I

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INTRODUCTION

Law, considered as a science, consists of certain principles or

doctrines. To have such a mastery of these as to be able to apply

them with constant facility and certainty to the ever-tangled

skein of human affairs, is what constitutes a true lawyer, and

hence to acquire that mastery should be the business of every

earnest student of law.^1

The school is not a neutral objective arena; it is an institution

which has the goal of changing people’s values, skills, and knowl-

edge bases. Yet some portions of the populations... bring with

them to school linguistic and cultural capital accumulated

through hundreds of thousands of occasions for practicing the

skills and espousing the values the schools transmit.^2

T

his introductory section discusses the overarching questions motivating this
study. It also provides the review of background concepts and literatures nec-
essary for understanding the basic model of language used throughout the book.
Put simply, this book is organized around two core questions:

* Is a common vision or language of law being taught to initiates across diverse

U.S. law school classrooms? (And if so, what is it?)

* What kinds of differences among classrooms, students, and professors seem to be

salient in creating any divergent refractions of a common vision?

Part II focuses on the first question (similarities among classrooms); Part III ex-
amines the second (differences). Part IV, along with other overall observations,
concludes that both in content and form, U.S. law school classrooms are per-
petuating a vision of law and human conflict that in effect erases certain key as-
pects of social experience. In sum, the language of U.S. law works to create an
erasure or cultural invisibility, as well as an amorality, that are problematic in a