In addition to law and language generally, this blog explores philosophy, translation, poetry (including my own poetry and translations), legal education reform, genealogy, rhetoric, politics, and other things that interest me from time to time. I consider all my poems and translations flawed works in progress, tweak them unpredictably, and consider the latest-posted versions the latest "final" forms. I'd enjoy others' thoughts on anything posted. © Harold Anthony Lloyd 2024
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Fantastic Cognitive Emotion & the Law Symposium Held at Wake Law 2/22/19
Many thanks to the thoughtful speakers and Wake Law Review students who made possible this engaging February 22, 2019 symposium on the inseparability of emotion and reason in legal and other reasoning. The symposium volume will be forthcoming. Read more about cognitive emotion and the law here.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Miscellaneous French Verse Translations
When translating verse, I think one should try to capture both the form (meter, line positions, rhyme scheme, etc.) and substance to the extent possible and to the extent not cumbersome* in the new language. "To the extent possible" can require much work that I think is often missing from much translation. I also think the original should be printed on the opposing page so the reader can judge the success for herself.
*Where end stopping or alexandrines, for example, seem cumbersome in English, I would think the original poet would want substitutes that distract less in English. Thus I've often used iambic pentameter in lieu of hexameter. I've also often avoided end stopping where that seemed a distraction (my translation of Phaedre for example).
Here are the English pages of some of my dabblings along these lines. I
think the Veraline & Du Bellay present especially hard challenges
and I keep tweaking......
I. Verlaine: MacIntyre claimed: “No one has ever translated, or can or
will translate [Chanson d'automne]; yet it offers the supreme challenge, the
shifting lure of the bright impossible.” Maybe MacIntyre didn’t try hard
enough?
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Making Good Sense: Pragmatism’s Mastery of Meaning, Truth, and Workable Rule of Law
Here is the abstract for my latest article forthcoming in the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy. In the article, I try to take a middle path between two types of error plaguing present times: "post-truthism" and formalism.
Abstract
The hermeneutic pragmatism explored in this article timely examines how “post-truth” claims over-estimate semantic freedoms while at the same time underestimating semantic and pre-semantic restraints. Such pragmatism also timely examines how formalists err by committing the reverse errors. Drawing on insights from James, Peirce, Putnam, Rorty, Gadamer, Derrida, and others, such hermeneutic pragmatism explores (1) the necessary role of both internal and objective experience in meaning, (2) the resulting instrumental nature of concepts required to deal with such experience, (3) the related need for workability to apply to the “the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted,” (4) the inherent role of morality and other norms in measuring such workability, (5) the semantic as well as experiential nature of our workable realities, (6) the semantic freedoms involved in constructing, framing, and retaining our workable realities and concepts, and (6) the semantic, pre-semantic, and other restraints on constructing, framing, and retaining our workable realities and concepts.
Such hermeneutic pragmatism also introduces Eunomia, a real-world alternative to Dworkin’s superhuman judge Hercules. Named after the Greek goddess of good order, the human Eunomia represents the reasonable judge excellently versed in (among other things) legal theory, legal practice, linguistics, and philosophy of language. Additionally, in its appendices, this article surveys the pragmatic restraints of “implementives” and provides a detailed overview of pragmatic “workability” restraints for both law and fact.
In addition to countering formalist error, such hermeneutic pragmatism thus timely counters troubling “post-truth” claims in certain segments of government and society. For example, The Washington Post tells us that President Trump is “known for trafficking in mistruths and even outright lies;” that “The president often seeks to paint a self-serving and self-affirming alternate reality for himself and his supporters;” that, through May 31, 2018; “Trump had made 3,251 false or misleading claims in 497 days--an average of 6.5 such claims per day of his presidency;” and that Donald Trump, Jr. has posted poorly-doctored images making “his father’s Gallup presidential approval rating look [ten points] higher than it actually is” while claiming “I guess there is a magic wand to make things happen and @realdonaldtrump seems to have it.” Additionally, the President’s attorney Rudy Giuliani has expressly claimed that “Truth isn’t truth.” Competent and ethical lawyers must of course reject such mendacity.
("Sense" in the title of this article means not only “meaning conveyed or intended” but also “capacity for effective application of the powers of the mind as a basis for action or response.” See Sense, MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY (11th ed. 2014) “Workable” has the broad meaning discussed in Sections II, IV, and Appendix C of the Article.)
