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I think one benefit of not using the homeless, single mothers, etc. as examples is that these underprivileged groups often evoke emotions and senses of justice that have nothing to do with the law in that case.

For example if a plaintiff is gay, some people may feel more or less sympathetic to them than if the plaintiff was straight.

So who cares about a silly baseball? Exactly! The baseball's not the point, the law's the point.

Posted by: falconred at May 7, 2004 12:55 PM

congrats on being done! My Property class actually did the "Who Owns Barry's 73rd Home Run Ball" thing--it was very interesting. for example, was there an intent to abandon the ball when he hit it? who owned it in the first place? what about the pitcher? etc.

Posted by: Aviva at May 7, 2004 01:43 PM

Personally I think I might be offended and annoyed if a law school exam asked a thought-provoking question that I couldn't do justice in the time I had. I would probably feel that the professor was making light of serious problems. By sticking with trivial problems, the professor can at least get students to solve a discrete problem within a limited time frame.

I couldn't do justice to something I really cared about, such as detainee rights, in the scope of a law school exam. I felt that my policy question in crim law was sort of silly, to be honest, because it was simply not possible to answer in the 40 minutes allotted. Heck, maybe a year wouldn't be enough.

And what is it with property professors and Barry Bonds' ball? That was my professor's favorite hypo too!

Congratulations on finishing up. :)

Posted by: transmogriflaw at May 7, 2004 08:00 PM

You write:

"By focusing almost entirely on middle class and business interests, law schools end up allowing students to ignore vast swaths of society, and then we wonder why poor and traditionally 'underserved' groups don't have more and better legal representation. Broken system."

No, not broken system. Just a law student who doesn't understand what law school is trying to do. The purpose of law school is not to indoctrinate students into your own personal political ideology. It's trying to give you tools that will equip you to solve any problem, whether the interests you will be representing will be rich or poor. It's up to you to decide whose interests you will represent.

Posted by: Ben at May 7, 2004 11:54 PM

Falconred wrote:
So who cares about a silly baseball? Exactly! The baseball's not the point, the law's the point.

Hammer, nail, head. If law school is teaching people that the law is the point, law school is teaching the wrong thing. Granted, I think what we've arrived at here is a debate w/in the legal profession that has raged since time immemorial. At one time it was a debate between "natural law" and man-made law, but to even have that debate you must assume there was a difference between the two at some point. Others have taken up this debate in a formalist (the descendants of natural law theory who argue roughly that it's the law that's important in itself, a sort of law for law's sake argument) v. realists (it's the law's effect on the real world -- real people -- that matters). I'm obviously more sympathetic to the realists, and think the idea that teaching law students that "the law is the point" is a dangerous one. Why do we have law in the first place?

Ben: I agree that the purpose of law school "is not to indoctrinate students into [my] own personal political ideology." However, in my experience it does a good job of trying to indoctrinate students into someone's particular political ideology, and as I said, that someone is middle to upper class and absolutely sympathetic to the interests of capital. Here, law school (at least as I've experienced it so far) is just reinforcing the hegemonic (dominant) ideology. The fact that Transmogriflaw's first take on the issue is that she couldn't do justice to a question of substance on a law school exam suggests to me at least that law school is not, as you claim, trying to give students tools to solve any problem; it largely focuses on preparing students to solve a certain range off problems pertaining to those who have the money to get them solved.

Transmogriflaw: I see what you're saying and I understand the desire not to trivialize complex and important questions by cramming them into the limited time/space of a law exam. I still think these would be great questions for exams -- you don't have to solve them, just describe how you would go about beginning to solve them and the issues that make them so difficult to solve. But my classes didn't really raise these issues at all, anywhere, on the exam or elsewhere. And maybe that's just fine. But I think if issues of the lower classes were raised more regularly in law school, we'd all think about them more, and that would make us more comfortable with them, and better prepared/more likely to focus on them in practice. Maybe.

Posted by: ambimb at May 8, 2004 06:29 AM

i kind of feel like i say this on every blog that i read whenever there's a post that's negative about school, but there really are schools that don't do that. Looking at past Con Law exams from my professor, our questions have been on deadbeat dads that don't pay child support, gay people that get fired from defense contractors, and couples that can't adopt because they're gay. and this year basically everyone agrees that the questions is going to be about gay marriage. and not just because my professor is gay - but because my school cares about social justice.

