0195182863.pdf

On Becoming a Legal Person 129

Prof.: In Michigan. Where are we in the case?

Student: We’re in Wisconsin.

Prof.: We’re in Wisconsin. Does that raise any problems?

Notice how voice and footing work in this passage. The first “we,” introduced by
the student, asserts a shared position based on a common predicament as readers
of a text that gives only limited information. The second “we,” used by the profes-
sor, moves into the shared reader role, accepting the footing and adopting the voice
proffered in the previous turn. The third “we” (also from the professor) goes fur-
ther, to a position defined by the legal institutional setting from which the written
case text was generated (asking the student the location of the court that wrote the
opinion: “Where are we in the case?”). Note what use of “we” accomplishes here:

1. It again unites professor and student, as readers and also as legal professionals
   who read the text for certain (contextual, pragmatic) technical framing
   information, of which the location and kind of court issuing the opinion count
   among the more important.


2. It places the student and professor inthe case, as it were, uniting them now
   with the authoring court, creating a momentary equation that allows the
   student to imagine himself as an authoritative legal source. (Note also that it
   elides the case as written and the case as enacted in court, “in the case” referring
   to both; a wonderful example of how salient and vivid written contexts are in
   legal epistemology.)


3. It foregrounds the location of the court, as opposed, for example, to other
   places that are loci for the story unfolding in the case.

In focusing on the location of the court, the professor’s questions highlight a

potential problem: the laws in Michigan might vary from those in Wisconsin.
Additionally, where several locales are involved, difficulties can arise over whether
a particular court has authority or jurisdiction to hear the case. Legal training trans-

forms geographic and sociopolitical locations into “jurisdictions,” where the cru-
cial borders are defined by the boundaries of legislatures’ and courts’ authority.
Just as characterization in law school classrooms produced a kind of abstract
individual, the reliance on geography just described results in an oddly acontextual
context. In one sense, we are given spatial coordinates for the narrative that is
unfolding. But the context thereby configured is understood in typified or abstract
dimensions, in tropes of jurisdiction or economically delineated geography (farms,
homes, businesses). This is even more the case when we move into a landscape
defined purely in terms of legal argument.

The Landscape of Argument and Discourse Frames

We have already seen many examples of the most ubiquitous form of contextualized
identity found in these classrooms: professors invite students to play the roles of
legal professionals, of lawyers and judges, and to make legally relevant arguments.
Also, at times, arguments that would actually be made by lawyers are put into the
mouths of parties or litigants. The most salient aspect of identity in these scenarios,