Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Perdue, Wendy Collins

655
Building Bridges
Wendy Collins Perdue 
Dean & Professor of Law  
University of Richmond School of Law 
 
The Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting 
Second Meeting of the House of Representatives 
Presidential Address 
San Diego  
January 5, 2018
I am deeply honored to assume the role of president of this organization 
and to stand in front of so many friends and colleagues whom I have known 
over the years. Many of you are people with whom I have worked through 
AALS, some are former colleagues from Georgetown or current colleagues 
from Richmond, and still others I know only through your scholarship and 
reputation. It is my hope that this year will provide an opportunity for me 
to reconnect with many of you as we pursue our shared interest in further 
strengthening and supporting our system of legal education.
I hope you will indulge me a brief set of thank-yous. First, to the staff of 
AALS. The work of this organization is made possible by an exceptionally 
dedicated staff who work behind the scenes. This year’s annual meeting, 
for example, will have over 250 sessions, with more than 1,000 moderators, 
speakers, and discussion leaders. That means the number of things that could 
go wrong is, well, really large. But this year, like every year, the staff makes it 
look easy. Most of what could go wrong doesn’t, and if it does, it gets fixed so 
seamlessly that no one notices–all thanks to our wonderful executive director 
and the amazing staff. This is a group that strives for excellence, so if you 
noticed something that could have been better, let them know. But while 
you are at it, if you noticed something that went really well, you might also 
consider mentioning that. They are loyal and dedicated, and deserve our 
deepest thanks.
Second, I want to offer a special thanks to our outgoing president, Paul 
Marcus. A year ago, Paul announced that his theme for the year was access 
to justice, and it has proven to be exceptionally appropriate. On January 
27 last year, only a few weeks after Paul reminded us of the importance of 
access to justice, a remarkable thing happened: lawyers, law professors, and 
law students from around the country grabbed their computers and their cell 
phones and went as quickly as they could to our airports. They sat on the floor 
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 67, Number 3 (Spring 2018)
656 Journal of Legal Education
beneath handmade signs that said “free legal help” in multiple languages. And 
if their access was blocked, crowds broke into spontaneous chants of “let the 
lawyers in.” “Let the lawyers in”—that’s a far cry from the more commonly 
invoked refrain, that line from Shakespeare: “The first thing we do, let’s kill 
all the lawyers.”
“Letting the lawyers in” surely means expanding access to justice for millions 
of people around the country, whether they are refugees, victims of domestic 
violence, or small businesses needing to protect their intellectual property. 
Thank you, Paul, for your work this year on such an important theme.
But there is another way in which “letting the lawyers in” can have important 
and much-needed social benefits. Lawyers are healers of a sort—the doctors 
of our social lives—and there’s a role for lawyers to play in addressing what 
currently ails us: the deep polarization of our society.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that political polarization 
has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. It is not just that people 
strongly disagree about important social and policy issues—that has always 
been true. But there are two new and disturbing trends that we’re seeing. First, 
there are fewer political moderates—people who hold what we would think 
of as liberal views on some issues and conservative views on others—and that 
means there is just less common ground. But more than that, people who 
inhabit these ideological silos tend to cut themselves off from those who do 
not share their full constellation of views. And the result is less opportunity to 
