1,720,973 research outputs found
A Writer’s Board and a Student-Run Writing Clinic: Making the Writing Community Visible at Law Schools
Get PDFIn this article the author explains institutional programs she has developed in response to a common problem, students’ frustrations with the limits of a law school’s legal writing program. The author proposes establishing a Writers’ Board, where members of the law school community who care most about legal research and writing training can work together to create opportunities for students to learn more. The Writers’ Board’s primary project is a Writing Clinic that offers diverse ways to improve legal research and writing on campus. Despite problems that are likely to arise when creating a Writers’ Board and Clinic, the author concludes that these projects will not only improve legal research and writing training, but also raise students’ confidence in the writing program and in themselves, and draw positive attention to a law school’s legal writing program
Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching and Scholarship
Get PDFThis is the transcript of Mercer Law Review’s Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship. In this Symposium Linda Edwards, among other panelists, discussed the work that goes into producing scholarship
Introduction to Essays on Technology and Changes in Legal Research
No full textTo celebrate publishing the first digital volume of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, the Board of Editors invited a distinguished group of librarians, textbook authors and research scholars to contribute essays addressing the changes that new electronic technology has brought to legal research, libraries, publishing and teaching legal research. They responded with a group of essays that are insightful, entertaining, and above all, personal
Further Thoughts on Better Writing
Get PDFAs writing teachers, we frequently witness the mystery of how writing and re-writing clarifies thinking. We teach our students to let the writing process show them the gaps in their reasoning. As student edit, they learn that paring away the superfluous allows us to see the line and structure of the argument. When a section or sentence “won’t write,” it is often because we are trying to ignore a flaw in our understanding. Form is related to content. The attempt to simplify out message teaches us what is it we have to say
Joe Williams and Discourse Communities-The Journal of Legal Writing Institute and Community Service
Get PDFProfessor Pollman writes a tribute to The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute
Double Jeopardy and Nonmember Indians in Indian Country
Get PDFThe ambivalence of the federal government to the sovereignty of native tribes is ordinarily a quiet fact of life in this country. Now, the federal circuits have disturbed that quiet by rendering opposing rulings on the question whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars successive tribal/federal prosecution of nonmember Indians in Indian Country. The Ninth Circuit has held the Double Jeopardy Clause does not present a bar to successive tribal/federal prosecutions. In contrast, the Eighth Circuit has held that the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits subsequent prosecution because the source of the tribe\u27s jurisdiction, if it has jurisdictional power, is the same as the source of the federal courts\u27. The circuit split has far reaching practical consequences, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari on the issue in United States v. Lara. This article gathers and analyzes various strands of law that contribute to the analysis of double jeopardy and nonmember Indians in Indian Country
IRLAFARC! A Survey on the Language of Legal Writing
Get PDFLanguage, like law, is a living thing. It grows and changes. It both reflects and shapes the communities that use it. The language of the community of legal writing professors demonstrates this process. Legal writing professors, who stand at the heart of an emerging discipline in the legal academy, are creating new terms, or neologisms, as they struggle to articulate principles of legal analysis, organizational paradigms conventional to legal writing, and other legal writing concepts. This new vocabulary can be both beneficial and detrimental. It can be beneficial because it expands the substance of an emerging discipline. It also can be harmful, however, because not everyone understands the new terms, and that lack of understanding can hinder communication about legal writing
The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Examples and Model-Based Learning in the Law School Classroom
Get PDFResponding to a changing landscape of law practice, law schools are searching for ways to structure the classroom experience and broader curriculum to promote more efficient and better learning outcomes. Although imitation, modeling, and the use of examples have become pre-eminent features of modern legal education, these pedagogies have remained largely unexamined. This article shows the power of teaching with examples in both the traditional and legal writing classroom, as well as how skillfully to limit the use of such pedagogy for maximum effect. Specifically, this article applies the findings of cognitive load research and composition theory to show that using worked examples is a superior pedagogy for novice learners, but that as students progress, they learn less from examples and need more opportunities for problem-solving. The article further explores the implications of this insight for curricular design and reform
Note, Maynard v. Cartwright: Channeling Arizona\u27s Use of The Heinous, Cruel Or Depraved Aggravating Circumstance to Impose the Death Penalty
Get PDF“Death is qualitatively different from other punishments that can be imposed by the state.” Recognition of this disturbing conclusion led to the heightened scrutiny demonstrated in a series of United States Supreme Court rulings beginning with Furman v. Georgia, which set forth the constitutionally acceptable range of discretion that a judge or jury may use in imposing the death penalty. States have attempted to bring their statutes within the Furman v. Georgia range by articulating aggravating circumstances that warrant the imposition of the death penalty. One controversial circumstance that many states employ permits a capital sentence where the offense is characterized as “heinous,” “cruel,” or “depraved.” In Maynard v. Cartwright (Maynard II), the United States Supreme Court\u27s latest ruling applying heightened scrutiny, the Court held that the Oklahoma Supreme Court\u27s application of its state statute violated the eighth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution. The Court focused on Oklahoma\u27s “heinous” aggravating circumstance which provided the basis for the death penalty.
Arizona\u27s death penalty statute also contains an aggravating circumstance provision allowing the death penalty when a murder is “heinous, cruel, or depraved.” The Arizona courts hold that this statute may be read in the disjunctive. This Note examines the history underlying the guidelines the United States Supreme Court has established for constitutionally permissible applications of “heinous, cruel, or depraved” aggravating circumstance provisions. The Arizona death penalty scheme and the accompanying attempts to limit application of the “heinous” aggravating circumstance provision are also be analyzed. The implications of Maynard II for Arizona\u27s capital sentencing scheme is examined by comparing the interpretation of the heinous provisions in Oklahoma and Arizona. Finally, this Note advocates that Arizona narrow the use of its aggravating circumstance provision to comply with the mandate to channel the discretion of the sentencer
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