Food for Thought: Contest Brings Contracts Principles into Students' Own World
by
Bruce A. Markell

Sometimes it is hard for Contracts students to understand the cases and statutes they read because these sources discuss or assume knowledge that is not within their experience.

Not many students know about bid procedures for public contracting or have participated in complex real estate transactions, although almost every Contracts casebook has cases involving them. In a similar vein, all too often students think (incorrectly) that something within their experience is an example of what is being discussed. Students often feel, for example, that they are being charged unconscionable rent.

The problem is in matching students' experiences with the material being discussed. I have attempted to solve it not by picking materials more in tune with students' experiences (I am not yet ready to do a casebook) but by having the students match the material to something they find familiar.

I have done this by asking students, on their own, to analyze contract issues they see in literature and movies. Because voluntary assignments are never popular (especially in the first year) I've added a twist. I announced at the beginning of the year that there would be a "literary contest" open to all. To enter, students needed to pick a passage from a literary source or a scene from a movie, identify the relevant contract issues present, and then resolve the issues by using the materials discussed in class. In short, I asked them to make up their own exam, and then provide their own answer.

To encourage contributions, I promised to award a free dinner for two for the best contribution. (In response to the inevitable question, I told students that I did not have to be one of the two). On the handout setting forth the formal terms of the competition, I also told them that I was to be the sole judge, and that I would be looking for originality in selecting the source, an ability to identify relevant issues in that source, and precision and quality of their analysis. Finally, in the small print I put a cap on price of the dinner ($150, including the cost of no more than one bottle of wine or champagne).

So that everyone could follow the progress of the competition, I asked the students to post their entries to the newsgroup that I had set up for the class (See my article, Electronic Newsgroups Keep Discussions Going, The Law Teacher, Spring 1995, at 12). I periodically reminded the class to check on what others had written and that the competition was still open.

In a class of 100, I received 15 entries. These ranged from an analysis of the offer contained in "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" in Richard III to a mock judicial opinion in the case of The Pied Piper v. The Town Counsel of Hamlin. Along the way, students analyzed issues found in Charles Bukowski's poetry, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and in David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars. All entries were original and well written, and many were amusing.

Many students found the process helpful in sorting out their first-year Contracts experience. Early in the competition, I told the class that they could show me their entries before submitting them in case they had any questions. Many students took advantage of this offer. In the process, almost every one of them told me that the project was much harder than they initially thought. Actually trying to apply law to known situations pointed out for them where their analytical skills needed improvement. I think this improvement resulted in part from the fact that they started with known subject matter; the contract rules were new enough without compounding the problem by trying to master the complexities of bid procedures or real estate sales.

The entries were so good that I awarded second and third prizes of a pound of coffee and a cookie from a local bakery (and thus kept within the food theme of the contest). On the student evaluations at the end of the year, many students mentioned that although they did not participate, they avidly read other students' entries and had discussions (even arguments) about the probity of the submissions' legal analysis.

The winning entry was from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 -- an excellent analysis of Milo's lack of good faith in concurrently entering into contracts to both defend and attack bridges in Germany during World War II. My final cost was $95 (Bloomington, Indiana does not have a lot of expensive restaurants) but the benefit to the class far exceed that sum.