even find the common ground that might exist.
And second, our politics have become increasingly personal with an almost 
tribal cast. We see those who disagree with us as unintelligent or ignorant, or 
selfish or even evil. Those of you of a certain age will remember the Saturday 
Night Live “Point/Counterpoint” “debates” between Dan Aykroyd and Jane 
Curtin—a take-off on a segment by the same name on 60 Minutes. Aykroyd and 
Curtin would approach the debate with deadpanned seriousness and Aykroyd 
would begin with the same personal and deeply gendered slur: “Jane, you 
ignorant …” …you remember the rest. At the time we thought it silly parody 
—ridiculous, not something you would hear an actual news commentator say. 
But that bit of comedy now seems sadly prescient.
As our society struggles with this problem of deep polarization, lawyers and 
law schools have an important role to play. Lawyers are, after all, in the dispute 
resolution business. Resolving conflict is central to what we do. And today, 
perhaps more than ever before, the skills that we as lawyers have, and we as 
law professors teach, are of critical importance.
Lawyers understand how to structure decision-making and dispute 
resolution processes. We understand the importance of the opportunity 
to be heard and other aspects of fundamental fairness. We understand the 
importance of considering both sides and crediting the merits of opposing 
views. We understand the importance of facts—the ones we can prove, not 
merely the ones we wish to be true—and we understand the importance of 
657
getting opposite sides of an issue to the table, to get them talking to each other 
in the first place.
Lawyers are not only comfortable navigating a world of conflict and 
disagreement, but they also approach disagreements with a methodology that 
is built on recognizing the strength of the opposing views. Legal pedagogy, 
like good lawyering, emphasizes the importance of developing a deep, even 
empathetic understanding of the arguments on the other side. Our case books 
include dissents which force students to confront opposing arguments. In 
moot court, students are assigned the side they must argue, and sometimes 
they are asked to brief one side and then do oral argument for the other. We 
constantly push our students away from the psychological comfort of certainty 
to that uneasy place where opposing views loom large.
Good lawyers and good judges also understand fallibility. Learned Hand 
once suggested that each court session should begin with the statement “think 
that we may be mistaken.”
This lawyerly approach to conflict and disagreement is reflected in legal 
scholarship as well. The best scholarship engages with opposing views. It 
acknowledges weaknesses in one’s own position and considers contrary 
positions in the strongest light. To be sure, it seeks to persuade, but it seeks 
to do so on the strength of the ideas presented, never by simply belittling or 
dehumanizing those who hold opposing views.
The point is not that arguments should be drained of emotion. Where the 
stakes are high, emotions will run high. But lawyers understand that disputes, 
even on matters upon which convictions are deeply held, need not be personal 
and that it is possible to separate the substance of an argument from the 
person making that argument. Lawyers likewise understand that it is possible 
to disagree without being disagreeable—indeed, we are admonished to do just 
that in our principles of professionalism.
Our traditions of professional respect and collegiality stand in marked 
contrast to what we sometimes see around us. And our traditions can be 
powerful. Picture, if you will, a court room in Durham, North Carolina in 
1933—a courtroom in which no African American would be allowed to serve 
on a jury and certainly would not be allowed to be a judge. A court room in a 
court house that no doubt had segregated wash rooms and drinking fountains. 
Into that court room walked William Hastie, an African American lawyer for 
the NAACP. The spectators in that courtroom witnessed Mr. Hastie treated 
