Whatever the overall trajectory, Socratic method teaching remains a hot topic for law pro-
fessors and students, as evidenced by ongoing discussions in professional publications, in
materials for law students, on law school web sites, and in law professor blogs. See, e.g., Leiter,
“The ‘Socratic Method’ ”; Beldar, “Method to the Socratic Madness.”
- See Teich, “Research on American Law Teaching,” 170. For some, it is important
that the professor call on students selected for Socratic exchanges without warning. Vitiello,
“Professor Kingsfield,” 965. Definitions vary widely (see discussion in Chapter 7). - See Dickinson, “Legal Rules”; see also Arnold, Symbols of Government; Robinson,
Law and the Lawyers; Frank, “Why Not a Clinical Lawyer-School?”; Frank, “A Plea for
Lawyer Schools” and “A Disturbing Look at the Law Schools”; Pound, “The Scope and
Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence.” - Under the aegis of “critical” scholarship, I include critical race theory, critical legal
studies, feminist legal theory, and some extensions of poststructuralist and queer theory
to legal arenas. See, e.g., Crenshaw, “Foreword”; Hantzis, “Kingsfield and Kennedy”; D.
Kennedy,Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy; Menkel-Meadow, “Feminist
Legal Theory”; Ramachandran, “Re-Reading Difference”; Rhode, “Missing Questions”;
Unger,Law in Modern Society. - See Friedland, “How We Teach,” 28; Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, 179; Menkel-
Meadow, “What’s Missing,” 600; Stevens, Law School, 156–158; but see Shaffer and
Redmount,Lawyers, Law Students, and People, 168. As Menkel-Meadow points out, law
teachers today use Socratic method teaching for quite different substantive ends than
originally envisioned by Langdell, “some pointing to the political underpinnings of the
rules, others to the efficiencies of the rules, others to the competing arguments that can
be made ‘on either side’ of the rule, anticipating its change in other factual circum-
stances.” Menkel-Meadow, “What’s Missing,” 600. This observation is supported by the
findings of our study, which track Socratic-type structures through quite diverse topics
and even discourse formats. - Johnson, Schooled Lawyers, xvii.
- Zemans and Rosenblum, Making of a Public Profession, 204–206. This observa-
tion finds support in a number of studies documenting a move away from idealism and
moral concerns during law school. See, e.g., Erlanger et al., “Law Student Idealism”; Sto-
ver,Making It and Breaking It. Janoff found that in one law school, female law students
begin to suppress a relational orientation after the first year, moving more to impersonal
and abstract rights approaches. Janoff, “The Influence of Legal Education.” - D. Kennedy, Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy, 17–20; see also
Shaffer, “Moral Implications,” 190. - J. B. White, “Doctrine in a Vacuum,” 35. In his recent book, From Expectation to
Experience, 1–7, 14–15, J. B. White maintains this fundamental perspective but also paints
a somewhat more complex view of the situation: no class ever lives up to our highest ex-
pectations, and in reality law school teaching does not map neatly onto a stereotype of
“doctrine in a vacuum,” although the image does capture some important “forces” at work
in legal education. - This is a theme echoed throughout much of the literature criticizing Socratic
method teaching. See, e.g., Bryden, “What Do Law Students Learn?”; Landman, “Anent
the Case Method”; Llewellyn, “The Current Crisis in Legal Education”; Patterson, “The
Case Method.” - See Chester and Alumbaugh, “Functionalizing First-Year Legal Education”;
Dallimore, “The Socratic Method”; Frank, “Why Not a Clinical Lawyer-School?”;
Vukowich, “The Lack of Practical Training in Law Schools.”
236 Notes to Pages 26–27