Labels:
Charles Sanders Peirce,
Deconstruction,
Derrida,
Formalism,
gadamer,
Habermas,
hermeneutics,
Hilary Putnam,
Interpretation,
Meaning,
Politics,
Postmodernism,
Pragmatism,
Richard Rorty,
Trump,
Truth,
William James
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Addition to Strings of Thought 5-19-2018
Hermeneutics
To Gadamer
Though eye must squint, eye must explore the bird
Who plays at the horizon of the word,
Whose far tints flash, far notes lag as it hops
Beyond and back from where the language stops.
For the entire "Strings of Thought" as it currently stands, see here.
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Why Legal Writing Is "Doctrinal" and More Importantly Profound
It is high time that we end the disparate treatment of legal writing professors and the use of such disparaging labels as "non-doctrinal" for the profound and essential subject matters which they teach. It is also high time that we reject the absurd Langdellian notion that practice taints scholarship. I discuss these points in more detail here.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Addition to "Strings of Thought" (2/7/18)
2/7/18 A legislative bill or other proposal isn’t simply
a string of words on a page. Instead, a legislative bill or other proposal involves
concepts (the signified) to which words (the signifiers) refer with varying
degrees of precision. Legislators debate
the concepts signified and the signifiers as signifying such concepts. Justice Scalia therefore oversimplifies how
language works when he claims that “the only thing one can say for sure was
agreed to by both houses and the President (on signing the bill) is the text of
the statute.” (Reading Law, p. 376) Justice Scalia oversimplifies here
because any such text was adopted as part of a greater whole, as signifiers of
concepts involved in the bill. For example,
a statute reading “All cars must drive on the write side of interstate roads”
adopted by both houses of Congress and signed by the President no doubt likely
means “All cars must drive on the right
side of interstate roads.” It’s hard to believe that both houses and the
President agreed on “write side” instead of “right side” of the road. I at
least cannot “say for sure” that they did. Justice Scalia concedes the same by
acknowledging what he considers “the rare case of an obvious scrivener’s
error.” (Reading Law, p. 57) In the real world, of course, obvious
scrivener’s errors are hardly rare.
The entire text of "Strings of Thought" can be found here.
Labels:
Concept,
Interpretation,
Jurisprudence,
Language,
Law,
Legislation,
Legislative Intent,
Meaning,
Original Meaning,
Originalism,
Pragmatics,
Semiotics,
Signifier,
Textualism,
Words
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Addition to "Strings of Thought" (1/30/18)
Legislative
Intent
1/30/18 Legislative
“intent” lies in legislatures’ speech
acts and not legislators’ speech acts. That is, legislative “intent” is the speaker
meaning of legislatures not legislators—confusing the two is a category
mistake. For example, when the legislature adopts a rule requiring drivers to
drive on the right side of the road, the legislature has performed a directive
speech act adopting a rule to some end or purpose (such as changing driving
patterns to enhance road safety). When
the legislature censures someone, it has performed an expressive speech act
condemning someone for some end or purpose (such as discouraging future bad
behavior on the part of public officials).
The different purposes (and the plans involved in such purposes) distinguish
the different types of speech acts. Recognizing this distinction between legislature and legislator speech acts avoids pseudo-quandaries such as “How can we
ever aggregate the subjective intent of countless legislators to determine
legislative intent?” or “How do we include the intent of a legislator who votes
for a bill for unrelated reasons?” Instead, we ask: “What is the objective bill
or proposal (and the concomitant purpose or plan or both) properly adopted by
the legislature?” We also ask: “What are
the objective concepts involved?” while acknowledging such concepts can have
yet-to-be explored threads and extensions.
1/30/18 A legislature
typically speaks best when it adopts a bill or other proposal (and any
concomitant purpose or plan) after reasonable debate by legislators. Although individual legislators’ speaker meaning in such debates can be highly relevant
evidence of the legislature’s speaker
meaning, legislators’ speech acts are
not legislatures’ speech acts.
