Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T16:29:16.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Legal pedagogy and its discontents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2020

Richard Abel*
Affiliation:
Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

I taught torts and legal profession at six US law schools over the course of forty years (1969–2008). This paper describes my efforts to incorporate socio-legal studies and critical legal studies into my teaching and my reflections on how successful this was.

Type
Reflections
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This is the first of a series of ‘Reflections’ in which leading writers in the field of sociology of law will be asked to reflect on their experience of writing, teaching, researching or policy-making.

References

Abel, R (1979a) Socializing the legal profession: can redistributing lawyers’ services achieve social justice? Law & Policy Quarterly 1, 531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abel, R (1979b) The rise of professionalism. British Journal of Law and Society 6, 8298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abel, R (1980) The sociology of American lawyers: a bibliographic guide. Law & Policy Quarterly 2, 335391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abel, R (1981) Why do bar associations promulgate ethical rules? Texas Law Review 59, 639688.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1982a) A socialist approach to risk. Maryland Law Review 41, 695754.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1982b) Torts. In Kairys, D (ed.), The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique. New York: Pantheon, pp. 185200.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1987) The real tort crisis – too few claims. Ohio State Law Journal 48, 443467.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1990a) Evaluating evaluations: how should law schools judge teaching? Journal of Legal Education 40, 407465.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1990b) Torts. In Kairys, D (ed.) The Politics of Law (revised edn). New York: Pantheon, pp. 326349.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1997) Lawyers: A Critical Reader. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Abel, R (1998) Torts. In Kairys, D (ed.), The Politics of Law, 3rd edn. New York: Basic Books, pp. 445470.Google Scholar
Abel, R (2002) Judges write the darndest things: judicial mystification of limitations on tort liability. Texas Law Review 80, 15471575.Google Scholar
Abel, R (2006) General damages are incoherent, incalculable, incommensurable, and inegalitarian (but otherwise a great idea). DePaul Law Review 55, 253329.Google Scholar
Abel, R (2008) Lawyers in the Dock: Learning from Attorney Disciplinary Proceedings. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abel, R (2011) Lawyers on Trial: Understanding Ethical Misconduct. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berle, A (1933) Modern legal profession. Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 9, 340342.Google Scholar
Calabresi, G (1970) The Costs of Accidents. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Carlin, J (1962) Lawyers on Their Own: A Study of Individual Practitioners in Chicago. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Curtis, C (1952) The ethics of advocacy. Stanford Law Review 4, 323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubin, L (1985) What Went Wrong (video). Birmingham, MI: Weil Productions.Google Scholar
Engel, D (1984) The oven bird's song: insiders, outsiders, and personal injuries in an American community. Law & Society Review 18, 551582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enos, R, Fowler, A and Havasy, C (2017) The negative effect fallacy: a case study of incorrect statistical reasoning by federal courts. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 14, 618647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erlanger, H and Klegon, D (1978) Socialization effects of professional school: the law school experience and student orientations to public interest concerns. Law & Society Review 13, 1135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
France, A (1894) Le Lys Rouge. Paris: Calman-Lévy.Google Scholar
Franklin, M (1971) Tort Law and Alternatives: Cases and Materials. Mineola, NY: Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, M, Rabin, R and Green, M (2006) Tort Law and Alternatives, 8th edn.New York: Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Galanter, M (1986) The day after the litigation explosion. Maryland Law Review 46, 339.Google Scholar
Haltom, W and McCann, M (2004) Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, D et al. (1984) Compensation and Support for Illness and Injury. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hensler, D et al. (1991) Compensation for Accidental Injuries in the United States. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.Google Scholar
Hoffman, P (1973) Lions in the Street: The Inside Story of the Great Wall Street Law Firms. New York: Saturday Review Press.Google Scholar
Holmes, O (1881) The Common Law. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Horwitz, M (1977) The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, D (1970) How the law school fails: a polemic. Yale Journal of Law and Social Action 1, 7190.Google Scholar
Kennedy, F (1971) The whorehouse theory of law. In Lefcourt, R (ed.) Law Against the People. New York: Random House, pp. 8189.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, K (1938) The bar's troubles, and poultices – and cures? 5 Law & Contemporary Problems 5, 104134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, K (1867/2017) Capital (Vol. 1: A Critique of Political Economy). Digireads.Google Scholar
Moriarty, T (1975) A nation of willing victims. Psychology Today (April), 4446.Google Scholar
Nader, R (1970) Law schools and law firms. Minnesota Law Review 54, 493–96.Google Scholar
Pipkin, R (1979) Law school instruction in professional responsibility: a curricular paradox. American Bar Foundation Research Journal 1979, 247275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, R (1973) Economic Analysis of Law. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Saks, M (1992) Do we really know anything about the behavior of the tort litigation system – and why not? University of Pennsylvania Law Review 140, 11471292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, W (1978) The ideology of advocacy. Wisconsin Law Review 1978, 29144.Google Scholar
Smigel, E (1969) The Wall Street Lawyer: Professional Organization Man? New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, R (1919) Justice and the Poor. New York: Carnegie Foundation.Google Scholar
Stevens, R (1971) Two cheers for 1879: the American law school. In Fleming, D and Bailyn, B (eds), Law in American History (Perspectives in American History, Vol. 5). Cambridge, MA: Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, pp. 405548.Google Scholar
Veblen, T (1918) The Higher Learning in America. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Wasserstrom, R (1975) Lawyers as professionals: some moral issues. Human Rights 5, 124.Google Scholar
Wexler, S (1970) Practicing law for poor people. Yale Law Journal 79, 10491067.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zemans, F and Rosenblum, V (1981) The Making of a Public Profession. Chicago: American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar