Reading Law

Reading Law
Author: Antonin Scalia
Publisher: West Publishing Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Judicial process
ISBN: 9780314275554

In this groundbreaking book, Scalia and Garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases. Is a burrito a sandwich? Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you using a gun in a drug transaction? The authors grapple with these and dozens of equally curious questions while explaining the most principled, lucid, and reliable techniques for deriving meaning from authoritative texts. Meanwhile, the book takes up some of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence. What, exactly, is textualism? Why is strict construction a bad thing? What is the true doctrine of originalism? And which is more important: the spirit of the law, or the letter? The authors write with a well-argued point of view that is definitive yet nuanced, straightforward yet sophisticated.

Reading Like a Lawyer

Reading Like a Lawyer
Author: Ruth Ann McKinney
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781611631104

Please note that the supplemental materials website has moved to caplaw.com/rll Studies show that the reading skills your students have developed in college may not be enough to ensure their success in law school. Reading law requires professionals to understand the purpose of their reading, to form and express opinions about what they're reading, to apply legal logic, to read with energy, and to adopt sophisticated reading habits that are unique to the study of law. Written for law students, pre-law students, paralegals, and others interested in developing these reading skills, Reading Like a Lawyer teaches each of the following critical legal reading skills: how to read legal casebooks and engage in class, as well as how to use your reading to prepare for exams; how to read published court cases outside of a casebook; how to read legislative material; and how to read online effectively. Based on sound educational research, each chapter includes exercises that challenge students to apply what that chapter has taught. A website accompanies the book and includes additional readings (e.g., on logic) plus opportunities for students to gain confidence by testing their own thoughts against those of the author. For faculty, Reading Like a Lawyer includes a separate teacher's manual and a faculty website with a powerpoint that mirrors the book's principle lessons.

Reading the Legal Case

Reading the Legal Case
Author: Marco Wan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0415673542

The Legal Case: Cross-Currents in Law and the Humanitiesre-examines the seemingly familiar notion of a ‘legal case’ by exploring the histories, practices, conventions and rhetoric of ‘case law’. The doctrine of stare decisis, whereby courts are bound by precedent cases, underpins legal reasoning in the common law world. At the same time, the legal case is itself a product of institutional and linguistic practices, and raises broader questions about the foundations and boundaries of law. The idea of the ‘case’ as an ordered, closed narrative with a determinate outcome is, for example, integral to medical, psychoanalytic, as well as forensic discourses; whilst the notion of the ‘strange case’ is a popular one in the English fiction of the late nineteenth century. What is at stake in the attempt to categorise or define a situation as a legal case? Is the notion of binding precedent in ‘case law’ really distinctive to the common law? And if so, why? What can the concept of a ‘case’ in other disciplines and discourses tell us about how it operates in law? With contributions from legal philosophers, legal historians, literary critics, and linguists, this book moves beyond the jurisprudential discussion of the nature and authority of the legal case, as it draws on insights from philosophy, m linguistics, narratology, drama, and film.

Reading Law as Narrative

Reading Law as Narrative
Author: Assnat Bartor
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2010
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1589834801

Casuistic or case law in the Pentateuch deals with real human affairs; each case law entails a compressed story that can encourage reader engagement with seemingly "dry" legal text. This book is the first to present an interpretive method integrating biblical law, jurisprudence, and literary theory, reflecting the current "law and literature" school within legal studies. It identifies the narrative elements that exist in the laws of the Pentateuch, exposes the narrative techniques employed by the authors, and discovers the poetics of biblical law, thus revealing new or previously unconsidered aspects of the relationship between law and narrative in the Bible

Reading Law

Reading Law
Author: James W. Watts
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 191
Release: 1999-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567193330

Watts here argues that conventions of oral rhetoric were adapted to shape the literary form and contents of the Pentateuch. The large-scale structure-stories introducing lists of laws that conclude with divine sanctions-reproduces a common ancient strategy for persuasion. The laws' use of direct address, historical motivations and frequent repetitions serve rhetorical ends, and even the legal contradictions seem designed to appeal to competing constituencies. The instructional speeches of God and Moses reinforce the persuasive appeal by characterizing God as a just ruler and Moses as a faithful scribe. The Pentateuch was designed to persuade Persian-period Judaeans that this Torah should define their identity as Israel.

