58 Similarity
doctrinal concepts, derived from past cases, which structured the authority of the
text in a different way. Legal doctrines emerge from courts’ decisions on similar
issues over time, in a process by which legal precedents develop. For example, in
his classic essay on legal reasoning, Edward Levi traced the development of a legal
doctrine that held manufacturers liable for injuries caused by “inherently danger-
ous” objects.^36 The logic guiding the evolution of this doctrinal category, as Levi
demonstrates, was anything but clear at times; however, it certainly drew on the
language and reasoning of previous cases involving injuries caused by manufac-
tured items. Judgments as to which injuries, items, and situations could properly
be deemed analogous to one another are crucial to this process of doctrinal rea-
soning and development. Doctrinal categories provide conceptual presuppositions
that allow subsequent texts to speak authoritatively, as, for example, “On what
authority can the judge say this is a good defense?” The judge’s authority in this
case rests on correct deployment of the doctrinal categories, which themselves
derive their authority from their genealogy through previous cases perceived to be
in some way similar (and decided by courts properly situated in the hierarchy).
Once again, then, the technical vocabulary to which the professor directs stu-
dents’ attention involves reference to previous legal language: to the language of
earlier cases, distilled into doctrinal categories and concepts. Again, there is a prag-
matic reflexivity: legal language referring to previous linguistic contexts to achieve
authority. And again, this aspect of the text is conveyed to students using a similar
reflexivity: the language of the classroom referring to the language of the case, which
provides the context that gives it meaning.
Toulmin has used the term “warrant” to talk about the background informa-
tion that allows us to make assertions.^37 In this case, the professor is focusing stu-
dents’ attention on the pragmatic warrants that give legal texts their authority, and
is doing so using the pragmatic structure, rather than the semantic content, of class-
room speech.^38 This isometry may account for the pervasive sense that the Socratic
method is better suited to law school teaching than lecturing, despite studies that
show no appreciable difference in results.
The approach to text inculcated in the law school classroom, then, differs
considerably from that conveyed in lower-status reading classes. There, nonuptake
blocks students from narrative control so that the text remains language to be re-
peated or pronounced. In the law school classroom, uptake is part of a structure
designed to break down a straight semantic reading of texts, at the same time as it
undermines the norms of normal conversation.^39 Instead of approaching written
texts as stories and classroom exchange as a chance to tell these stories, students
are trained to focus on those texts in terms of layered legal authority. The levels of
authority in legal texts are indexed through the successful deployment of techni-
cal terms, which the students must identify through their readings—at the same
time as the students must themselves successfully deploy technical terms in a dis-
ciplined classroom discourse. The content of the texts—stories of human conflict
and pain, of moral dilemmas and social injustices—is subtly subjugated to the struc-
tures and strictures of law.
Thus, the ideology that is quietly conveyed here privileges levels of legal au-
thority in the deciphering of texts, rather than the emotional or moral force of the