The Wire Goes To Law School

The announcement that the University of Pittsburgh's law school is offering a course based on the hit TV show The Wire  is just the latest in a series of examples of the importance of this show and others to college curricula. The earliest examples that I've been able to find of pedagogical use of The Wire, in particular, are those at Middlebury, Harvard, Duke, and others, (documented in an article by Drake Bennett for Slate) at least as early as 2010, but perhaps earlier. John Swansburg updated that article a week later, giving other examples dating to 2008. So it's not clear to me whose course was first.

Nevertheless, the interest in using The Wire to probe important societal questions seems fairly established in undergraduate curricula as early as 2008. PBS did a short update last year. Finally, a law school has joined the debate. As we see, the University of Pittsburgh Law School now is offering such a course, though I suspect that criminal law profs, and perhaps profs in other areas, such as evidence and criminal procedure, have been using episodes from the show in classes for some time.

More on Wire-related courses in the selective bibliography below.

Teaching The Wire (Drexel)

Teaching The Wire (Middlebury College)

The Wire Is on the Syllabus in a St. Olaf Class

Mental Floss offers this article on college courses based on television shows.  Note UC Berkeley's course using Judge Judy.

Law, Pop Culture, the Final Exam, and the Internet

London School of Economics (LSE) prof Andrew Murray created a final exam problem that included all kinds of references to the hit HBO comedy Silicon Valley, and because students may keep the exam questions after they turn in their answers, one (anonymous) student posted the question online. Joy in online Mudville! The thing has gone viral, and Professor Murray is a source of amazement to the rest of us academics who can only wish students would find our questions half as entertaining, especially on final exams.

More here from Legal Cheek. 

Cusack on the "F Word" in Pedagogy and Higher Learning

Carmen M. Cusack, Nova Southeastern University, is publishing Use of the Word 'Fuck' in Pedagogy and Higher Learning in volume 8 of the Journal of Law & Social Deviance (2014). Here is the abstract.

George Carlin famously stated that “fuck” is “perhaps one of the most interesting words in the English language today. In English, ‘fuck’ falls into many grammatical categories. With all these multipurpose applications, how can anyone be offended when you use the word?” Discussing “fuck” as a fascinating component of grammar certainly makes the word “fuck” seem like it belongs in academia. This Article endeavors to analyze students’ complex opinions about use of the word “fuck” in American pedagogy and higher learning. Section II analyzes First Amendment case law and use of the word in educational and societal contexts. Section III discusses some Sociology students’ opinions about the use of the word “fuck” in pedagogy and higher learning. Their perspectives about the use of the word include positive, negative, and neutral feelings and perceptions. Ultimately, students felt positively about the use of the word, in general, and felt that free speech protected its use at their public university. However, many students cautioned that context was important to maintaining a safe learning environment, avoiding offense, and appropriately expressing ideas. They also suggested several contexts in which use of the word “fuck” would be inappropriate. Section IV discusses how students’ opinions may be relevant to educators’ decision to include the word “fuck” in pedagogy, and also considers legal and social standards that limit such speech. Students’ opinions about propriety may be important for understanding Constitutional jurisprudence and speech limits in pedagogy because limits on speech are often defined by the words’ offensiveness.

Download the text of the article from SSRN at the link.

Legal Research and Doctrinal Analysis In a Legal Studies Program

Vincent Kazmierski, Carleton University Department of Law, has published How Much 'Law' in Legal Studies? Approaches to Teaching Legal Research and Doctrinal Analysis in a Legal Studies Program at 29 Canadian Journal of Law and Society/Revue Canadienne Droit et Société (2013). Here is the abstract.

This article addresses the teaching of legal research methods and doctrinal analysis within a legal studies program. I argue that learning about legal research and doctrinal analysis is an important element of legal education outside professional law schools. I start by considering the ongoing debate concerning the role of legal education both inside and outside professional law schools. I then describe the way in which the research methods courses offered by the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University attempt to reconcile the tension between “law” and legal studies. In particular, I focus on how the second-year research methods course introduces students to “traditional” legal research and doctrinal analysis within a legal studies context by deploying a number of pedagogical strategies. In so doing, the course provides students with an important foundation that allows them to embrace the multiple roles of legal education outside professional law schools.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Teaching Administrative Law In the First Year Curriculum

