Why impose a course on constitutional law on our students? Wilson Huhn's book

[Sanford Levinson]

I look forward to tracking down Wilson Huhn's book.  I'm intrigued that it refers to "five" types of legal argument, since my colleague Philip Bobbitt has identified six "modalities" of constitutional argumentation (and Jack Balkin and I have suggested that on occasion there is a sevent, "natural law," modality.
 
sandy

________________________________

From: michael curtis [mailto:curtism at bellsouth.net]
Sent: Mon 7/9/2007 8:35 PM
To: Malla Pollack; Sanford Levinson; 'Con Law Prof list'
Subject: Re: Why impose a course on constitutional law on our students? Wilson Huhn's book 



Wilson Huhn's book is great and deals with legal argumentation in virtually
every doctrinal area.  I have been recommending it to con law students for
some years now.

Michael Curtis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Malla Pollack" <mpollack at ajsl.us>
To: "'Sanford Levinson'" <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>; "'Con Law Prof list'"
<conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 4:14 PM
Subject: RE: Why impose a course on constitutional law on our students?


> My thanks to Prof Levinson for his fine article and his willingness to
> support a new law school and review.
>
> While I use (and love) Prof. Levinson's case book, I am not now teaching
> in
> a school where the students overwhelmingly agree that bar prep per se is
> not
> central.
>
> To keep student interest, and make the course useful,  I assign both the
> case book and a short book on legal arguments, Wilson Huhn, The Five Types
> of Legal Argument (paperback Carolina Acad Press).   This allows me to use
> the cases to teach students how to dissect and counter argument types -- a
> skill which every lawyer needs.
>
>
> Meanwhile, I slide in the core citizenship issues Prof. Levinson suggests.
>
> Malla Pollack
> Professor, American Justice School of Law
> mpollack at ajsl.us
> 270-744-3300 x 28
> articles http://works.bepress.com/malla_pollack/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
> [mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Sanford Levinson
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 2:56 PM
> To: Con Law Prof list
> Subject: RE: Why impose a course on constitutional law on our students?
>
> This comes under the category of shameless self-promotion.  Our
> colleague Malla Pollack has founded a new (online) law review, the
> American Justice L. Rev., and the first issue includes a piece of mine,
> "REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN THE LAW SCHOOL
> CURRICULUM."  It can be found at
>
> http://www.ajsl.us/review/Pollack%20LevinsonforPUBLICATION.pdf
>
> To make a longish story short, I argue that there's no good reason to
> require constitutional law (as is done at most law schools, save for the
> University of Chicago) in terms, e.g., of preparing students for the
> bar--we don't teach lots of subjects that are covered on the bar--or
> preparing students to practice law--most of our students will never have
> a constitutional law case in their entire careers, though they are
> likely to have lots of cases in subjects that we don't require, e.g.,
> family law.  So, if there is a justification for requiring
> constitutional law, as I think there is, it is to prepare them to be
> good citizens and civic leaders.  But it should be obvious that
> preparation for that role does not require that our students learn the
> latest three- and four-part tests or most other contemporary doctrine.
> Not surprisingly, I argue that it does require an historical overview of
> American constitutional development (which can be taught, normatively,
> as a story either of decline or progress, or neutrally as the way that
> the Constitution, for better or worse, has actually developed over the
> past 220 years) and paying far more attention that we now pay to what I
> have come to call the "hard-wired Constitution."  Indeed, not to put too
> fine a point on it, I think that the legal academy is criminally
> negligent in failing to teach our students about what are in fact the
> most important parts of the Constitution (which, of course, are never
> litigated and most of which raise few questions of "interpretation" the
> way legal academics define such questions).
>
> Obviously, I would be delighted to read any responses, on- or off-line,
> to my arguments, which are, just as obviously, meant to stir up a debate
> (and not only to promote sales of my book and adoption of our casebook
> :) )
>
> sandy
>
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