Law School Academic Support Blog

The Playground

Isn’t it the way of the fall semester that September seems like it lasted for 8 weeks, October was about 2.5 weeks, and November 1^st is when are standing at the top of a giant slide that ends in finals? I wandered into this playground in mid-August, and while it seemed to come both too fast and too slow, I am happy to see the ground come into view.

This semester has been wild.

Overwhelming.

Intense.

Busy.

Frustrating.

Joyful.

Fulfilling.

Fast.

I am grateful for the chance to hit stop for a few days later this week. I need the time to gather whatever resources I have left (or can conjure) before the building smells like stress in the upcoming weeks. I am thankful that I get to see more family than usual this year. I remain in awe of the ASP community and its generosity, kindness, and warmth.

I wish you all the best of times. May the ground beneath the end of your slide be soft when you land.

(Liz Stillman)

Baseball is a Rules Based System

Have I mentioned that I live in walking distance of Boston's Fenway Park? I live in the town just slightly west of Boston. Last night there was a baseball game at Fenway. It was an important one to Red Sox fans. Have I mentioned that I am not, proximity aside, a member of Red Sox nation? However, the Red Sox beat my team to get to this game, so since I am an adult, I decided that I am now a fan…of the team the Red Sox are playing (there are no adults in baseball, or was that crying? Either way). Yet, I live with Red Sox fans, so we were watching the game. For a very, very long time. Because it ended in the 13^th inning. I guess folks with tickets got their money worth, but they do close the beer stands after the 7^th inning which means that when this game finally became interesting to me most people down the street were either happily sober or wishing they weren’t.

You are wondering, what is the legal teaching connection? Glad you asked. Here is our fact pattern: it was the top of the 13^th inning and the Tampa Bay (not devil anymore) Rays were batting. There was a player on first base and one out, when Kevin Kiermayer came to bat and Kiermayer hit a “rocket” to the wall. Then, “[t]he ball hit the wall, struck Red Sox outfielder Hunter Renfroe in the right thigh and hopped into the Boston bullpen.”[1]The runner on first ran; Kiermayer ran. The runner on first crossed homeplate and the Red Sox fans in attendance, now long cut off from beer, were despondent. For a moment. The umpires conferred and ruled it was a double, so the runner on first could only get to third base and the run the Rays had “scored” was erased. This is the run that would have broken the 4-4 tie in the 13^th inning. Red Sox nation rejoiced. I glowered a bit.

This is where the rules of baseball come in-as they do in every game-but since there are fewer playoff games occurring than on usual nights -we were paying attention. The rule and its application were explained by Major League Baseball umpires this way: “It's item 20 in the manual, which is, balls deflected out of play, which is in reference to official baseball Rule 5.06(b)(4)(H) [which] says, ‘If a fair ball not in flight is deflected by a fielder and goes out of play, the award is two bases from the time of the pitch. Once that ball hit the wall, it was no longer in flight. Now the ball bounces off the wall and is deflected out of play off of a fielder. That’s just a ground-rule double.”[2]

The legal education angle here is that this seems to be a strict liability rule-it doesn’t matter if the ball accidentally or intentionally got put out of play. The way I plan to use this in class this week is to ask students to go through all the possible intents: willful, reckless, negligent, etc. and ask how each could have been proven in that moment. I'll poke at the idea of whether Renfroe had intentionally pushed the ball out of play to save the game knowing that his intent didn’t actually matter and wouldn’t be examined. Would he be a hero or a scofflaw for engaging the rules that way? I’ll tap the professional responsibility issue of whether the rules act as a shield or a weapon when you are player. I’ll ask why Major League Baseball tends to use strict liability rules. You can’t stop the game to have a trial, but they do have so many camera angles at every position on the field that they send off multiple videos to a third party for confirmation. I’ll also show the video of the 2013 World Series where a call by an umpire awarded the St. Louis Cardinals a run, and therefore the game, and ultimately the series, against the Red Sox for contrast…and laugh.[3]

Go Yankees!

(Liz Stillman)

 

[1] https://www.mlb.com/news/rays-ground-rule-double-in-13th-inning-explained

[2] Id.

[3] https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1826398-was-obstruction-the-right-call-to-make-on-wild-last-play-of-game-3

March Madness, Law School Edition

It's March!  Time to create tournament brackets for everything, including law school.  This bracket focuses on four key features of law school: podium courses, skills courses, student organizations, and study skills. What's your favorite part of law school?  Want to make some changes to the bracket?  If so, Download Tournament bracket here.  Have fun and may the best bracket win!  (Kirsha Trychta)   

Picturing Standing in Constitutional Law

Each spring semester, I lead a structured study group primarily focusing on Constitutional Law. For the last few years, I’ve started the semester off with the same “standing” exercise with students, and it’s been a big hit.  I begin by drawing a pictograph on the whiteboard consisting of three big empty rectangles, side-by-side.  I then challenge the students to fill-in the chart with concepts from their standing chapter in a way that makes sense, graphically.  

I encourage them to start by identifying the three main concepts from the standing material. After a few minutes, the students come up with their list: standing (generally), ripeness, and mootness.  If they get stuck, I encourage them to look at their book’s Table of Contents for hints.  I then ask them to place each concept in chronological order.  If I have enough dry erase markers, I’ll write the ripeness material in red, since no case that is deemed unripe will get before the court.  I put the standing material in green indicating that those who have standing are cleared to argue their case before the court, and reserve yellow for the more nuanced category of mootness.