with a level of professional respect that they had never seen accorded to an 
African American. And that demonstration of respect was, as Ken Mack has 
written, “electric.” Hastie himself reported back to the NAACP, “town agog…
Incalculable good done whatever the outcome.”
Lawyers are not social workers, but they are, as Lon Fuller put it, architects 
of social structure. And in that role as architects, they can be—we can be—
enormously helpful in reconnecting a fractured world. That is to say, in 
building bridges.
Building Bridges
658 Journal of Legal Education
We have some great examples of what lawyers who build bridges can 
accomplish. One who comes to mind for me is Chief Justice John Marshall, 
whose home in Richmond, Virginia, I have visited on multiple occasions. 
Known for his even temperament and collegiality, Marshall was a great 
practitioner of the gentle art of persuasion without rancor. He was an expert 
at what my Richmond Law colleague Kevin Walsh calls “disagree–ability.” 
Marshall’s approach was profoundly consequential. By building connections 
and finding common ground, he transformed the Supreme Court from 
an assembly of individual Justices, each of whom wrote separate opinions 
speaking only for themselves, into an institution that could issue opinions of 
the Court and speak with one voice. It was revolutionary, but so in keeping 
with a man who believed he could help to build a nation by building bridges 
between friends and foes alike.
So that is my theme for the year: building bridges. Over the last few years, 
there has been much focus within the legal academy on bridging theory and 
practice. And that work should continue. But at this moment in time, we 
lawyers, and educators of lawyers-to-be, need to be building other bridges as 
well, and teaching our budding lawyers to build bridges in a different way too.
Society needs us to model civility and the John Marshall skill of “disagree-
ability.” Society needs us to model listening skills, so that we can openly and 
honestly build dialogue with respect for one another’s views. And society needs 
us to lead the way in dispute resolution, which requires civility, listening, open 
mindedness, and a host of other skills that are part of the lawyerly repertoire. 
So over the course of the year, I hope to celebrate and encourage law schools as 
leaders of civil discourse, reasoned debate, and productive dispute resolution. 
I know that law schools are already active in this arena:
• You have programs explicitly designed to model our ideals of informed,  
 respectful debate;
• You are training law students in the skills of dialogue across difference;
• You are serving as the facilitators of deliberative decision making on  
 important policy issues; and
• You are reaching out to local schools to train students and administrators  
 in the skills of conflict resolution.
These are just a few of the ways that law schools are building bridges, 
and I hope we will all find ways to do more. Let us put our traditions of 
professionalism, civility, and reasoned disagreement on display for all to see, 
and let us inspire the next generation to “think like a lawyer” about society’s 
problems—to listen, consider, reason, collaborate, resolve, and even heal.
Let me close by thanking each of you for the many ways that you are already 
building bridges. You are not only modeling the best of our profession, but you 
659
are also doing the work of building bridges within your law schools, within 
your universities and local communities, within the bar. And as scholars you 
are calling out the ways that law facilitates or impedes a social architecture 
of connections. The work that you do as teachers, scholars, and lawyers has 
enormous impact.
As we go about that work, I hope we will remember the admonition of 
Justice Thurgood Marshall which appears on the Virginia Civil Rights 
Memorial: “The legal system can force open doors and sometimes even knock 
down walls, but it cannot build bridges. That job belongs to you and me.”
I look forward to working with each of you in the coming year and thank 
you again for this opportunity to serve.
Building Bridges


