The language of law school : learning to "think like a lawyer" / Elizabeth Mertz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mertz, Elizabeth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law--Study and teaching--United States.

Law.

Law--Study and teaching.

United States.

Law--United States--Methodology.

Methodology.

Physical Description:

xvii, 308 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford [England] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Anyone who has attended law school knows that it entails an important intellectual transformation, frequently referred to as "learning to think like a lawyer." This process, which subtly induces students to think and talk in radically new and different ways about conflicts, is largely accomplished in first-year law school classes where professors inculcate new attitudes toward spoken and written language. Elizabeth Mertz's book is the first study to truly delve into that language to reveal the complexities of how this process takes place. She concludes that the transformation law students undergo is as much a shift in how they approach language-how they talk and read and write-as in how they "think."

Mertz bases her linguistic study on tape recordings and in-class observations from first-year Contracts courses in eight different law schools, as well as on interviews with students and professors at those schools. She documents how professors employ the Socratic method, along with newer variants of legal pedagogy, to shift students away from moral and emotional frames for thinking about conflict, and instead toward frameworks of legal authority. This move away from moral and social grounding is crucial, she argues, because it represents an underlying worldview at the core not just of law education but also, for better or worse, of the entire U.S. legal system. This foundation provides our legal system with a very effective source of legitimacy and a powerful means of processing conflict, but it also fails to deal systematically with aspects of fairness and social justice. The latter part of her study shows how differences in race and gender makeup among law students and professors can subtly alter this process.

Written within the tradition of anthropological linguistics, Mertz's work-the first to study law school in this sort of detail-will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers interested in the intersection of law, language, and society: sociolinguists; anthropologists; sociologists; feminist, race, and social theorists; and members of the legal profession interested in the dynamics of law school.

Contents:

1 Entering the World of U.S. Law 3

2 Law, Language, and the Law School Classroom 12

3 Study Design, Methodology, and Profile 31

II Similarity: legal Epistemology

4 Learning to Read Like a Lawyer: Text, Context, and Linguistic Ideology 43

5 Epistemology and Teaching Styles: Different Forms, Same Message 84

6 On Becoming a Legal Person: Identity and the Social Context of Legal Epistemology 97

III Difference: Social Structure in Legal Pedagogy

7 Professorial Style in Context 141

8 Student Participation and Social Difference: Race, Gender, Status, and Context in Law School Classes 174

IV Conclusion: Reading, Talking, and Thinking Like a Lawyer

9 Legal Language and American Law: Authority, Morality, and Linguistic Ideology 207.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-300) and index.

ISBN:

0195182863

9780195182866

019518310X

9780195183108

OCLC:

65521635