Law, Language, and the Law School Classroom 13insights from multiple disciplines provides the foundation for the model of lan-
guage in social context used in this study. We begin by delineating the central
questions animating this project, and then proceed to locate these questions within
frameworks provided by previous scholarship.
Similarities and Differences
As noted in Chapter 1, this study focuses on Contracts classes in eight law schools
from across the country. Included among the law schools were some of the most
elite in the country and some with more local reputations, public and private, urban
and rural, small and large, and schools with night classes for part-time students.
The professors in the study also varied in background, philosophy, age, race, and
gender, as did the students. Coders taped and took notes on interactions for an
entire semester in these classes. To capture the initial stage of students’ introduc-
tion to legal approaches, we always observed during the first semester. The tapes
were then transcribed and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. I asked
two fundamental questions of the data we collected: What (if any) similarities are
there across the widely variable classrooms of this study? And what is the shape of
any differences among them?
A Shared Vision of Law?
In asking about similarities, we can assess whether there is a shared worldview or
cultural framework that cuts across the differing classrooms of this study. This is
an empirical way of approaching a question with which legal scholars and philoso-
phers have struggled mightily: Just what is “law”? How is it defined, how does it
work? As an anthropologist, I would rephrase this question to take account of his-
tory and location, not assuming that law is the same thing in all times and places,
or indeed that something we could call law is present everywhere.^1 And I would
also be aware of the fact that there are many vantages from which to answer this
question, even within one society.^2 Legal professionals are likely to view law differ-
ently than do laypeople, and there are also frequent divergences in vision among
professionals and among laypeople.^3 In this book, my focus is on one version of
the “expert” vision, the understanding of law imparted to students—initiates into
the legal profession in the United States.
The legal realist tradition and its modern cousin, the field of sociolegal stud-
ies, correctly insist that to achieve a meaningful understanding of legal processes,
we must examine the face of law on the ground, as it affects and is shaped by the
people it governs.^4 Scholars have often written of the difference between law “on
the books” and law “in action,” as if these were always opposed and distinct things.^5
And it is certainly true that written case law and legislation do little to capture the
overall shape of legal interventions in our lives. Yet I would argue that a full in-
quiry into law on the ground requires us to study those who translate and admin-
ister the law—to examine the views and writings of experts such as judges and
legislators.^6 If the formal frameworks of reasoning employed by lawyers and judges