English

2018 AALS Annual Meeting Presidential Address

Siegel, Jonathan R.

Book Review of Supreme Courtship: A Novel by Christopher Buckley

Nelson, Camille A.

Varona, Anthony E.

901
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 67, Number 4 (Summer 2018)
From the Editors
Montesquieu’s theory of doux commerce, or “sweet commerce,” teaches that 
we become gentler and kinder by doing business with those who are foreign to 
us.1 Mutual self-interest motivates people interacting across national and other 
borders to become more sociable and achieve, through collaboration, much 
more than they could achieve alone. By working to understand the “other,” 
no matter how distant or different they are from us, we better understand 
ourselves and, as a consequence, we improve our own lives. 
Self-interest, however, is only a part of it. The fundamental understanding 
of the natural and inalienable rights of humankind – values such as dignity, 
identity, and autonomy – itself argues in favor of better understanding and 
respecting people who are different from us. We should reach across chasms 
and divides not solely to benefit our own understanding and position but also 
to honor the basic tenets of human rights and the enduring requirements of 
the social contract itself. 
It  is no surprise the benefits of globalization and internationalization 
have long been acknowledged, and realized, in commercial trade, tourism, 
transit, arts and cultural activities, telecommunications, scientific research, 
space exploration, philanthropy, and many other areas of human enterprise. 
The legal profession and legal education itself, however, continue to lag in our 
embrace of internationalism. 
In the United States, our attitude toward international and comparative 
law at times has been not only insular but outright hostile, as memorably 
exemplified by the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in 2003’s Lawrence v. 
Texas. There, Justice Scalia protested against the majority’s reliance on the 
decriminalization of sodomy in other nations as support for its holding that 
sodomy bans are prohibited under the U.S. Constitution. He wrote that “[t]he 
1. See Nathan B. Oman, Markets as a Moral Foundation for Contract Law, 98 Iowa L. Rev. 183, 202-
03 (“There is empirical evidence in support of Montesquieu’s thesis. Experimental studies
show that market activity is strongly correlated with higher levels of interpersonal trust.”)
While often attributed to Montesquieu, the Doux Commerce theory also is linked to the work of 
political philosophers David Hume, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. Mark L. Movsesian, Markets 
and Morals: The Limits of Doux Commerce, 9 wm. & maRy Bus. L. Rev. 449, 456 (2018)(Prof.
Movsesian puts it this way: “The [doux commerce] thesis is most closely associated with French 
philosophes like Montesquieu and Voltaire, but Scottish Enlightenment figures like Smith and 
Hume also endorsed it.”).
902 Journal of Legal Education
Court’s discussion of these foreign views” is “meaningless” and “[d]angerous 
dicta ….”2 
Similarly, President Donald J. Trump’s “America First”3 exhortations curry 
so much popular support because they resonate with the nation’s longstanding 
embrace of the idea of American exceptionalism. “America First,” however, 
suggests “America best,” which itself begs the question that if we really are 
best and to be emulated and followed, then what do we have to learn, and to 
teach, from outside of our national borders?4
Most of the articles we include in this issue of the Journal of Legal Education 
illustrate that American legal education has much to learn, and to teach, in 
international and comparative law.       
We begin with Professor Rosa Kim’s Globalizing the Law Curriculum for Twenty-
First-Century Lawyering. Professor Kim examines why internationalizing the law 
school curriculum is especially important today, in the Trump Era, and when 
the practice of law across all specializations is increasingly global in scope, 
with the old distinctions between “domestic” and “international” practice now 
obsolete. She writes that “the core curriculum of most law schools remains 
tied to a model established over a century ago” and argues in favor of not 
just a handful of international and comparative law courses in a discrete 
curricular sector, but of a pursuit of “global competency” across the law school 
curriculum.
Dean Theresa Kaiser-Jarvis carries the thread of globalization of legal 
education forward in her article, Preparing Students for Global Practice: Developing 
Competencies and Providing Guidance. She provides tangible and practical 
suggestions for law professors and associate deans in charge of curricular 
planning for the purpose of “creat[ing] a globally competent lawyer.” Dean 
Kaiser-Jarvis emphasizes experiential learning, and discusses the value of 
immersive experiences abroad, familiarity with a legal system other than the 
common law, exposure to “global networks” and “language[s] other than 
English.”
2. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 598 (2003)(Scalia, J., dissenting). Justice Scalia quotes Justice
Thomas’s concurring opinion in Foster v. Florida, where he wrote that the Supreme Court
“should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans.” Id., quoting Foster v.
Florida, 537 U.S. 990, n. (2002)(Thomas, J., concurring). See also Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S.
304, 347-48 (2002)(Scalia, J., dissenting)(rejecting views of other nations on the legitimacy
