Lloyd on Langdell and the Eclipse of Character @LloydEsq @WFULawSchool @PittLawReview

Harold Anthony Lloyd, Wake Forest University School of Law, is publishing Langdell and the Eclipse of Character in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Christopher Columbus Langdell has not only damaged the study of law with his three follies: his legal formalism, his redacted appellate case method, and his notion that legal practice taints the professor of law. His three follies have also impaired character development critical for legal actors. This Article focuses on four such critical character traits and virtues impaired by Langdell: (i) imagination, (ii) empathy, (ii) balance, and (iv) integrity. Readers wishing to explore virtues beyond those addressed in this Article might note my earlier examination of the role of virtue in good legal analysis found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4092075. This Article also calls out potential character issues with two professor types inspired by Langdell: (v) the hazing professor who confuses intellectual rigor with intense discomfort and who uses the redacted appellate case method to inflict such discomfort at the expense of better pedagogy, and (vi) the professor without substantial practice experience who is substantially paid to teach what she has never practiced. Agreeing with C.S. Pierce that the best argument is a cable rather than a chain, I end by weaving in a Langdell villanelle (from my Apology Box: https://haroldanthonylloyd.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4.html) to supplement the prose. I hope such a cable can help lift Langdell and his follies from legal education and the world.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Harold Anthony Lloyd On Reforming Legal Education

Harold Anthony Lloyd, Wake Forest University School of Law, is publishing Raising the Bar, Razing Langdell in the Wake Forest Law Review. Here is the abstract.

As an introduction to the Wake Forest Law Review’s symposium edition on “Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform and the Lawyer’s Craft,” this article 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” learning such law, and (3) despite Langdell’s own roughly fifteen years of practice experience, practice experience taints one’s ability to teach law. This article highlights problems with, and harms resulting from, each of these wrong notions. Among other things, this article explores: (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. This article also briefly surveys 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.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.