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Distraction or Necessity: A Post-Pandemic Examination of Digital Devices in the Law School Classroom
Full text linkDigital devices are a constant presence in the law school classroom; however, faculty members and students report mixed feelings about the role of digital devices in the classroom learning experience. While data suggests that use of digital devices has a deleterious effect on acquiring and retaining information, digital device usage is sometimes helpful and often necessary to facilitate learning in the modern law school classroom.
This article draws upon ideas from Professor James M. Lang in his book Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About (Hatchette Book Group Inc. 1st ed. 2020), identifies the reasons that digital devices distract our brains and suggests a context driven approach to the use of digital devices in a law school classroom. Part I will discuss the science of learning and distraction, Part II will discuss the various approaches to technology use in the classroom, Part III will discuss developing and implementing a technology use policy for the legal skills classroom, and Part IV will discuss the benefits of teaching students to be good stewards of technology as they enter the legal profession
Teamwork Makes a Dream Work: Collaboration in the Legal Writing
Full text linkThis essay provides insights into the benefits (and some of the challenges) encountered when two relatively seasoned legal writing professors decided to collaborate in their first-year legal writing courses. The essay, in self-deprecating candor, describes how my colleague and I leveraged our individual strengths to improve our legal writing students’ learning experience. Along the way, a friendship, born of deep respect, was formed.
Collaboration defined simply is no more than “a process of working with others to accomplish something.”[1] To that end, collaborative teaching, i.e., team teaching is typically two or more faculty members working together to develop instructional materials. Collaborative teaching is far from new and seems to have gained traction as secondary and post-secondary educators are realizing the benefits of diverse voices in classroom instruction.
While not intended to be an exhaustive study of the topic, the essay does provide some important context for utilization of collaboration. Specifically, the first section provides background information about collaboration—what it is, its various types and functions, and some of its benefits and challenges. The second section discusses the specific model that my colleague and I used and why this particular collaboration model works for us. Finally, the article concludes extolling the utility of collaboration as a multi-faceted tool for new and more seasoned faculty members—a tool that will not only help to educate our students but will also help to build community with those students and amongst colleagues.
No task is too great, no accomplishment too grand, no dream too far-fetched for a team. It takes teamwork to make the dream work.
—John Maxwell
[1]. Douglas C. Orzolek, Collaborative Teaching: Lessons Learned, 66 Coll. Teaching 124, 124-29 (2018)
The Adaptable Legal Writer
Full text linkToday, more than ever, lawyers must constantly adapt—quickly and with deliberateness. This Article shines a light on the need to teach law students adaptability in law practice, and the central role of the legal writing professor in that endeavor. Part II explores the need for adaptability in a lawyer’s career. Part III provides an overview of three adaptability approaches from the legal writing pedagogy literature: information literacy, genre discovery, and the contextual case method. Part IV closes with a reflection on key features of adaptability pedagogy in legal writing—curiosity, inquisitiveness, and ethicality—and its general application in legal education. At heart the adaptability approaches discussed in this Article require law students to methodically question and to work with integrity and ethicality. They compel legal writing students to practice activities that will help them adapt as lawyers in an ever-changing environment. All are invited to read this Article as a celebration of the legal writing professor’s critical role in legal education
Doing Less—Reflections on Cognitive Load and Hard Choices in Teaching First-Year Legal Writing
Full text linkThe evolving landscape of legal research and writing (LRW) education requires LRW professors to balance a multitude of expectations and demands in the process of teaching foundational skills and ensuring that students are “practice-ready.” This essay argues that attempting to cover too wide an array of skills and competencies often leads to ineffective learning outcomes and suggests that a “less is more” approach may be more beneficial. It explores the challenges faced by LRW professors in teaching a comprehensive set of skills while ensuring students can transfer their learning to new contexts. Drawing on research and personal teaching experiences, the essay advocates for a strategic approach of “doing less” to achieve more effective learning outcomes. This approach involves prioritizing foundational skills like research, organization, and analysis, which are essential for success in practice and increasingly important in light of changes in the legal profession, such as the emergence of generative AI. The article also suggests reevaluating course design to focus on optimizing foundational skills, simplifying assignments, and reducing cognitive overload. Furthermore, it proposes de-emphasizing certain aspects of practice-ready professionalism, such as strict adherence to formatting rules and deadlines, to create space for deeper learning and metacognition. By making thoughtful decisions about what to prioritize and how to structure their courses, LRW professors can better equip students for the complexities of modern legal practice while fostering a more meaningful and transferable learning experience
Doing More With Less: State Public Health Emergency Powers Post-Pandemic
Full text linkThree years after COVID-19 arrived in the United States, many governors and public health officials are equipped with fewer—not more—public health emergency powers than at the start of the pandemic. This may seem counterintuitive, considering that this virus has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and counting. While public health emergency powers were stripped on the federal, state, and local level, this loss is most acutely felt at the state executive level. Some state legislatures passed laws banning state and local governments from implementing a mask or vaccine mandate, while others amended their state emergency disaster statutes to limit the scope and duration of these powers. With these powers stripped from the states’ executive branches, what are governors and public health officials to do when the next public health crisis comes their way? This Article discusses how these officials can maximize the public health emergency powers that remain at their disposal. This Article further explores other avenues a state’s executive branch may use to manage a public health emergency aside from those powers in a state disaster or public health emergency statute
Teaching Dobbs as a Contemporary Case Study of Federalism in Action and an Introduction to the Cross-Disciplinary Nature of the Law
Full text linkWith its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and returned the issue of legal access to an abortion to the states. Prior to Dobbs, reproductive rights and the right to an abortion were firmly situated within the substantive due process and fundamental rights coverage of law school constitutional law courses. But this coverage often falls late in, or completely outside the scope of, the required constitutional law curriculum at U.S. law schools. This Article offers the Dobbs decision as an opportunity for constitutional law professors to begin their coverage of the right to an abortion earlier in the required constitutional law curriculum in a manner that moves away from a strictly “Case-Method” study of law to a more accessible cross-disciplinary study of law.
By using Dobbs as a contemporary case study of federalism in action, constitutional law professors can utilize a rich variety of readily available resources to make the legally complex concept of federalism more approachable and accessible to a wider assortment of students, including students with learning disabilities. Professors also can use Dobbs as an introduction to the cross-disciplinary nature of the law by exploring Dobbs’ impact on other academic disciplines including medicine, business and economics, and political science, while empowering students to engage with their law school studies in a more meaningful and active manner. This Article presents exercises for both recommended uses of Dobbs, which apply different teaching modalities inside and outside the classroom, allowing constitutional law professors to support their students in developing new critical thinking skills that support a greater understanding of the law and the intersections between the legal profession and other areas of academic pursuit
The Shifting Landscape of Substantive Due Process: Could Dobbs Pose a Threat to Contraceptive Rights?
Full text linkNearly two years ago, the Supreme Court issued its infamous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a challenge to one of the then-most restrictive abortion bans in the country. In a stunning—yet not entirely surprising—6-3 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause does not protect abortion as a fundamental right and returned the power to regulate abortion to the states. Of course, legal questions abound as to the future of reproductive care in the United States following this infamous decision, and Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion raises one of the largest-looming concerns. In that concurrence, Thomas calls on the Court to revisit seminal substantive due process precedents, including Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that established that access to contraceptives is a federally protected right.
This Note seeks to determine whether Dobbs could be extended to overturn one of Griswold’s central holdings, a decision that would open the door for states to limit access to contraception in countless ways. The Note begins by discussing the three prominent theories the Court has employed in construing rights under substantive due process, highlighting the inconsistency with which the Court has approached substantive due process issues over time. With this context, the Note then looks to the Court’s approach to substantive due process in Dobbs, an opinion that cements the Court’s commitment to viewing rights through the lens of “history and tradition.” The narrow lens through which the Court views our country’s legal history suggests that access to contraception could be in jeopardy. The Note concludes by assessing how states could frame future restrictions on contraception and offers some avenues for action. While the future of contraceptive access as a legal right is difficult to predict, one thing is certain: should the Court ultimately revisit Griswold, its decision on its central holding will shape the lives of women for decades
Debunking the Narrowness Narrative in LGBTQ Religious Exemption Claims
Full text linkIn three recent cases—Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis—the U.S. Supreme Court held in favor of a conservative Christian claimant who sought a religious exemption, reasoning that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise or Free Speech clause exempted the claimant from complying with a validly enacted antidiscrimination provision barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Many legal scholars and commentators have decried these decisions as radically altering First Amendment law at the expense of LGBTQ civil rights. In contrast, many national LGBTQ rights organizations have engaged in a different kind of narrative about these cases, one that tends to minimize the scope and breadth of the risk and retrenchment created by these decisions. I call this the Narrowness Narrative because it characterizes these three decisions as narrow in ways that obscure the bigger and more troubling picture, namely the Court’s burgeoning sympathy for the interests of the white Christian nationalism movement and the undeniable trend of the Court’s elevation of these interests and the concomitant subordination of marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ community.
In his Childress Lecture and article, Professor Ball counsels that, in order to keep progressivism’s distributive and egalitarian goals centered within the progressive legal movement, “it is important for progressive activists, commentators, and academics to consider how specific constitutional claims made in court impact the framing of policy questions outside of the judicial context.” This essay adapts and extends that call to a different stage of the life cycle of LGBTQ rights litigation and, in some instances to different actors in that movement, by focusing on the post-mortem messaging of national LGBTQ rights organizations upon the Court’s issuing of a ruling that diminishes LGBTQ equality. I advocate that these national organizations ought to be attentive to progressivism’s distributive and egalitarian goals when issuing public statements about anti-LGBTQ U.S. Supreme Court decisions and contend that the Narrowness Narrative is counterproductive to progressivism’s goals