of execution of defendants with intellectual disability, noting “Equally irrelevant are the
practices of the ‘world community,’ whose notions of justice are (thankfully) not always
those of our people.”).
3. President Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Address, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/
briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/. “From this moment on, it’s going to be
America First.”
4. Or from immigrants who imbue their American identities with “foreign” experiences,
understandings, and capabilities? It bears noting here that both of us are immigrants and
naturalized American citizens. (Camille was born in Jamaica and Tony in Cuba.)
903
Next, we have an article co-authored by Andrew Winston, Peter Roudik, 
Barbara Bavis, and Donna Sokol entitled The Law Library of Congress: A 
Global Resource for Legal Education. In this piece, the co-authors discuss how a 
quintessentially domestic American institution – the Law Library of Congress, 
for which the “first obligation is to serve the US Congress and the US Supreme 
Court” – has become a treasure trove of international and comparative law 
resources for both domestic and international researchers. The article provides 
a detailed overview of these resources as well as describes how US and foreign 
academics and law students are able to access them.
We then move to two articles that provide detailed and fascinating looks 
into challenges and opportunities confronting legal education in Africa and 
Russia. In the first piece, entitled Comparative Research in Contemporary African Legal 
Studies, Professor Charles Manga Fombad provides a fascinating example of 
how the debates around the globalization of legal education are unfolding 
around the world in ways that are both similar to and different from how they 
have evolved in the United States. 
In his article, Dr. Fombad discusses the move towards enriching African 
legal scholarship and curricula with more international and comparative law 
content. He bemoans what he describes as “the declining interest that most 
African law schools have in teaching comparative law” and “its disappearance 
from the law curriculum” and concludes that it will “likely…have a negative 
impact on the quality of legal research and, consequently, legal education.” 
He argues in favor of the incorporation of comparative scholarship and 
curriculum in African legal education, especially “at a time of progressive 
denationalization through regional and sub-regional integration.” 
In the second article of this dyad, A Profile of Russian Law Students: A Comparison 
of Full-time versus Correspondence Students, Professor Kathryn Hendley examines the 
dynamics of legal education in Russia, with a detailed examination of how law 
is studied in Russia, by whom, at what stage in their educational careers, and to 
what effect in terms of job placement and attitudes towards, with a particular 
emphasis on the distinctions between traditional full-time law students and 
those who attend by means of “correspondence.”
Next, we depart from the international and comparative theme of this issue 
with a very topical article by Professor Scott F. Norberg entitled J.D.s and Jobs: 
The Case for an ABA Accreditation Standard on Employment Outcomes. In it, Professor 
Norberg proposes a new “employment outcome standard” for adoption by the 
ABA for the reaccreditation of law schools. Norberg addresses the motivations 
for such a standard, and specifically the interplay between what he refers to as 
“persistently weak graduate employment outcomes” and “high levels of law 
school debt” affecting a sizeable cohort of law schools in the United States.  
The final article in this issue is a review by Professor Richard A. Boswell 
of Emeritus Professor Richard J. Wilson’s book, The GLoBaL evoLuTIon 
of CLInICaL LeGaL eduCaTIon: moRe Than a meThod. In his book, our 
colleague Professor Wilson traces the history, progression, and impacts of 
904 Journal of Legal Education
clinical legal education across the world. Professor Boswell concludes that 
Professor Wilson shows how “Clinic is more than just a way of teaching but 
is also a very vibrant global movement that has deep roots in what educators 
have learned about how students learn.”
This is the first issue of the Journal of Legal Education for which the American 
University Washington College of Law took the lead, in partnership with our 
colleagues and institutional co-editors at Northeastern University School of 
Law. Our law school assumed the institutional co-editor responsibilities from 
University of Washington School of Law, which had very admirably served in 
the role since 2014. 
This issue’s theme is an especially fitting one for us, insofar as our law 
school has long valued the integration of international and comparative law 
across our traditional and experiential curricula. We thank all of this issue’s 
authors for their important contributions, our colleagues and co-editors at 
Northeastern for their generous guidance and help, and for their hard and 
excellent work the other members of our AUWCL JLE editorial team, which 
includes Professors Khelani Clay, Robert Dinerstein, John Heywood, Billie Jo 
Kaufman, Mark Niles, Shannon Roddy, William Ryan and Ripple Weistling.5
We hope that you will enjoy this issue.
Camille A. Nelson
Anthony E. Varona
5. We also thank our editorial assistant, Emma McArthur, and our graphic designers,
Erik Garcia and Linda Wen, for their excellent graphic design and production work.


From the Editors

Woo, Margaret Y.K.

Paul, Jeremy R.

373
From the Editors 
A quiet revolution is taking place in legal education. For close to a century, 
law schools used the bar exam as the principal method of testing whether 
students were graduating with the knowledge they needed to practice law. 
But in 2014, new ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of 
Law Schools (“ABA Standards”) were adopted and implemented in time 
for accreditation visits occurring in 2016-2017. These revised accreditation 
standards require law schools to develop programmatic student learning 
outcomes as well as methods to assess those outcomes. (ABA Standards 301, 
302, 314, and 315 — see appendix I). These new requirements are sparking some 
of the most significant, systemic changes to law school pedagogy that we have 
seen in many years. 
The assessment standards stem from a broader movement in higher 
education from a traditional, input-based, prescriptive system of accreditation 
(focusing on budget, facilities, academic metrics of incoming students and 
the number of faculty) to an outcome-based system of accreditation. The 
ABA has also embraced a shift from historic output measurements, such as 
bar passage or job placement, to a focus on student learning outcomes and 
the assessments of such student learning outcomes. Law schools faced with 
these new standards must quickly familiarize themselves with best practices 
in designing student learning outcomes and assessments, and ideally schools 
will use this opportunity to modify and improve their programs. With such 
changes underfoot, the JLE devotes this issue to the new ABA Standards on 
assessments — on formative and summative assessment to be employed by 
individual faculty members as well as practices and requirements governing 
institutional assessment.
We begin with Steven Bahls, chair of the Student Learning Outcomes 
Subcommittee of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to 
the Bar, who participated in drafting of these new standards. President Bahls 
details the context and process by which these standards were developed, the 
comments considered by the committee and the changes made in response. In 
so doing, President Bahls clarifies the motivations, interpretations, and policy 
objectives underlying these new standards. Dean Judith Welch Wegner, co-
author of Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (more commonly 
known as the Carnegie Report), places these standards in the context of 
twenty years of conversation on pedagogy between the bar and the legal 
academy. She unpacks the concept of assessment and the multiple respects in 
which that concept is incorporated into the revised ABA Standards, with an 
eye to helping faculty members and law schools understand assessment and 
implement high-quality assessment practices rather than fall prey to erroneous 
assumptions or problematic practices. Most interestingly, Dean Wegner also 
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 67, Number 2 (Winter 2018)
374 Journal of Legal Education
turns to the ABA Standards themselves and argues for an assessment of these 
accreditation requirements. 
On institutional assessment, Dean Susan Duncan follows with her very 
thoughtful discussion on how law schools can implement institutional 
assessment practices and the role of law school deans in encouraging these 
changes. Andrea Curcio focuses on faculty contributions to institutional 
learning outcomes assessment. She prescribes a relatively simple and low 
cost model to measure institutional learning outcomes that does not require 
disruptions to an individual faculty member’s pedagogical and assessment 
methods.
The next set of articles focuses on the micro-implementation of these 
standards in the classroom. Olympia Duhart responds to the major objections 
to implementing learning outcomes assessments and offers a number of 
useful techniques on how to do formative assessments in the classroom. 
Sophie Sparrow targets “soft skills” and their assessments. “Soft skills” are 
skills identified by the Whole Lawyer Survey and include such professional 
competencies and behavior as confidentiality, timeliness, commitment, 
integrity, respect, listening, responsiveness, diligence, strong work ethic, and 
attention to detail. Jeffrey Harrison suggests the use of pretesting as a baseline 
for assessing learning outcomes. Finally, Steven Friedland rounds off this set 
of papers with a more holistic demonstration of how to apply design theory in 
creating an assessment-centered classroom.
We complete this volume with our At the Lectern by Martin Malin and 
Deborah Ginsberg, on “Flipping the Classroom to Teach Workplace ADR 
in an Intensive Environment,” as well as three book reviews: two reviews 
of Stephen Presser’s Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law (one 
by Bernard W. Bell and the other by Scott Douglas Gerber); and Thomas 
Morawetz’s review essay on two books: Daniel S. Medwed ed., Wrongful 
Convictions and the DNA Revolution: Twenty-Five Years of Freeing the Innocent and Sharon 
Dolovich and Alexandra Natapoff eds., The New Criminal Justice Thinking). Enjoy!
Margaret Y.K. Woo
Jeremy Paul
375
Appendix I 
ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools
Standard 301. Objectives of Program of Legal Education (a) A law 
school shall maintain a rigorous program of legal education that prepares its 
students, upon graduation, for admission to the bar and for effective, ethical, 
and responsible participation as members of the legal profession. (b) A law 
school shall establish and publish learning outcomes designed to achieve 
these objectives. 
Standard 302. Learning Outcomes A law school shall establish learning 
outcomes that shall, at a minimum, include competency in the following: (a) 
Knowledge and understanding of substantive and procedural law; (b) Legal 
analysis and reasoning, legal research, problem-solving, and written and 
oral communication in the legal context; (c) Exercise of proper professional 
and ethical responsibilities to clients and the legal system; and (d) Other 
professional skills needed for competent and ethical participation as a member 
of the legal profession. 
Standard 314. Assessment of Student Learning A law school shall utilize 
both formative and summative assessment methods in its curriculum to 
measure and improve student learning and provide meaningful feedback to 
students.
Standard 315. Evaluation of Program of Legal Education, Learning 
Outcomes, and Assessment Methods The dean and the faculty of a law 
school shall conduct ongoing evaluation of the law school’s program of legal 
education, learning outcomes, and assessment methods; and shall use the 
results of this evaluation to determine the degree of student attainment of 
competency in the learning outcomes and to make appropriate changes to 
improve the curriculum
From the Editors


Boutcher, Steven A.

Raup-Kounovsky, Anna

Seron, Carroll

Financing Legal Education Through Student Loans: Results from a Quasi-Experiment in Tuition Remission

Curcio, Andrea A.

A Simple Low-Cost  Institutional Learning-Outcomes Assessment Process

Fombad, Charles Manga

Comparative Research in Contemporary African Legal Studies

Anderson, Alexis

Classroom Taping Under Legal Scrutiny—A Road Map for a Law School Policy

Slomanson, William R.

696 
Book Review
B e r k e l e y  J o u r n a l  o f  G e n d e r,  L a w  &  J u s t i c e ,  P ra c t i c a l  C i t a t i o n 
S y s t e m  ( 2 0 1 6 ) ,  p p .  6 ,  h t t p s : / / d r i v e . g o o g l e . c o m / f i l e / d / 0 B 5 _
Sa1FS7WzRaTliZVN3WHRxc1Y1THlCbUxRdXdaUm9oaUtN/view 
[https://perma.cc/3S2M-ZJQ4]
Reviewed by William R. Slomanson
Blue Book Rhapsody
There once was a book of Creation
Called A Uniform System of Citation;
With general rules for all of the schools,
It quickly caught on in the nation.1
Legal writers adrift in this nation
Trounced A Uniform System of Citation
As nothing but rules concocted by schools
To perpetuate self-fl agellation.
They arrogantly scorned all the toil,
While editors burned midnight oil
To yield a Thirteen and fi eld a Fourteen,
Yet neither of them was a “Hoyle.”2
Paginating the Twentieth edition,3
560 when brought to fruition,
With an Index of jive, which spans thirty-fi ve,
Leaves nothing to one’s intuition. 
1. William R. Slomanson, Book Review, 68 A.B.A.J. 735 (1982) (reviewing THE BLUEBOOK: A 
UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 13th ed. 1981)) (fi rst 
of nine verses).
2. William R. Slomanson, (Blue) Book Review, 42 J. LEGAL EDUC. 147 (1992) (reviewing THE 
BLUEBOOK: A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 15th 
ed. 1991)) (fi rst and second of nineteen verses, footnotes omitted). 
3. THE BLUEBOOK: A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 
20th ed. 2015) [hereinafter BLUE].
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 66, Number 3 (Spring 2017)
William R. Slomanson is Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor of Law at Thomas Jeff erson 
School of Law.
697
A voice from the now recent past 
Demurred with a prominent blast; 
He bid his adieu to the venerable Blue; 
He was horrifi ed, shocked, and aghast.4
Judge Posner’s supposed jeremiad5
Was digested and soundly applied;
Drafting at Berkeley trounced Blue as berserkly,
Yielding a competitor for changing the tide.6
“[I]nnovation, intersectional” the mission,7
They conjured a zeitgeist rendition;
Designed to replace the Hobgoblin disgrace
Of form over substance erudition. 
PCS8 doth no longer align
In a “narrow . . . [and] privilege[d]” confi ne;9
It opens the door to practitioners and more,
Giving voice for nonlawyers to shine.
4. Richard A. Posner, The Bluebook Blues, 120 YALE L. J. 850 (2011) (reviewing THE BLUEBOOK: 
A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 19th ed. 2010)). See 
also RICHARD A. POSNER, DIVERGENT PATHS: THE ACADEMY AND THE JUDICIARY 126–28 (2016).
5. Judge Posner’s ensuing book characterizes his earlier Yale article as “my jeremiad (fallen on 
deaf ears).” Id. at 101 n. 32.
