118 Similarity
classrooms in this study, professors covered similar cases with no mention what-
ever of ethnicity, stereotypes, or prejudice. At the same time, we can see that even
when these kinds of factors are mentioned, there is no sustained or systematic
analysis of them.
Later in the same class, as the professor turns to another case, there is another
allusion to ethnicity, this time simply as humorous punctuation:
Transcript 6.15 [5/10/13]Prof.: Here we are, by the way, with another interesting ethnic group. Swedish
Evangelical Lutheran. What do we know about them? The answer:
absolutely nothing! But they want a church, apparently. Go on.The class then moves on to a systematic consideration of legal issues: whether the
builder’s failure to construct a church to meet certain specifications constituted a
breach of the contract, justifying the church’s decision not to pay the builder;
whether defects in construction provided the church with an adequate defense
against having to pay the builder damages. The cotextual reference to the previous
discussion about Greeks (“another interesting ethnic group”) underlines the spo-
radic and seemingly haphazard effect of social context on legal results.
This pattern can be found even when questions of race or gender are raised as
directly pertinent to legal results, whether by professors or students. For example,
one case studied in many of the classrooms involved an interracial boxing match
that gave rise to a contractual dispute. Notice how the impact of race is at once
acknowledged and peripheralized:
Transcript 6.16 [3/12/8]Prof.: I think, it was one of the first occasions in which there was gonna be an
interracial fight, and, therefore, one of the reasons clearly not articulated,
clearly not arguable to the court, would be some racism that would enter
in- ah some concern on the part of the court that ah maybe people
wouldn’t pay, that they would boycott such a fight or maybe that
they would- maybe they would pay more. Racism is not the kind of thing
you would argue in the court, but it may have been a factor certainly in
the court’s refusing to let the issue go to the jury.After acknowledging the possible impact of racial identity and prejudice, the pro-
fessor proceeded to focus the students’ attention on the “real” legal problem: the
“damage issues arising under Dempsey,” which were discussed as a distinct, and
more central, matter. As we saw in Chapter 4, a different professor also mentioned
race at the beginning of the discussion of Dempsey but dismissed its importance in
the development of the case:
Transcript 6.17 [5/8/14]Prof.: So we’re talking about a time, thirty years later. Thirty years after the
fighters’ prime, thirty years after their prime, they meet. It’s unlikely
they’re going to fight thirty years later. I mean it’s unlikely that they’ll move
very easily. [[class laughter]] And the case of modern boxers, it’s the last-
they can’t even talk, let alone fight, [[class laughter]] at this point in their