing grows as well. The study concludes, based upon statistically significant data, that law school ASPs impact students in positive ways and therefore are worth the investment. This article is the third in a series designed to show that law school academic support measures positively impact students\u27 well-being and lead to a more robust educational experience

Islet Endothelial Activation and Oxidative Stress Gene Expression Is Reduced by IL-1Ra Treatment in the Type 2 Diabetic GK Rat

Inflammation followed by fibrosis is a component of islet dysfunction in both rodent and human type 2 diabetes. Because islet inflammation may originate from endothelial cells, we assessed the expression of selected genes involved in endothelial cell activation in islets from a spontaneous model of type 2 diabetes, the Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rat. We also examined islet endotheliuml/oxidative stress (OS)/inflammation-related gene expression, islet vascularization and fibrosis after treatment with the interleukin-1 (IL-1) receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra)