Rules for Monica
by
Charles Calleros

In teaching both Contracts I and Legal Method and Writing, I have noticed that two features of the law school experience can impede learning: the law itself and the near panic that sweeps through the first-year class as the first set of final examinations approaches. It may seem odd to identify the law itself as an obstacle, but we profess to use the cases and statutes in our first-year courses primarily as vehicles for teaching techniques of legal method and analysis rather than as a comprehensive source of a body of law that students must master. Whether we really practice what we preach on that score is debatable in light of our common preoccupation with "coverage" in non-skills courses. Nonetheless, an occasional diversion to nonlegal cases can be justified if they teach something about the law and legal method through metaphor or analogy.

Moreover, if the nonlegal context is familiar and universal, the students can quickly bring their personal experiences to bear on the problem and can focus all their attention on the lessons of legal method, without being distracted or confused by the introduction of complex and unfamiliar legal rules. Once they gain confidence in addressing ambiguities in the holdings of cases in a nonlegal context and understand what it means to synthesize those holdings, first-semester students can apply their newly formed conceptual frameworks to more complicated and unfamiliar cases dealing with elusive legal concepts such as consideration and causation.

This relatively nurturing approach is especially welcome about a month before the first set of finals, when students are furiously outlining course material in preparation for examinations -- or are desperately trying to comprehend what it means to outline course material. At that time, they very much appreciate a workshop that ties together key concepts of legal method and shows how the concepts relate to future success on examinations. And their anxiety is greatly reduced if we can use a familiar, nonthreatening nonlegal setting to demonstrate the relationships between case analysis, case synthesis, outlining, and exam taking.

One such demonstration is described in my article, Using Classroom Demonstrations in Familiar Nonlegal Contexts to Introduce New Students to Unfamiliar Concepts of Legal Method and Analysis, 7 Leg. Writing 37 (2001). That article describes in detail a workshop, 60 to 90 minutes in length, in which a classroom instructor can lead students through an overview of case analysis and synthesis, outlining, and essay exam taking. Through a grant from the Institute for Law School Teaching, I have now produced an accompanying videotape, in which a mother and a daughter act out the "cases" that form the basis for parental rule-making regarding the daughter's evening social activities.

The videotape, Rules for Monica, presents four scenes, or cases, in which (1) the daughter, Monica, either arrives home after an evening social outing or requests permission to participate in a social outing and (2) her mother, Carmen, reacts to the daughter's actions or requests. In the first scene, Carmen reacts negatively to Monica's return from a football game and pizza. From Carmen's statements, it is fairly plain that Carmen is concerned as a general policy matter about Monica's sleep and her studies and that Carmen believes that Monica has violated some curfew rule. But what precisely is the holding, and what rule governs Monica's future actions? Did Monica misbehave by going out for pizza after the game, or was it only because she "hung out" at the pizza parlor after finishing her pizza, or did she displease her mother simply by returning after some previously unannounced, bright-line curfew, such as 11 p.m.? Carmen's statements are ambiguous, allowing some debate about the precise meaning of her ruling.

By intermittently viewing the video and pausing it for discussion, students quickly learn that new cases, presenting Carmen's reactions on slightly different facts, help to clarify the ruling in the first case and to add new dimensions to Carmen's initial rulings. By the time students have analyzed and synthesized all four cases, they end up with a policy rationale that is implemented with a two-part rule, qualified by an exception. Some students also read between the lines and infer that Carmen's rules are really driven by her concern for Monica's safety in unsupervised settings and not by her expressed concern for Monica's ability to get enough sleep and finish her homework.

What should students do with these policies, rules, and illustrative cases? The video encourages them to outline the material, organizing the outline around the rules and then illustrating each rule with a brief summary of one or more cases. Even if students have only enough time to begin such an outline, an instructor's example on an overhead projector can drive the lesson home.

Finally, the video invites the instructor to distribute an essay examination that presents new facts raising now familiar issues about Monica's social outings. Armed with the rules in the sample outline and with the analytic reasoning and policy considerations presented in the previous cases, students can present reasonable arguments both for and against the proposition that Monica violated Carmen's rules in the cases presented in the examination.

Following the brief examination period of 10 minutes or so in which students can at least analyze the problem and outline their answers, the instructor can lead the class in discussion about the question.

After this workshop, most students seem to feel a bit less anxious about examinations and better prepared to study for them. They may also understand more concretely that the examinations will not ask them to simply recall particular legal rules or facts that they have studied, but will invite them to apply analytic skills to recognize issues and arguments and to apply past lessons to novel facts, some-times requiring attention to underlying policies when interpreting and applying specific rules.

If you would like a copy of the videotape, e-mail me at charles.calleros [at] asu.edu