Kevin M. Stack, Vanderbilt University School of Law, has published Lessons from the Turn of the Twentieth Century for First-Year Courses on Legislation and Regulation at 65 Journal of Legal Education 28 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay — part of a special journal issue on Legislation and Regulation and Regulatory State courses as core elements of the law school curriculum — approaches the debate over adopting these courses by looking back to the controversy stirred by teaching administrative law in law schools at the beginning of the twentieth century. This essay argues that sources of resistance to administrative law at that time not only help to explain the slow pace of adoption of “Leg-Reg” and “Reg-State” courses today, but also inform what material these new courses should cover. At the turn of the century, both commitment to the case method as the exclusive pedagogy for law teaching and jurisprudential principles that understood courts to be the privileged sources of law resulted in early administrative law courses being normalized within the case method, excluding the internal law and decisionmaking of administrative agencies from their coverage. Based on the premise that law students should confront the primary sources of law in our current regulatory legal system, first-year Leg-Reg and Reg-State courses should not replicate the traditional, exclusive focus on judicial decisions. Rather, these new courses are the right occasion to introduce regulatory and congressional materials as primary sources. That coverage choice, moreover, provides preparation for an upper-level administrative law course focused on how courts review agency action, while minimizing duplication in coverage. Even more importantly, treatment of nonjudicial primary sources in these new courses helps to bring the image of law conveyed to first year students closer to the true dimensions of our legal order.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Teaching Decedents' Estates With Popular Culture

Camille M. Davison, Charlotte School of Law, is publishing Problems, Music, and Popular Culture: How I Teach Theory and Practice in Decedents’ Estates to Our Next Generation of Lawyers in volume 28 of the Quinnipiac Probate Law Journal (2015). Here is the abstract.

In this essay, I discuss my approach to teaching Decedents’ Estates. I hope to inspire each professor who reads this article to find his or her authentic self in the classroom and use it to motivate students to find their passion in law school and beyond. I also share my approach to show the various ways to engage and assess students. The methods that I outline may be adjusted to fit any course -- law school or otherwise. At my institution, Charlotte School of Law, the Decedents’ Estates course is a required upper level course. My approach is to motivate students and inspire active learning and deep thinking in a large classroom. Although I have an assigned casebook, I supplement it with additional materials. By blending problems, music, and popular culture with the traditional cold-call Socratic method, I am able to engage different types of learners. While I would love for each of my students to be as passionate as I am about the subject of Estates and Trusts, my goal is not so far-fetched. Like any other law professor, I want them to understand how to identify legal issues and how to apply the law to various fact patterns in an organized way. Additionally, I want them to understand the importance of the subject for both legal and practical purposes because this is an area where many of them might actually find work. I strive to demonstrate my passion for the subject area *395 because it is the passionate teacher who “motivate[s] students to take their courses more seriously” and “inspire[s] them to explore the subject matter further outside of class.” I try to find a healthy balance between teaching the students to “think like lawyers” and having them “do like lawyers.” Since I cannot teach them everything that they will encounter in practice, I use some of my time to help them transfer what they know to novel situations that they may encounter in practice. My students are not only prepared for the bar examination, they are also prepared to use the knowledge both personally and professionally. In this article, I outline the approaches that I use to reach large numbers of students and encourage active learning. I use visual aids, music, problems, and simulated legal activities to “show” rather than “tell” the classroom. My approach promotes rigor, but not fear. I attempt to make cold calling fun and I encourage active learning through simulated exercises and the use of popular culture references in the fact patterns. The students become team players in the classroom when I engage them with relevant stories from newspaper headlines or have them perform oral arguments using the lyrics of a song to identify legal concepts. Active participation helps students achieve “content mastery,” “higher-level thinking skills,” “professional skills,” and “[p]ositive attitude.” As Denise Knight states, “[f]ew instructors would quibble with the notion that promoting active participation helps students to think critically and to argue more effectively.” Part I of the essay reminds law professors that they are educators who teach law and Part II discusses the design of my course.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Star Trek: TNG As a Teaching Tool For First Year Courses

Andrew E. Taslitz, American University College of Law, Okianer Christian Dark, Howard University School of Law, and Atiba R. Ellis, West Virginia University College of Law, have published The Star Trek Enrichment Series: An Exploration in Teaching and Learning in volume 58 of the Howard Law Journal (2015). Here is the abstract.

This short essay, a part of the Howard Law Journal’s symposium in honor of the contributions of the late Professor Andrew E. Taslitz, discusses the authors’ experiences teaching the Star Trek Enrichment Series (“the Series”) at the Howard University School of Law. The Series was a six-session, one semester, non-credit course designed to creatively use Star Trek as a teaching tool in the legal academy, with particular attention to the needs of first-year students. This essay discusses our aims for the Series. It then situates the Series (and this essay) within the literature on the use of Star Trek as a tool for post-secondary teaching. Finally it reflects on the specific contributions of our dear colleague Andrew Taslitz to the Series. We designed the Series to reinforce students’ understanding of doctrine, to improve students’ understanding of jurisprudence, and to draw larger connections between the law, culture, and society. We posit that this innovation, spurred by Professor Taslitz and combining all our talents, is an important and substantial contribution to the practice and the literature on teaching and learning.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

True (Legal) Grit

Emily Zimmerman, Drexel University School of Law, and Leah Brogan, Drexel University, are publishing Grit and Legal Education in the Pace Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Although research indicates that grit predicts successful performance in a variety of contexts, grit is underexplored in the context of legal education. We investigated the relationship between grit and law school grade point average (GPA) among recent law school graduates. Contrary to expectations, a statistically significant correlation did not emerge between grit and law school GPA. However, average grit scores of women and men did significantly differ, with women reporting higher overall grit scores than men. Female and male participants’ law school GPAs did not significantly differ. This article discusses our research project and the questions regarding legal education that our findings raise. We also identify areas for further research regarding grit, legal education, and law practice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Teaching Law With Popular Culture

I'm still looking for a few more profs to participate in a book of essays on teaching the law school curriculum using popular culture (film, tv, graphic novels, comics, music, other materials).  Right now we have about a dozen essays lined up from contributors from the U.S., Canada, and France. If you teach in the first year curriculum and use pop culture, or teach bar courses using pop culture, please consider participating. If you teach undergraduate courses or a "law and" or law course in a graduate school, that's great, too. If you aren't interested, but know colleagues who might be, please feel free to forward this message to them.

Please send indications of interest to christine.corcos at law.lsu.edu.

Thanks.

Updating Socrates for the 21st Century Law Classroom

Stephen E. Henderson and Joseph T. Thai, both of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, are publishing Teaching Criminal Procedure: Why Socrates Would Use YouTube in the St. Louis University Law Journal. Here is the abstract.

In this invited contribution to the Law Journal’s annual teaching volume, we pay some homage to the great philosopher whose spirit allegedly guides our classrooms, but in service of two concrete goals. One, we employ dialogue to describe the “nuts and bolts” of teaching criminal procedure, most of which are equally relevant to any doctrinal law school course (including course description, office hours, seating charts and attendance, class decorum and recording, student participation, laptops, textbooks, class preparation and presentation, and exams). Two, we explain the benefits of using multimedia in the classroom, including a few of the many modules found on our Crimprof Multipedia service. We organize its benefits into four “h’s” (humor, humanization, headlines, and hypotheticals), and we give several examples of each for a topic that pervades criminal procedure: racial (in)justice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

"The Wire" In Law School Courses

Andrea Dennis, University of Georgia Law School, has published Teaching The Wire: Crime, Evidence and Kids at 64 Journal of Legal Education 111 (2014). Here is the abstract.

I have a confession: I have only watched Season 1 of The Wire, and it has been many years since I did that. Thus, both my knowledge and pedagogical use of the show are limited. What explanation can I offer for my failings? I am a Maryland native with family who resides in Baltimore City, or Charm City as it is affectionately called. I worked for several years as an assistant federal public defender in Baltimore City. Over time, I have seen the city evolve, and I have seen it chew up and spit out many good people and some not so good people. So, in the past, I told students who asked whether I had ever seen The Wire: “Why should I watch a fictional version of what I (painfully) experienced as reality?” Although it took many years after the series ended, I did eventually break down and watch Season 1. In doing so, I discovered that the show is an ideal source for exploration of issues arising in three courses I teach. To date, I have used portions of Season 1 as platforms for assessing students’ comprehension of the materials in these courses.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law-Inspired Haiku From Some Future Law and Poetry Scholars at Emory School of Law

As a followup to a post about Supreme Court Haiku and the current ABA-sponsored Supreme Court Haiku Contest for Law Students (open until November 15), I've invited Professor Julie Seaman of the Emory School of Law to present a selection of the haiku created by some of her constitutional law, evidence, and free speech students. I think they're a clever and talented group, and their poems have pith. I like pith.

A few weeks ago, and seemingly out of the blue, legal haikus were suddenly everywhere.  A former student slipped a flyer under my door announcing a Supreme Court haiku contest for law students, sponsored by the American Bar Association.  A sticky note attached to the flyer said, “I thought you’d like to share this with your classes!  Apparently the ABA shares your love of legal haiku.”  A few days later, someone on the conlawprofs listserv shared a link to the Supreme Court Haiku website (www.supremecourthaiku.com), a remarkably clever and delightful collection of which I’d thus far been unaware. 