Next, I ask them to identify the test from the casebook that is associated with each principle. This could obviously differ depending on the casebook, but, in my experience, most constitutional law books stick to the same main cases.  I sometimes will write the case name under the principle, but no more.  I don’t write the specific test on the board, but instead give the students time to review and edit the test in their notes or to add the test if it is missing from their notes. 

Finally, I draw an arrow going from “mootness” to “standing,” and ask them what the arrow represents. After a few guesses, I give them a hint if they need it; I tell them to think about the abortion cases that they read.  Eventually someone figures it out, and we have a conversation about the concept that some legal issues are “capable of repetition, yet evading review” which means that although the issue is technically moot, the party may be deemed to have standing anyway. 

I end the exercise by reminding the students that the picture is an overly-simplified version of some very complex constitutional concepts, and that in order to be successful on the exam, they are going to need to continue to build upon what we started in the review session. 

The entire exercise usually takes about 20-30 minutes, leaving enough time in a single review session to also complete a few pre-selected practice multiple-choice questions that focus on the standing principles to help solidify their newly-organized standing rules. (Kirsha Trychta)

Holiday Cartoons

Please enjoy these holiday cartoons from the internet. (Kirsha Trychta)

 

 

 

  

Serve Up a Holiday-Themed Scavenger Hunt

It’s often difficult to keep law students engaged around the holidays when they’re anxious to spend time with friends and family. Below are a few fun ways to promote student engagement by integrating the holidays into your classes.

If you find yourself over-stuffed this week, I do not recommend trying to sue “Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, Mayflower Movers, Pilgrim Pride, Turkey Hill, Black Friday, Corn on the Cob, [or the] Cleveland Indians.” Riches v. Thanksgiving, 2007 WL 4591385 (N.D. Cal 2007). A prisoner who was “offended” by the Thanksgiving holiday tried to do just that, but the court dismissed his claim finding that “[t]o the extent any of these defendants are actual entities that may be sued, they are private organizations that do not act under color of state law, an essential element of a § 1983 action.” And if you want a second helping of prisoner litigation, dish out Professor Abigail Perdue’s suggestion: Karmasu v. Hughes, 654 N.E.2d 179 (Ohio App. 1995) (concerning a prisoner who sued the prison dietician for serving turkey stuffing for Thanksgiving).

In December, consider a Christmas tree or menorah themed case. There are over two thousand cases involving Christmas trees with issues ranging from freedom of religion to the Fair Labor Standards Act in agricultural production. See Mather v. Village of Mundelein, 864 F.2d 1291 (7th Cir. 1989) and U.S. Dept. of Labor v. N.C. Growers Assn., Inc., 377 F.3d 345 (4th Cir. 2004), respectively. For a more technical exploration of the holiday, turn to the U.S. Court of International Trade, which explored whether “14-foot long lengths of wire set with 10 light bulbs … in the form of such objects as fruits, vegetables, hearts, rearing horses, guitars and American flags” should be classified as “lighting sets of a kind used for Christmas trees” or “other electric lamps” within a tariff statute. Primal Lite, Inc. v. U.S., 15 F. Supp. 2d 915 (Ct. Intl. Trade 1998).

Pavlicic v. Vogtsberger (or any of the cases it cites) is an ideal choice around Valentine’s Day for both romantics and cynics alike because the case addresses “the recovery of gifts which [a man] presented to [a woman] in anticipation of a marriage which never saw the bridal veil.” 136 A.2d 127, 128 (Pa. 1957).

Meanwhile, in the spring, opt for an Easter Bunny themed case. If the case need not be published, then I recommend Rogers v. Walgreens, 2017 WL 3263783, where a woman was so startled by a Walgreens’ employee dressed as the Easter Bunny that she fell and injured herself. But if you require a published source, consider People v. Gaither, 173 Cal. App. 2d 662 (1959), which found the defendant guilty of poisoning his ex-wife’s family with chocolate Easter Bunny candies laced with enough arsenic to kill 75 people.

After you select your case, make sure it is sufficiently de-identified for the research exercise.  Here’s a quick “how to”:

1. Download the opinion from Westlaw or Lexis as a Microsoft Word document.
2. Delete as much of the identifying information as possible, including the case caption, syllabus, headnotes, and the judge’s name.
3. Omit any concurring or dissenting opinions, for brevity, if desired.
4. Substitute any extraordinarily unusual words in the opinion with more commonplace synonyms. Savvy students will simply search for the strange term instead of identifying the actual legal issue.
5. Use the “find and replace” feature on Word to quickly substitute the parties’ last names with their first names or other designations such as buyer and seller or plaintiff and defendant.
6. Try to locate the case yourself using traditional Westlaw and Lexis searches. Make sure that the case is findable but does not necessarily immediately reveal itself.
7. Confirm that the case does not come up in the first few pages of Google search results.

Once the opinion is sufficiently scrubbed, announce the rules of the game and get researching!

For more information on fun holiday-themed research exercises, see the Winter 2016 edition of “The Learning Curve,” a publication of the AALS Section on Academic Support, which is available online at the Law School Academic Success Project.

This post originally appeared on the "Teach Law Better" blog on November 20, 2017.  (Kirsha Trychta)