6. P ra c t i c a l C i t a t i o n S y s t e m ( 2 0 1 6 ) , h t t p s : / / d r i v e . g o o g l e . c o m / f i l e / d / 0 B 5 _ S a 1
FS7WzRaTliZVN3WHRxc1Y1THlCbUxRdXdaUm9oaUtN/view [https://perma.cc/3S2M-ZJQ4] 
[hereinafter PCS].
7. Statement Regarding the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice’s Citation Practices, BERKELEY J. OF 
GENDER, L. & JUST. (Oct. 7, 2016), https://genderlawjustice.berkeley.edu/bglj-says-goodbye-
to-the-blue-book [https://perma.cc/Q7EJ-W4PG] [hereinafter Statement]. One hopes 
that—as suggested by the BJGL&J editors—both their explanatory Statement and their new 
citation manual have been placed on Permalink, or a comparable service for retaining this 
new citation system. See, e.g., Using Permalinks, WORDPRESS: CODEX, https://codex.wordpress.
org/Using_Permalinks [https://perma.cc/P92A-SJEY] (last visited Dec. 19, 2016). 
8. PCS, supra note 6. Note that this book review footnote citation format conforms with the 
Bluebook’s transformative mandate not to italicize commas when they are “an element of 
the sentence or citation in which they appear.” BLUE, supra note 3, Rule 2(f), at 69. The PCS, 
on the other hand, “expressly disregards the formatting of punctuation (i.e. whether the 
comma in a citation is italicized or not) since such formatting is irrelevant to the reader’s 
ability to fi nd the source . . . .” Only time will tell how the courts will resolve this far-reaching 
confl ict of laws. Other confl icts between BLUE and PCS include the PCS prohibited use o f 
signals such as supra, the use of small capitals, and abbreviated law journal names.
9. Statement, supra note 7.
Book Review: Practical Citation System
698 Journal of Legal Education
Consisting of only six pages, 
Less is more—a theme for the ages.
The length refreshing, the content a blessing,
Chucking Blue will now come in stages.
PCS now tenders fresh rules
Eschewed by only the fools; 
It covers the quirks of most standard works,
A blueprint with all basic tools. 
The vintage riposte from Rodell10
Long ago was hoping to quell 
Dire legal writing, that logic was fi ghting,
With Blue, it still rings a bell. 
So for years the tail’s wagged the dog,
Since Blue has thickened the fog.
But Practical Citation will capture the nation,
Since the Blue mouse that roared left a bog.11
10. Fred Rodell, Goodbye to Law Reviews, 23 VA. L. REV. 38 (1936). In Professor Rodell’s rampant 
view: “There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other 
is its content.” Id. at 38. But cf. Cass R. Sunstein, In Praise of Law Books and Law Reviews (and 
Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), 114 MICH. L. REV. 833 (2016). Per Professor Sunstein: “Rodell 
makes some excellent points . . . but he is smug, and he sneers, and he’s full of contempt. . . . 
Contempt is not the best thing to be full of, and in this case, it’s unjustifi ed. He disparages 
something that has real value.” Id. at 837.
11. PCS dares to conclude its opening manual segment with the bordering on blasphemous 
principle: “When in doubt err on the side of clarity . . . and simplifying format.” PCS, supra 
note 6.


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