Law, Language, and the Law School Classroom 27civility and overly competitive attitudes, and that it leaves students unprepared for
the realities of practice. Johnson, for example, notes that as law schools adopted
the Socratic method, there was a shift from the model of lawyers as moral decision
makers to an image of law as a technical field of expertise.^89 Zemans and Rosenblum
similarly note the move away from moral considerations involved in Langdellian
scientism.^90 Critical legal theorists like Duncan Kennedy take this insight one step
further, insisting that the shift to technical expertise itself embodied a morality,
but in a negative sense.^91 In a somewhat different vein, James B. White character-
izes current law school training, with its emphasis on “doctrine in a vacuum,” as a
failure, and proposes instead a more egalitarian and creative training.^92 Implicit in
White’s critique is also the notion of functional, as well as moral, failure: that the
Socratic method and accompanying approaches to law school education, when
losing the interest and destroying the confidence of law students, fail to effectively
impart even the more abstract conceptual aspects of legal training.^93 Another long-
standing criticism has been that law schools turn out lawyers not equipped to prac-
tice law.^94 This criticism, though it did not end the use of Socratic training, did
contribute to a partially successful movement for clinical education in law schools.^95
Today, some of the most innovative ideas about improving law teaching can be
found in the scholarship of clinical and legal writing law professors.^96
Specific critiques of the Socratic method have emerged from psychological,
sociological, and educational research. For example, psychiatrist Alan Stone used
a combination of personal observation and interviewing to assess the advantages
of this teaching method.^97 Although he concluded that there were some advan-
tages for “channeling group emotions into structured academic inquiry,” Stone
also expressed concern about the negative effects of the Socratic method on stu-
dents’ interpersonal relations and sense of self-esteem, a theme echoed in current
studies of psychological distress among law students.^98 Studies have also highlighted
the limits of Socratic teaching in reaching students with diverse learning styles,
personalities, and backgrounds.^99 Susan Daicoff connects the shift to more imper-
sonal reasoning encouraged by legal training with lawyer dissatisfaction, lowered
public trust in the legal profession, and declining professionalism.^100 In addition,
Taunya Banks, Lani Guinier, and others have indicated ways that Socratic teach-
ing might operate to differentially exclude women and students of color, results
given support by an ABA report on the subject (see discussion in Chapter 7).^101
In contrast, supporters of the Socratic method maintain that the method bears
a special relationship with the style of reasoning required by lawyers, that it is effi-
cient in large classrooms, that it stimulates active involvement on the part of stu-
dents, that it prepares students for the adversarial debates and quick retorts required
of practicing attorneys, that it is not necessarily more dominating and manipula-
tive than the methods used in clinical teaching, and that it conveys at once the
guiding principles and indeterminacy of the law in a way that lectures could not.^102
Elizabeth Garrett, for example, highlights the utility of Socratic teaching as a method
for fostering active learning and critical thinking.^103 Along with Stropus and other
defenders of Socratic teaching, she distinguishes the Socratic method itself from
unduly harsh or uncivil classroom dynamics and suggests ways to encourage a less
intimidating atmosphere in the law school classroom.^104 On the other hand, Vitiello