The entire post of "Strings of Thought" can be found here.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Addition to "Strings of Thought" (1/21/18)
Speaker
Meaning
1/21/18 “Original” speaker meaning includes the
unexplored. Imagine I buy a netted
device I categorize as “my hammock” before I unbox and see it. On the next day, I unbox “my hammock,” count
its strings, and note their makeup and weave. On the third day, I tie “my
hammock” between two trees. I broadly gauge
its new shape when tied into the world. On the fourth day, I refine “my hammock’s”
new shape: it contradictorily resembles
both a canoe and a crescent moon. On the fifth day, I wonder whether “my hammock”
now qualifies as a bed and tentatively conclude that it does. On the sixth day,
I lie down in “my hammock” and see interesting new views from its vantage
point. On the seventh day, I rest with no hammock thoughts in my head. The “original” meaning of “my hammock” thus
casts a wide and variable net not captured from day one. Instead, day by day
through day six, I have obtained fuller and fuller understandings of “my
hammock” including how it intersects with (and provides vantage points to) the
world to which it is tied. Thus, any “original
concept” signified by “my hammock” is
larger than any “original conception”
(or first-day conception) of something
boxed and unseen, is larger than any second-day conception adding counted strings, their makeup, and their weave, is
larger than any third-day conception
of the hammock as tied, and so on. Furthermore,
for those seeking speaker meaning, any “original concept” and any preceding daily conceptions don’t sleep the seventh day.
The entire post of "Strings of Thought" can be found here.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Strings of Thoughts
Recognizing I’ll never have time to put in
finished prose or verse all the things I’d like to explore, I’m starting some
strings of thoughts unfinished as of the dates entered below. I’d enjoy hearing others’ responses to any of
the strings.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
The Inherent Inseparability of Doctrine & Skills
A quick screen shot of my brief bit in Linda Edwards' fantastic new book The Doctrine Skills Divide: Legal Education's Self-Inflicted Wound. I think the title speaks for itself, and the book should be required reading for everyone interested in reforming legal education today.
Labels:
Case Method,
Category,
Charles Sanders Peirce,
Classical Rhetoric,
Descartes,
Experience,
Framing,
Humanities,
Jurisprudence,
Langdell,
Law,
Law School,
Legal Writing,
Meaning,
Practice,
Theory
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Speaker Meaning and the Interpretation and Construction of Executive Orders
Here is an abstract of my latest article posted on SSRN:
ABSTRACT:
ABSTRACT:
This Article explores the interpretation and construction of executive orders using as examples President Trump’s two executive orders captioned “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” (the “Two Executive Orders”).
President Trump issued the Two Executive Orders in the context of (among other things) Candidate Trump’s statements such as: “Islam hates us,” and “[W]e can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred.” President Trump subsequently provided further context including his tweet about the second of his Two Executive Orders: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call [the second of the Two Executive Orders] whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”
President Trump issued the Two Executive Orders in the context of (among other things) Candidate Trump’s statements such as: “Islam hates us,” and “[W]e can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred.” President Trump subsequently provided further context including his tweet about the second of his Two Executive Orders: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call [the second of the Two Executive Orders] whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”
Labels:
Context,
Executive Orders,
Immigration,
Interpretation,
Islam,
Language,
Law,
Legislation,
Legislative Intent,
Originalism,
Politics,
Pragmatics,
President Trump,
Religion,
Semiotics,
Speaker Meaning,
Supreme Court
Monday, July 10, 2017
President Trump & Word Association
As a lover of words, I am of course interested in the following Quinnipiac poll which asked responders "What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?" The list provides endless fodder for analysis of speaker meaning. The top two answers were "idiot" and "incompetent." Did the speakers mean some subtle difference between those terms? What about any meant difference between those two terms and such other terms as "unqualified," "ignorant," "stupid," and "clown"? The third most frequent response is "liar." Was "liar" meant in a different sense from "dishonest" or "con-man" which pop up later in the list? Is "leader" (fourth on the list) a complement or is it a factual statement such as "president" (sixth on the list)? What about "trying"? Does that mean the man is attempting to succeed (my guess but it's only a guess) or that he is "causing strain, hardship, or distress" (American Heritage College Dictionary 4th ed.)? I also wonder how Originalists like Neil Gorsuch would interpret and parse each word in this list. Reasonable contemporaneous readers can of course draw wildly different conclusions about the meanings of these words.
Monday, June 5, 2017
Embracing Life: Shakespeare and "Existentialism"
Sartre claims that existence
precedes “essence,” that “being-in-itself” is thrust upon us, that we have our
subsequent brief existence to create our identities or “essences” (our “beings-for-itself”).[1]
The
great American pragmatist William James also notes that we are thrust into a
swirl of experience which we try to predict and organize with concepts and
theories as our “tools.”[2]
Many years before James and Sartre, Shakespeare’s
Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Jaques, and other diverse characters also opine on one’s
brief moments thrust upon life’s “stage.”
