edit: What exactly are you getting from a professor that is relevant and what should you be looking for to make sure you do well on the exam. Further, is this a correct way of thinking about the type of things that are relevant to exams and how far and wide should this methodology be applied to the material.
seems right to me. it important to know the substance of what they’re saying, but seems also very important to be able to describe the way that fits into the bigger picture and recognize minutia for minutia
0Ls starting threads with long winded hypothesis about law school classes, and another 0L confirming his hypothesis in the forum for law students? What about this seems right?
I am looking forward to hearing you complain about your LRW teacher when you get back your first memo.
And if you’re thinking this much about the theory behind the teaching, you’re probably going to spend too much time on this bullshit and not enough time doing the important things.
I’m tempted to just respond sarcastically. My more gentle response is that you sound a bit confused about a lot of things about the law and law school. For example, you say “For an assigned case, the professor enters into a discussion of the legislative history of a particular element of a particular rule of law.” But more often than not, caselaw has nothing to do with “legislative history” because you’re dealing with common law, not statutory interpretation, so there is no legislative history.
Of course even when a case interprets a statute, (1) there is often limited legislative history available (especially with state statutes), (2) legislative history is widely considered to be a fairly limited (though sometimes useful) tool in statutory interpretation for reasons too complicated to get into, (3) many cases interpreting statutes turn on applying the statute to a new, heretofore uncontemplated situation, so what the drafters of the statute meant at the time is not always that useful.
Beyond that, what I think you are maybe sort of trying to get at (although I’m not sure because your post is a little bit like a description of basketball written by a person who has only seen still photographs of the game) is something that the caselaw method already does. You read a variety of cases dealing with variations of an issue, you see all the different twists and turns it could take and how judges resolve the problems, you learn to apply the law to the facts and to find your own forks and to choose one road or another at the fork and make the best argument for the one you chose.
No, but I’m a dickbag with a power complex who’s this close to banning you. Talk to each other all you want, but do it in the appropriate forums. The forum for law students is reserved for law students to converse with each other, and for 0Ls to clandestinely snoop and very occasionally ask intelligent questions.
On what grounds on your going to “ban” me bro? I actually responded to the topic. If you’re going to ban anyone, wouldn’t it make more sense to ban the people posting shark pictures? Just do your job and move the thread where it needs to go, there’s no reason for “threats.”
ohhhhhhh shit son! First lesson in the law: It doesn’t matter what it says, it matters what the person with the power to enforce it decides to do. In other words, it’s best to let sleeping dragons lie. Put another way, good? bad? he’s the guy with the banstick. Alternatively: HE IS THE LAW.