« Eye of the Beholder | Main | Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace »
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Teaching emotionally charged subjects, ctd.
The conversation, promptly most prominently by Jeannie Suk's New Yorker piece, is turning to trigger warnings, at least according to this piece from Slate/Inside Higher Ed. Shorter version from most of the people interviewed: "Of course we should teach sexual assault and other sexually related subjects, but let's be sensitive." "Sensitivity," among many of those interviewed, seems to entail some combination of not cold-calling or providing trigger warnings. Note that the conversation is not only about sexual assault; it also is about "discrimination," which means, if taken seriously, a trigger warning for any Con Law, Fourteenth Amendment or Employment Discrimination course.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 23, 2014 at 07:26 PM in Howard Wasserman, Teaching Law | Permalink
Comments
Prof. Israel overall may have been a great teacher and scholar, but the question he asked did not approach brilliance. It was, as JoJo suggests, needlessly offensive and ridiculous. I am glad no professor would try that today.
Posted by: CHS | Dec 26, 2014 11:17:38 PM
Jojo: I did not delete your comment, although the personal invective and name-calling were entirely unwarranted and unprovoked by anyone who has written or commented here.
We all can agree that we should avoid being "socially inept jerk[s]"; unfortunately, like most insults, that is in the eye of the beholder. Morover, the example you give of how we properly should test on things like rape or the rape shield is, in fact, precisely what pretty much everyone does. So on your own definition and example, no one is being a jerk. Unfortunately, even the anodyne example you gave is setting some people off. So now the question is what to do about and how. "Don't be a jerk" isn't very helpful in that regard.
As for Josh's exam, I doubt the exam introduced any such complications or immunities into the mix since the students were not taught those complications, would not recognize, and likely would not introduce them. Would the same problem play out differently in the real world. Sure. But this whole debate is triggered by the insistence of some that we should not bring the "real world" (in which you may have to deal with an emotionally charged issue such as sexual harassment or sexual assault or racism in representing a client) into the exam setting.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Dec 26, 2014 8:33:09 PM
Who would believe that "If a rural county public defender three years out from flunk out u can ask a panel of ordinary citizens about perceptions toward rape or murder or the accused, surely there are some graduates of Yale who can do so to a cross section of the population that is more educated and intelligent than the average joe on the street"? A graduate of Yale who now teaches at a law school is not exactly more in touch with reality than "a rural county public defender three years out from flunk out u."
Posted by: Chris | Dec 26, 2014 7:32:02 PM
Two points:
First, law faculty love to make boring subjects emotionally charged or political even if the subject itself is not. Look at the Civ Pro post from a few days ago that needlessly introduced prison litigation into a civipro final, when it was not intended, and which may (read "likely did") introduce complications and immunity doctrines though none was intended. In the name of pushing the envelope, law faculty touch emotionally charged buttons, and for what purpose, really?
Second, pretty much all of criminal law has the potential to reach anyone who is a victim of a crime. Much first amendment law can offend students of various stripes. You can teach it without being a jerk about it, and you can have students look at it as a judge would a conflict. If it's, "the accused stands indicted for rape. He contends that his past sexual history with the victim, and the victim's past sexual history with others, give context for why he is not guilty." You can cover the evidentiary concerns in the third person and in a way that will not put a student who may have himself or herself been a victim of assault or a friend of a victim of assault.
Can this be difficult? Yes. Can it be done? Well, real lawyers do it every day in jury selection. Again, law professors usually are not skilled in teaching or in examining people, so it is often the clunky presentation rather than knowledge of the law that leads to awkward situations. If a rural county public defender three years out from flunk out u can ask a panel of ordinary citizens about perceptions toward rape or murder or the accused, surely there are some graduates of Yale who can do so to a cross section of the population that is more educated and intelligent than the average joe on the street.
I, too, had experiences such as that recounted by Doug Levene by a few lechers in law school. It was not thought provoking. Rather, it began to introduce my current thoughts about the legal academy. You could get the same point across by not being a socially inept jerk, yet you chose not to, professor. What does that say about you? Would you ever do such a thing if you were called upon to advocate on behalf of a client or to argue to a Court?
Oh, that's different you say? We're advancing knowledge/scholarship/examination of the theory behind the law here in the classroom. Whatever.
Posted by: Jojo | Dec 26, 2014 2:07:31 PM
In my Criminal Law class at Michigan in 1978, Prof. Jerry Israel taught the law of rape. In questioning one female student about the degree of resistance required, or not required, to constitute rape, he asked her a question about whether it was possible to stick a pencil in a spinning coke bottle. Who would dare to push a student that far today? Who dares to get into a student's face and make them uncomfortable? Israel, by the way, was a great law professor as well as a superior scholar.
Posted by: Douglas Levene | Dec 25, 2014 9:17:58 AM
Honestly I think the question is whether the criminal law should continue to be a part of the 1L curriculum.
Posted by: Think Like a 1L | Dec 24, 2014 12:41:12 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.