Lear’s naked babe, for example, cries when tossed upon that “stage.” Interestingly, the infant has feeling and tears
for coming to a “great stage of fools”[3]
even though it presumably lacks language and concepts such as “stage” or
“fool.” Shakespeare’s babe suggests a
pre-conceptual link to the swirl of experience—a feeling link which James’s concepts
and theories for predicting and navigating experience could then supplement and
build upon. (For those interested in feeling and emotional connections to the
world, I have explored the subject further in my Cognitive Emotion and the Law .)
Lear’s babe also gives us moral as
well as epistemic insight. The infant “comes to” rather than “brings”
foolishness to a “great stage of fools.”
Not choosing to navigate this swirl of experience, the babe can’t be a
fool for just being born--any foolishness it may display must come after mere
birth itself. As Emily Dickinson also notes,
mortals born into the swirl aren’t given an initial “Skipper’s” or “Buccaneer’s”
choice in the matter:
Labels:
Afterlife,
Death,
Emily Dickinson,
Emotion,
Existentialism,
Fame,
Hamlet,
King Lear,
Life,
Macbeth,
Nabokov,
Philosophy,
Pragmatism,
Richard Rorty,
Sartre,
Shakespeare,
William James
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
A Sonnet on the Jerusalem Cross
For me, the Jerusalem Cross is endlessly inspiring: Christ before Paul; the Kingdom that’s within;
the wisdom of the Buddha; William Blake and all he tried to do, say, draw,
and paint; the semiotics of the endless signified and signifier; the freedom and choice in how we
frame; the crosses we bare and bear; the number 5
that I somehow took as “my” number when I was a child. Such crosses cross beyond mere prose:
The Jerusalem
Cross
Her references are kingdoms built within,
Are centers of what is, are plots of peace,
Are emanations of Blake’s Albions,
Are heavenly vistas of Jerusalems,
Are heavenly vistas of Jerusalems,
Are fresh imaginations testing worlds,
Are fourfold noble truths, are eight crossed paths
That frame a centered cross that wisdom bares
To study all the crosses that it bears.
Her signifiers are two crossing lines,
Four smaller pairs, too, eight paths framing round
Just four right angles centering sixteen more
That also form at most a single square--
Or four or five depending on the count.†
*****
†(The cross's lines are personal as well
In ways they interweave both "H" and "L,"
In ways they cover Everyone with "E"
Should some find some initials tough to see.)
*****
†(The cross's lines are personal as well
In ways they interweave both "H" and "L,"
In ways they cover Everyone with "E"
Should some find some initials tough to see.)
Saturday, April 29, 2017
"Nature Hath Framed Strange Fellows" William Shakespeare and Natural Law
A. Introduction
Natural law theorists might turn to The History of Troilus and Cressida to start building their case. They might begin with Ulysses’
lofty outline of the “natural” order:
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order,
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the influences of evil planets
And posts, like the commandment of a king . . . .[1]
Such
theorists might then use Ulysses’ further stirring words to blend such “natural
physical order” with a “natural order” in law and morality as well:
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy. The bounded
waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right; or rather right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.[2]
As far as it goes, it is hard to imagine a more eloquent case for natural
law than this.
Labels:
Arden,
Framing,
Hamlet,
Interpretation,
Intolerance,
Jurisprudence,
Language,
Legal Theory,
Measure for Measure,
Merchant of Venice,
Morality,
Natural Law,
Philosophy,
Prospero,
Religion,
Shakespeare,
Tempest,
Ulysses
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Shakespeare and Legal Positivism
Despite
his limited formal education, Shakespeare’s works display a great deal of legal
knowledge.[1] As a part of Shakespeare’s vast imaginative
universe, his storylines and characters help us (among countless other things) to
analyze the command form of legal positivism, a form of legal positivism
holding that laws are commands of sovereigns backed by threats of punishment.