Posted by: monica at May 8, 2004 06:51 AM

Yeah, your school sounds like a huge step in the right direction. I only wish I would have known that a year and a half ago when I was applying...

Posted by: ambimb at May 8, 2004 07:36 AM

Ambimb,

It sounds like you want be an environment that validates your view of the world. You want professors that think like you do, and fellow students that think like you do. Why does that matter?

Posted by: Ben at May 8, 2004 10:27 AM

Sadly, the world I live in validates my view of the world all too emphatically. However, if I have any desire to work among professors and students who think like I do, it's because worldview matters -- it has real consequences in the world. And a professor's worldview may matter much more than the average person's because a professor can have a profound influence on the way hundreds or thousands of students think. As you said before, it's theoretically up to individual students/lawyers to decide whose interests they're going to represent, but the choice is made easier to represent the interest with the most money if all you learn in law school is abstract tools to solve any abstract problem.

Posted by: ambimb at May 9, 2004 06:33 AM

i am all too guilty of wanting to be in a place where my view of the world is validated. i didn't want to go to law school if that wasn't the case. there's no point in putting myself through torture and enormous debt if i'm going to lose my soul by the end.

Posted by: monica at May 9, 2004 07:27 AM

But who exactly are you worried about being unduly influenced by professors and other students and their lack of concern for social justice? Surely *you* wouldn't be so easily duped. Is your thinking that while you are smart enough to see through the charade, others will mindlessly follow whatever their profs and other students tell them?

Posted by: Ben at May 9, 2004 10:45 AM

An empirical observation: While studying for torts tomorrow I just took a torts exam from several years ago that was about a very serious issue: torts created due to childhood sexual abuse. This professor's exams usually have the standard assault/battery silly little fact patterns that let a student show off the law he knows, but he does do the occasional policy question.

I really didn't like it. I found myself upset by the details in the question, and I only had an hour. I had to put that aside to come up with an answer and I felt horrible afterwards.

I don't think there is anything wrong with making the exam questions silly and innocuous. There is a place for larger issues. My school offers many seminars that, and we are expected to write a legal treatise on some important issue before we graduate. This is a good environment for this. I don't think three hour exams are appropriate for it.

Posted by: transmogriflaw at May 9, 2004 01:11 PM

Transmogriflaw: You're probably right; a final isn't necessarily the best place to tackle serious issues -- especially for the first time. Do you think you would have felt differently about it if you'd discussed issues like this frequently in class? Maybe not.

Perhaps 2L and 3L are the place to focus on things that matter -- beyond the basics. That's the standard line I've heard, so perhaps I should just be patient and hope for better next year.

(Congratulations on finishing one final and good luck with the other three!)

Ben: It's not about anyone being duped. It's about a dominant ideology that constantly works to maintain its center and to obfuscate the margins. For example, law professors who stick with cases about corporations in conflict with each other are not trying to fool anyone. However, the implicit message is that this subject is important, this is what lawyers do, what they think and care about. I assume very few professors plan a syllabus with any active or even conscious intent to fool their students about anything, and I wouldn't argue that anyone is really "fooled." I'm simply saying that I'd like to see the focus in law classes shifted from the interests of money and business (who can pay lots and lots of money to make sure their interests are represented), to the interests of people who have fewer resources at their disposal when legal problems arise in their lives. Since we know corporations will be able to get good legal representation no matter what law schools do, why not make law school curricula err on the side of those who may *not* get that representation?

Finally, I don't think law students "mindlessly follow whatever their profs and other students tell them," but I do think the profession of law has cultivated an aura of mystery about itself so that many students enter law school not very sure about what it is they're going to learn. Plus, students pay extortionate amounts of money to hear what professors tell them. This means many students are reluctant -- at least during their first year -- to challenge or question their professors too rigorously. As I said, perhaps this changes in 2L and 3L as law students gain confidence and familiarity with how the law works. I hope so.

Posted by: ambimb at May 10, 2004 08:00 AM

on my crim exam this morning, two of the three questions were based on a fact pattern about a battered woman killing her husband. and i kind of do agree with you, trans, that the problem deserves so much more attention than one hypothetical one one exam, when you have to argue the prosecution side anyway. even though we did discuss it a lot in class, it was strange.

but i like my professors and colleagues agreeing with me politically because otherwise i'd have a major fear that the default position at the end would be ending up in a big firm where i'd almost certainly be miserable. and when most of our students go into public interest, career services knows how to find us those kinds of jobs.

Posted by: monica at May 10, 2004 11:38 AM