Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, The Practical Implications of Unexamined Assumptions: Disrupting Flawed Legal Arguments to Advance the Cause of Justice, 58 Washburn L.J. 531 (2019)"Failure to problematize what is taught and how it is taught in the core curriculum ensures that the subject-matter and its attached pedagogies will remain normalized and regarded as neutral, even as they replicate systems of power and privilege. For this reason, I have constructed the required curriculum of my legal writing courses in a manner that invites students to struggle with their relationship to systems of power and their ability to replicate them as they learn legal analytic and reasoning processes. In each course, I employ situational/positional anti-racist and feminist pedagogies that aim to reflect the unexamined assumptions students make and employ in structuring legal arguments."
Lorraine Bannai and Anne Enquist, (Un)examined Assumptions and (Un)intended Messages: Teaching Students to Recognize Bias in Legal Analysis and Language, 27 Seattle U.L. Rev. 1 (2003)This article discusses how law school, specifically through legal writing courses, can address cultural bias and its effect on legal analysis and language. Part I addresses why the law school curriculum should aid students in recognizing expressions of bias in legal analysis and language. Part II discusses how bias typically appears in legal language, as well as how it may infect legal analysis and argument, and suggests ways of teaching students to recognize it in a legal writing course. Part III addresses challenges that may be faced in teaching the material, including suggestions for handling discussions of potentially sensitive subjects.
Emily A. Bishop, Avoiding 'Ally Theater' in Legal Writing Assignments, 26 No. 1 Persp: Teaching Legal Res. & Writing 3 (Spring 2018)"if White professors collectively back away from writing assignments implicating issues of race, effectively sitting in a holding pattern until law faculties diversify, they risk signaling to students of color that these issues are not important, or not relevant to the work of a novice legal writer. A better strategy . . . involves more thorough study of the construct of race, racial bias, and their effects on law students of color before introducing writing assignments on potentially charged topics. This may allow them to use their privilege to provide a forum for discussion of issues of race, in a way that will not disproportionately burden students of color."
Johanna K.P. Dennis, Ensuring A Multicultural Educational Experience in Legal Education: Start with the Legal Writing Classroom, 16 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 613 (2010)By examining eight different law schools, the Author discusses current efforts in each law school that impact the educational experience, the shortfalls in these efforts, the need for first-year integration of multicultural topics, and how an educator in the legal academy can ensure that her students receive a well-rounded multicultural educational experience. In particular, the Article addresses multicultural education through the lens of a legal writing professor, whose role entails instructing students on predictive and persuasive writing over the course of the first two or three semesters of law school.