Why did my student give me the flyer?  Because last semester, after trying my hand at legal haikus on a Facebook dare, I announced to my con law class that they could win free passes for writing haikus about the reading assignments.  Before each class, I would choose my favorite submission and post it on the powerpoint slides for the class; its author would be entitled to an extra free pass to be used as he or she wished during the semester.

The contest was a big hit with the students.  Some students were quite prolific.  Many of the haikus were funny and creative.  I continued the call for haikus this fall in evidence and free speech.  Several students have told me that boiling the cases or rules down to seventeen syllables helps them learn the material – imagine: actual pedagogical value!  But even if the exercise is pedagogically irrelevant, it sure is fun to read the submissions.  Here are some highlights: 

DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services

Oh poor little Josh

State said they would care for him

No prison no help

Colin Peterson

Buck v. Bell

Can Carrie have kids?

She encumbers the state's funds!

She had due process.

Josh Karr

Troxel v. Granville

Child can’t see grandma

Mom has the right to deny

the visitation

Zoya Kovalenko

Cruzan v. Director, MO Dept of Health

Nancy is brain-dead

Her parents grieve, with no choice

But to watch her lie

Ashleigh McClure

NYC Transit Auth. v. Beazer

On that methadone

TA says I can’t work here

Upheld . . . unemployed

Stephanie Grossinger

Railway Express Agcy v. New York

It is a health risk,

To have car advertisements.

Deal with it, locals!

Rebecca Sussman

Korematsu v. United States

Refusing Orders?

Not So Fast, Korematsu.

Jail Time for You, Sir.

Caroline Geiser

Tiers of scrutiny

Judiciary

defers, but not for suspect

classifications.

Jordan Kragten

Craig v. Boren

So now my girlfriend

Can’t buy us three-two’s either?

Equality bites.

Mike McClain

United States v. Virginia

Stonewall is glaring

Shenandoah is playing

RAH Virginia Mil!

Rebecca Sussman

Skinner v. Oklahoma

Embezzlement: theft,

very similar but one

sterilizes you.

Alison Murphy

Moral turpitude

Cannot deprive criminals

Of life’s greatest gift

Meg McNulty

Watts v. US

Watts threatened the Chief,

But such clear hyperbole

Is protected speech.

Rebecca Hall

New York v. Ferber

If porn depicts kids,

value is de minimus.

The statute survives.

Joe Bearden

Trial of Sir Walter Raleigh

Raleigh’s ghost lingers . . .

“What matter how the head lie,

So the heart be right?”

Rebecca Sussman

Rule 804(a)

Forgetful? Stubborn?

Sick? Privileged? Dead? Then you are...

Unavailable.

Graham Burkhalter

Admissions Doctrine

Wait! Statements I make

are not considered hearsay?

I’m done talking now.

Josh Karr

I will sit silent

If asked if I read today

Tacit Admission

Brad Verona

Frye Test

Frye test rests on

these Elitists assumptions. 

Jurors can be smart!

Rebecca Sussman

The creativity bled over into other student communications.  One day the air conditioning was not working in the classroom.  After class, this message (from student Chris Roth) was in my inbox:

It is so damn warm

Please turn on the A/C now

Because it is hot

Another day I received this in an email before class (from student Ned Dutton):

I’m leaving early,

But please don’t be offended.

It’s an interview.

One day I canceled a reading assignment and received this (from student Rebecca Sussman, whom I must say has discovered a genuine gift for haiku):

A sigh of relief, 

Gonna ignore that reading.

Hello, sweet Netflix!

Ms. Sussman also apologized for an absence this way:

The class glared at me!

Rude, loud coughing wouldn't end!

I hate bronchitis.

Leading up to the review session, student Caroline Geiser sent this:

7 more classes

and then we have exams?!? Shit. 

Jesus take the wheel.

And finally, on the final (from student Jordan Kragten):

Constitutional

law was tough, but Professor

Seaman was great.  Thanks!

Popular Culture In University Teaching

From the Chronicle of Higher Education's Tweed Blog, professors who use popular culture in their teaching.

Socrates

Ah, the Socratic Method, pedagogical tool beloved of law students. NOT. Angus Kennedy examines some new books devoted to the life and legacy of Socrates here, who is supposed to have annoyed those around him with that device so much that they told him to begone permanently. Well, he did some other things that annoyed his neighbors too. Notes Mr. Kennedy, "In Plato’s Meno, Socrates offends a man called Anytus by suggesting that even great men such as Themistocles and Thucydides were not capable of teaching their sons to be good. Anytus warns him to be careful, that he is ‘too ready to speak evil of men’. It was Anytus who brought the prosecution against Socrates in 399 BC, on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, which led to Socrates’ execution."