One L

One L
Author: Scott Turow
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429939567

One L, Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school and a best-seller when it was first published in 1977, has gone on to become a virtual bible for prospective law students. Not only does it introduce with remarkable clarity the ideas and issues that are the stuff of legal education; it brings alive the anxiety and competiveness--with others and, even more, with oneself--that set the tone in this crucible of character building. Each September, a new crop of students enter Harvard Law School to begin an intense, often grueling, sometimes harrowing year of introduction to the law. Turow's group of One Ls are fresh, bright, ambitious, and more than a little daunting. Even more impressive are the faculty. Will the One Ls survive? Will they excel? Will they make the Law Review, the outward and visible sign of success in this ultra-conservative microcosm? With remarkable insight into both his fellows and himself, Turow leads us through the ups and downs, the small triumphs and tragedies of the year, in an absorbing and thought-provoking narrative that teaches the reader not only about law school and the law but about the human beings who make them what they are. In the new afterword for this edition of One L, the author looks back on law school from the perspective of ten years' work as a lawyer and offers some suggestions for reforming legal education.

Reading the Law

Reading the Law
Author: Peter Goodrich
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 229
Release: 1986-01-01
Genre: Droit - Grande-Bretagne
ISBN: 9780631146315

Critical Reading for Success in Law School and Beyond

Critical Reading for Success in Law School and Beyond
Author: Jane Grise
Publisher: West Academic Publishing
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2017-07-06
Genre: Critical thinking
ISBN: 9781634609364

Critical Reading for Success in Law School and Beyond presents critical reading strategies in a systematic sequence so that students can become effective readers who are successful in both law school and in law practice. This reading system was developed by identifying the characteristics of expert readers at different stages of the reading process and then creating a curriculum to teach these skills. It contains essential ingredients for developing skills in reading comprehension as well as legal analysis, case evaluation, and case synthesis. Critical Reading starts with chapters on reading as an advocate and with focus and then introduces students to case structure as well as civil and criminal procedure. Students are then introduced to specific comprehension techniques such as case context, reading for an overview, reading facts, and strategies for understanding unclear text. Critical Reading then addresses strategies for making inferences, evaluating cases, and synthesizing cases. Critical Reading for Success in Law School and Beyond focuses on comprehension of full reported cases as students must be able to read full decisions in practice. It is designed to be used in law school pre-orientation and orientation programs, academic success courses, legal writing and doctrinal classes, as well as individual student support.

Reading Law Forward

Reading Law Forward
Author: Peter Charles Hoffer
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2023-07-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0700635084

In the current legal climate where “everyone is an originalist,” conventional wisdom suggests that judges merely find law, rather than make it. Orthodox common-law jurisprudence makes fidelity to the past the central goal and criterion. By contrast, the alternative approach, “reading the law forward”—what some call judicial pragmatism or consequentialism—is viewed as heretical. Rather than mount a theoretical defense of a forward-thinking jurisprudence, legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer offers an empirical study of how this approach to constitutional interpretation actually leads to better law. Reading Law Forward looks at seven judges who exemplify this alternative jurisprudence: John Marshall, Joseph Story, Lemuel Shaw, Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, and Stephen G. Breyer. “In the hands of America’s leading judges, a jurisprudence of reading law forward enabled courts to respond to the challenges of changing conditions. It kept law fresh. It promoted and still promotes the growth of a democratic society,” Hoffer convincingly argues.

Deciding Communication Law

Deciding Communication Law
Author: Susan Dente Ross
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1050
Release: 2004-05-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135620148

This clearly written and well-focused volume combines concise decisions of the primary areas of communication law with the foundational case decisions in those domains. Thus, in one volume, students of communication law, constitutional law, political science, and related fields find both the key rulings that define each area of law and a detailed summary of the legal concepts, doctrines, and policies so vital to understanding the rulings within their legal context. The text forgoes the tendency to provide encyclopedic treatment of all the relevant cases and focuses instead on the two or three cases most vital to an accurate and informed understanding of the current state of each field of communication law. The chapters provide readers with the most salient concepts and the necessary depth to understand the law while permitting most reading time to be directed to the law itself. Full-text rulings allow readers to immerse themselves in the law itself--to develop a feel for its complexity, its flexibility, and its language. Useful as a quick reference to the landmark rulings and the jurisprudence of communication law, this book also serves well as the primary text in related undergraduate courses or as a supplemental text in graduate classes in the field.