Various scenarios in the plays help us see how such an approach cannot succeed. As I plan to show in subsequent blogs, Shakespeare
also: (a) beautifully lays out arguments for natural law only to demolish them;
(b) centuries before Holmes formulated his prediction theory of law (the theory
that the law is a set of predictions as to how the courts will act in certain
circumstances), Shakespeare penned plays that help us see how such theory
fails; and (c) Shakespeare otherwise gives us insightful bits and pieces from
which we might begin generating a workable jurisprudence complying with the
semiotics of law and its inherent restraints.[2] In this
first of four planned blogs (all four of which draw from my longer article Let’s Skill
All the Lawyers), I’ll briefly explore the command theory form of legal
positivism using insights from Shakespeare.
Labels:
Command,
Divine Right of Kings,
Falstaff,
God,
H.L.A. Hart,
Hamlet,
Henry IV,
Jurisprudence,
King John,
King Lear,
Law,
Legal Positivism,
Macbeth,
Natural Law,
Philosophy,
Richard II,
Shakespeare,
Sovereign,
Threat
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Gorsuch and Originalism: Some Critiques from Logic, Scripture, and Art
(This blog combines, expands, and end-notes two prior blogs)
Labels:
Art,
Auden,
Balkin,
Bruegel,
Constitution,
Ekphrasis,
Gorsuch,
Icarus,
Interpretation,
Language,
Law,
Legal Theory,
Old Testament,
Originalism,
Poetry,
Pragmatics,
Religion,
Scalia,
Supreme Court,
Ten Commandments
Monday, February 27, 2017
Neil Gorsuch? Originalism and the Ten Commandments
Current Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch claims that judges should “apply
the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text,
structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of
the events in question would have understood the law to be ....”
On its face, this is at best an odd claim. Laws are generally forward
looking in their desire to govern future behavior. And even if we could
always focus back to determine legal meaning, why would we want to
disconnect meaning from ongoing life in such a way? Why, for example,
should the absence of email in George Washington’s day mean our modern
use of email isn’t covered by our modern notions of “speech”? Excluding
email from “speech” today would be silly and we have refined “speech”
to include email in both law and in life. Of course, if we refine
meaning for “speech” and “email,” why shouldn’t we do the same for other
things in other contexts as they change with time? It’s hard to see
how Originalism’s odd backwardness isn’t fatal from the outset.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Parsing Babble in North Carolina's HB-2 and Calling Out the Need for Immediate Repeal
Read here my parsing of ambiguous bathroom provisions in North Carolina's HB-2 and the immediate need to repeal the flawed statute in light of further imminent threatened boycotts of the state.
Labels:
Child Labor,
Corruption,
Discrimination,
Ethics,
Gender,
HB 2,
Interpretation,
Intolerance,
Law,
LGBT,
Meaning,
Minimum Wage,
North Carolina,
Pat McCrory,
Poltical Corruption,
Republican Party,
Workers Rights
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Rethinking The Elect
The Elect
Take
that long-suffering slave: if she
instead
Were master,
could descent dissent and shed
Vile
arrogance slaves shirk and in its stead
Renounce
the life that life inherited?
Take
that starved, broken pauper: if instead
Of life
so harsh he often would be dead
He had a fuller purse, was fuller fed
Would
he have known to offer paupers bread?
Take
that queer soul who's “different”: if
instead
He'd
turned out “normal” would he think a dead
Queer's
better than a live one, too, and spread
Intolerance
majorities have bred?
Is
this not Grace? Spared from such tests
as these,
Has
God not favored his minorities?
In a time of Trump when I fear many devalue diversity and many more do not see the frequent grace in minority, struggle, and lack of material wealth, I highlight this poem from Charms and Knots. I also highlight the poem for a time when many no longer appreciate the endless powers of formalist verse. Apart from the inherent power of sonnet form, twelve same-rhymed lines followed by two fresh rhymes actually participate in the grace and rarity of difference (indexical expression of the point to use Peirce's terminology).
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Ekphrasis & Prose: Sonnet Translations of Poe & Hawthorne
Shadow After Poe
We noticed there was pestilence about.
We played instead of passive victim an
Aggressive agent capable of plan
And execution. In, we locked it out,
A simple action, really, which we sealed
With weighty velvet curtains drawn across
An iron door bolted tight. “Our gain, Hell’s loss!”
We toasted with good bourbon and were steeled.
“God helps who helps himself,” we boasted till
We saw a shadow by a comrade still
And cold throughout the reverie. It hid
As quick within the heavy draperies. Did
Drink fool? No. Oh, no fancy has composed
Such vast lost voices in a single ghost.