Matriculate At Lost U: Low Tuition, Lots of Relevance, High Fun Factor

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus Blog has this piece about Lost University, a project of the folks over at ABC's Lost, which links the show's content to, well, the real world. Real class materials include Bluray discs of the show, and you won't get any spoilers. Rats. First semester offerings include a course on time travel by a physics prof at USC, philosophy from other USC profs, and hieroglyphics from a UCLA professor.

Here's more from the Los Angeles Times.

Nicholas Warner, who teaches the physics course, told the Chronicle,
“There used to be huge disconnect (sic) between watching television shows and academic investigation. Anything that provides channels to follow up questions is a wonderful thing.”

Now, Professor Warner is right--building bridges between the two cultures is indeed a wonderful thing. But I think academics have been building those bridges for a while now. College courses (and graduate school courses) integrating popular culture and everything else, including law, have been around for a while now, as have books about tv shows and films in which academics study the impact of popular culture (think about all those books about the meaning of Star Trek). I think the "disconnect" vanished into a black hole some time ago. What's different about this enterprise (ha!) is that it's a joint project between the show and academia.

The Use of Law and Literature

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has published "Law, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Copia: A Response to Skeptics." Here is the abstract.

Recently, the law and literature (L&L) enterprise has been "reassessed" by a variety of scholars, whose opinions fall loosely into two camps. Some assert that L&L serves a necessary function in legal scholarship and education and should be preserved. Others, such as Jane B. Baron, see L&L as a flawed enterprise that is probably worth preserving, but not in its current incarnation, and not without recognizing its theoretical and practical limitations. In this essay I focus on the purposes and consequences of L&L for legal pedagogy. In order to discover the benefits of L&L, we must ask whether L&L is appropriate for legal education, and why. What I propose is that studying literary texts - fictional, dramatic, cinematic, or poetic works, of the high or low variety - in relation to and alongside of law, can benefit some of our students very much. Baron asserts that L&L discredits law as a field of study by claiming that we can only learn about human nature, compassion, empathy, or other humanistic quality crucial to competent lawyering or judging, by reading literature. This claim treats law "as a largely empty domain composed mainly of rules, a barren realm of technocratic doctrinal manipulation." Although Baron does not say so explicitly, she has expressed a pedagogical concern. The argument she critiques sets up an antagonistic dichotomy: it claims that we learn different and better things by studying literature than by studying law. Proponents of the dichotomy seek to prove that studying L&L is appropriate in legal education. I argue here that the best approach to L&L is an expansive and generous one, an approach that does not rely upon the denigration of law to prove the appropriateness of literature to legal studies. In discussing the benefits of L&L to legal pedagogy, I suggest that L&L, and indeed other interdisciplinary areas, are useful to and appropriate for legal pedagogy because they provide a variety of heuristics, or learning tools. These heuristics enable our various law students to find paths to legal knowledge that works best for them. This concept of multifarious methods derives from the rhetorical copia, as outlined in particular by Erasmus in the sixteenth century. In Part I, I build upon Baron's critiques of current trends in L&L as a framework to review the antagonistic dichotomy of L&L discourse that privileges literature on one hand and denigrates law and traditional legal studies on the other. In Part II, I reframe this dichotomy in a way that is constructive, returning value to traditional legal texts. In Part III, I use the theory of rhetorical copia to show that L&L is best thought of as one of many methods available to legal pedagogy, a strong supplement to traditional doctrinal and skills courses.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Teaching Law and Literature: Various Approaches Across the Curriculum

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Literary Evidence and Legal Aesthetics, in Teaching Literature and Law (Austin Sara, Matthew Anderson & Cathrine Frank eds., NY: MLA, 2010)(MLA Approaches To Teaching Series). Here is the abstract.

This short essay considers the different ways in which law professors and English professors teach courses in Law and Literature -- particularly the differences in the course materials and the analytic approaches used in understanding those materials. Courses taught on law faculties generally include fewer readings drawn from case law and legal theory. On the other hand, courses taught in English departments are more likely to emphasize similarities between the legal readings and works of fiction or drama. I discuss some of the disciplinary habits that make it difficult for faculty members in each area to come to terms with materials taken from another discipline, but I end by arguing that these barriers are not insurmountable and can even be addressed, to some extent, by focusing on analytical habits already available in the home discipline.

Download the essay from SSRN here.