Fiction Draws Students into the Culture of Law
by
Ronald W. Eades

While teaching a required course that students did not want to take, I began a little experiment that seems to be working. I required my American Legal History students to read some outside materials they would find entertaining. The students then had to write book reviews of the material. Initially shocked to get an assignment like ones they had learned to dread in high school, they eventually learned the reviews could be a useful part of their law school experience.

Several years ago, the faculty at the School of Law, University of Louisville, decided our students were not being sufficiently exposed to materials outside the core, rules-oriented courses. The school instituted a requirement that the students take a course from a list of alternatives that included American Legal History. The students were not pleased. None of the law firms that regularly recruited on campus appeared to do very much Legal History work. None of the students could recall ever hearing one of our former graduates wax eloquently about a big, million-dollar legal history case currently in litigation.

I supported the unpopular requirement because I believe law is a reflection of the culture that produces it, and students should have some understanding of that culture. I agreed to teach a section of American Legal History and to let students learn about the culture of law by reading fictional works. To insure they accomplished the reading in a studious manner, I required and graded book reviews.

My first task was selecting the fictional works from which the students could choose. I had several criteria. The works should reflect something about the way in which our culture views law, should present those ideas in a stimulating or thought-provoking manner, and should be exciting to read. In addition, I wanted to find a variety of fictional formats C novels, short stories, and plays. Each student had to select two works and only one could be a short story.

Naturally Billy Budd by Herman Melville was easy to place at the top of the list. As a short novel that appears in every law and literature discussion, it provided a simple starting place. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was also an easy choice. Those two items allowed the students to see discussions of rights, justice, prejudice, and breakdowns in the judicial process. For the adventurous students, I added The Trial by Franz Kafka. Obviously that work does not relate to the American experience, but I felt is was sufficiently universal to be appropriate. That has been a difficult work for students who have tried it.

I selected some shorter works to add a variety of interesting topics. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson was a horrifying tale that many students had read when they were younger. When they read it in law school, however, the strictly traditional legal procedure that produced the meaningless execution took on a new meaning. I also added The Hack Driver by Sinclair Lewis. It is a delightful short story about the experiences of a new law firm associate. The students enjoyed the work, and saw it as a prediction of things to come.

I offered a few plays. Because the course spends a little time on the Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible by Arthur Miller was a natural. Inherit the Wind and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, both by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, also provided a fictional account of issues that are raised in the course. For a student who wanted a more classical offering, I allowed students to select either The Taming of the Shrew or The Merchant of Venice. Both of these Shakespeare plays raise issues of the role and rights of women, justice, mercy, and blatant bigotry.

The next problem was to set some limits on the format of the reviews. I wanted the reviews to accomplish a few simple goals. Of course, I had to check to see if the students had actually read the works and I wanted the students to think and analyze the relationship between law and culture. Finally, in the interest of efficient grading, I wanted the reviews to be short and direct.

The reviews were limited to no more than five pages each. The first page had to contain the name of the work and the author, and it also had to answer the question: "Did the student think that other students would benefit from reading the work? Please explain." There were several reasons for this instruction. The first page of every review was removed from the student's work and placed in a ring binder on reserve in the library. This allowed other students to have a quick source as they were selecting the works they would read. I have reused the better ones each year. In addition, the question directs the students to think about why the work may have some relevance to the study of law.

The rest of the review also had specific requirements:

• A brief summary of the work that should extend no more than one paragraph.
• A description of what the student felt was the most interesting part of the work.
• A discussion of what the work revealed about the nature of law or the nature of society.
• An explanation of whether the presentation of the nature of law or society was consistent or inconsistent with the student's own view of that subject.

Using that format, I was able to make some comparisons of the quality of the consideration and analysis that the students had brought to their reading. The summaries of the works and the discussions of the most interesting parts allowed me to determine whether the students had seriously read the material. The discussions of the nature of law or society the students to think about the relationship between law and the culture of law.

I continue to teach the course on American Legal History and want to continue the experiment with the book reviews. Both the students and I enjoy this break from the typical law school reading assignment. I have a long reading list of fiction and non-fiction, law-related materials that I have prepared over twenty years of teaching. I intend to select different items from this list as alternatives for the book reviews. In addition, I want to continue to experiment with the format of the reviews. I also have one additional future experiment in mind. Since today's students are video intensive, and there are a substantial number of excellent law-related movies available, I would like to add movie reviews to the course. I could imagine students writing reviews of the movies To Kill a Mockingbird, Twelve Angry Men, or Inherit the Wind.