Aggressive agent capable of plan
And execution. In, we locked it out,
A simple action, really, which we sealed
With weighty velvet curtains drawn across
An iron door bolted tight. “Our gain, Hell’s loss!”
We toasted with good bourbon and were steeled.
“God helps who helps himself,” we boasted till
We saw a shadow by a comrade still
And cold throughout the reverie. It hid
As quick within the heavy draperies. Did
Drink fool? No. Oh, no fancy has composed
Such vast lost voices in a single ghost.
I've also wondered the same about individual passages in longer works. Here, for example, is a bit of Hawthorne's The House of The Seven Gables set to sonnet form:
Labels:
Communication,
Edgar Alan Poe,
Ekphrasis,
Framing,
Interpretation,
Language,
Meaning,
Metaphor,
Narrative,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Poetry,
Semiotics,
Sign,
Sonnet,
Translation,
Words
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Originalism and the Fall of Icarus
Well, here we go
again. With Neil Gorsuch as the current Supreme Court nominee, once more we
hear praises of “originalism” as a judicial interpretive philosophy. As Gorsuch
puts it, judges should “apply the law as it is, focusing
backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide
what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have
understood the law to be . . . .” Since law generally looks forward
to govern future and not past behavior, and since context drives meaning in
much more complex ways than Gorsuch’s words suggest, I’m amazed that people take
this backward-looking and overly-simplistic philosophy seriously. I’ve written at length about the problems
with such an approach but now also wonder if an old painting might
more quickly dispatch such error.
Labels:
Art,
Auden,
Bruegel,
Category,
Context,
Ekphrasis,
Ethics,
Framing,
Gorsuch,
Icarus,
Icon,
Interpretation,
Language,
Law,
Meaning,
Originalism,
Scalia,
Semiotics,
Symbol,
Textualism
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Two Performance Review Mantras (“Mercy and Truth Are Met Together; Righteousness & Peace Have Kissed”)
I. Mantra For Myself
I smile if I have shown a light.
I smile if I if I have aimed at right.
I smile if I have done my best.
Imperfect, I’ve no other test.
II. Mantra For Others
I smile if they have shown a light.
I smile if they have aimed at right.
I smile if they have done their best.
Imperfect, they’ve no other test.
Labels:
Bible,
Buddha,
Christ,
Duty,
Emotion,
Ethics,
Forgiveness,
Golden Rule,
Grace,
Humility,
Imperfection,
Jesus,
Judgment,
Light,
Mantra,
Mercy,
Performance Review,
Poetry,
Truth,
William Blake
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Wake Forest Law Review Publishes "Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform & The Lawyer's Craft"
The Wake Forest Law Review has published its 2015 Legal Education Reform Symposium volume entitled Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform & The Lawyer's Craft. The volume can be purchased here and I hope it will make a positive difference in legal education reform.
My introductory article in the volume highlights longstanding, substantial damage Christopher Columbus Langdell has inflicted on law schools and legal education. Much of this damage stems from three of Langdell’s wrong and counterintuitive notions: (1) law is a science of principles and doctrines known with certainty and primarily traced through case law; (2) studying redacted appellate cases is “much the shortest and best, if not the only way” of learning such law; and (3) despite Langdell’s own roughly fifteen years of practice experience, practice experience taints one’s ability to teach law. I briefly highlight problems with, and harms resulting from, each of these wrong notions. Among other things, I briefly explore: (A) contradictions, oversights, and wrong assumptions in Langdell’s views; (B) how the very meanings of “theory” and “practice” reject Langdell; (C) how the necessary role of experience in meaning itself rejects Langdell; (D) parallels between Langdell and unworkable Cartesian dualism; and (E) how the necessary role of framing in the law rejects Langdell. I also briefly survey some remedies suggested by reason, experience, common sense, and modern cognitive psychology. These include rejecting the redacted appellate case method as a primary mode of instruction, recognizing the necessary fusion of theory and practice, recognizing the need for practice experience in law professors, recognizing the embodied nature of meaning and the resulting role of practice and simulation in good legal education, embracing the humanities (including classical rhetoric) in legal education, abandoning meaningless distinctions such as distinctions between “doctrinal” and “non-doctrinal” courses, and abandoning “caste” systems demeaning those with law practice experience and elevating those who lack such necessary experience. My introduction can be found here.
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