pedagogical innovation with his more general quest to establish the study of law as a true
science:
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 cer-
tainty 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. (Langdell, preface, vi–vii)In this view, the data of legal science were to be found, for the most part, in legal opinions,
which were to be studied in the way that zoologists and botanists study animals and plants
so that the data can be properly classified. Langdell viewed his brand of Socratic method
teaching as a superior way of teaching students this classification process. Ironically, al-
though his substantive vision of legal science has long since been discredited, Landgell’s
closely allied innovation in legal pedagogy has remained the signal method for law teach-
ing through current times. The debate in the legal academy, reviewed in Chapter 2, con-
tinues to rage. Popular representations of law school in the United States, in books and
film, have made a harsh variety of Socratic method teaching synonymous with law school
pedagogy in the public eye. See, e.g., The Paper Chase; Turow, One L.
- Transcript 4.1 presents a curious combination of messages. On the surface, the
professor invokes Kingsfield (an intimidating professor on whose class the film The Paper
Chase focused) to reassure this year’s class that he has no desire to intimidate them. On
the other hand, his use of directly reported speech to stand in Kingsfield’s shoes (or speak
in his voice), even if only humorously and for a moment, reminds them vividly of the
authoritative position he occupies while also indexing (if in caricature) an image of the
distinctive, combative legal discourse they are about to enter. - Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction, 109.
- D. Kennedy, Legal Education,3.
- J. Gee, “The Narrativization of Experience,” 24; see discussion in Chapter 2.
- Data for this discussion were drawn from one of the two classrooms used in the
pilot study that I performed prior to conducting the full-blown study, because it is the class
that conforms most closely to the canonical Socratic style. The class was held in a law school
that would be categorized as an elite/prestige law school, by a quite senior white male pro-
fessor, himself trained at an elite law school. - See discussion of Van Gennep and Turner in Chapter 2.
- See Mertz, “Consensus and Dissent,” for a more in-depth discussion.
- Note in Transcript 4.2 the use of “Well” by the professor to mark disagreement
and to signal his ensuing cue to the student that she needs to try again. This gives her an
opportunity to repair her previous, off-the-mark response, and also provides a brief delay
in which she can rethink her reply. When the student mimics the professor with her own
“Well,” we can understand it as also marking a brief delay, at the same time as it provides
a form of coherence with the professor’s previous utterance. In Chapter 7, we track issues
of coherence, repair, reframing, and discourse markers in more detail; in Chapters 6 and
7 we examine further the dialogic form found in law school classrooms. As we will see,
small words like “well,” “now,” “all right,” and “wait” are frequently carrying heavy dis-
cursive loads in these classrooms. - Compare this excerpt with Transcript 4.7, in which a professor similarly inter-
rupts a student who attempts to begin her retelling of the conflict story in this case—fairly
predictably, given more usual storytelling norms—by introducing one of the main char-
acters. Again the student is refocused on legal frames for her narrative.
244 Notes to Pages 50–54