Reading Law

Reading Law

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  • Author: Antonin Scalia
  • Publisher: West Publishing Company
  • ISBN: 9780314275554
  • Category : Judicial process
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

In this groundbreaking book, Scalia and Garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases. Is a burrito a sandwich? Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you using a gun in a drug transaction? The authors grapple with these and dozens of equally curious questions while explaining the most principled, lucid, and reliable techniques for deriving meaning from authoritative texts. Meanwhile, the book takes up some of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence. What, exactly, is textualism? Why is strict construction a bad thing? What is the true doctrine of originalism? And which is more important: the spirit of the law, or the letter? The authors write with a well-argued point of view that is definitive yet nuanced, straightforward yet sophisticated.


Reading Like a Lawyer

Reading Like a Lawyer

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  • Author: Ruth Ann McKinney
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9781611631104
  • Category : Law
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Please note that the supplemental materials website has moved to caplaw.com/rll Studies show that the reading skills your students have developed in college may not be enough to ensure their success in law school. Reading law requires professionals to understand the purpose of their reading, to form and express opinions about what they're reading, to apply legal logic, to read with energy, and to adopt sophisticated reading habits that are unique to the study of law. Written for law students, pre-law students, paralegals, and others interested in developing these reading skills, Reading Like a Lawyer teaches each of the following critical legal reading skills: how to read legal casebooks and engage in class, as well as how to use your reading to prepare for exams; how to read published court cases outside of a casebook; how to read legislative material; and how to read online effectively. Based on sound educational research, each chapter includes exercises that challenge students to apply what that chapter has taught. A website accompanies the book and includes additional readings (e.g., on logic) plus opportunities for students to gain confidence by testing their own thoughts against those of the author. For faculty, Reading Like a Lawyer includes a separate teacher's manual and a faculty website with a powerpoint that mirrors the book's principle lessons.


Freedom's Law

Freedom's Law

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  • Author: Ronald Dworkin
  • Publisher: OUP Oxford
  • ISBN: 0198265573
  • Category : Law
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 438

Dworkin's important book is a collection of essays which discuss almost all of the great constitutional issues of the last two decades, including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, homosexuality, pornography, and free speech. Dworkin offers a consistently liberal view of the Constitution and argues that fidelity to it and to law demands that judges make moral judgments. He proposes that we all interpret the abstract language of the Constitution by reference to moral principles about political decency and justice. His 'moral reading' therefore brings political morality into the heart of constitutional law. The various chapters of this book were first published separately; now drawn together they provide the reader with a rich, full-length treatment of Dworkin's general theory of law.


Reading Law

Reading Law

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  • Author: James W. Watts
  • Publisher: A&C Black
  • ISBN: 0567193330
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 191

Watts here argues that conventions of oral rhetoric were adapted to shape the literary form and contents of the Pentateuch. The large-scale structure-stories introducing lists of laws that conclude with divine sanctions-reproduces a common ancient strategy for persuasion. The laws' use of direct address, historical motivations and frequent repetitions serve rhetorical ends, and even the legal contradictions seem designed to appeal to competing constituencies. The instructional speeches of God and Moses reinforce the persuasive appeal by characterizing God as a just ruler and Moses as a faithful scribe. The Pentateuch was designed to persuade Persian-period Judaeans that this Torah should define their identity as Israel.


Reading Law Forward

Reading Law Forward

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  • Author: Peter Charles Hoffer
  • Publisher: University Press of Kansas
  • ISBN: 0700635084
  • Category : Law
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 246

In the current legal climate where “everyone is an originalist,” conventional wisdom suggests that judges merely find law, rather than make it. Orthodox common-law jurisprudence makes fidelity to the past the central goal and criterion. By contrast, the alternative approach, “reading the law forward”—what some call judicial pragmatism or consequentialism—is viewed as heretical. Rather than mount a theoretical defense of a forward-thinking jurisprudence, legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer offers an empirical study of how this approach to constitutional interpretation actually leads to better law. Reading Law Forward looks at seven judges who exemplify this alternative jurisprudence: John Marshall, Joseph Story, Lemuel Shaw, Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, and Stephen G. Breyer. “In the hands of America’s leading judges, a jurisprudence of reading law forward enabled courts to respond to the challenges of changing conditions. It kept law fresh. It promoted and still promotes the growth of a democratic society,” Hoffer convincingly argues.


Reading Law as Narrative

Reading Law as Narrative

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  • Author: Assnat Bartor
  • Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
  • ISBN: 1589834801
  • Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 231

Casuistic or case law in the Pentateuch deals with real human affairs; each case law entails a compressed story that can encourage reader engagement with seemingly "dry" legal text. This book is the first to present an interpretive method integrating biblical law, jurisprudence, and literary theory, reflecting the current "law and literature" school within legal studies. It identifies the narrative elements that exist in the laws of the Pentateuch, exposes the narrative techniques employed by the authors, and discovers the poetics of biblical law, thus revealing new or previously unconsidered aspects of the relationship between law and narrative in the Bible


Law, Literature and the Power of Reading

Law, Literature and the Power of Reading

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  • Author: Suneel Mehmi
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1000428621
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 306

At the intersection of law, literature and history, this book interrogates how a dominant contemporary idea of law emerged out of specific ideas of reading in the nineteenth century. Reading shapes our identities. How we read shapes who we are. Reading also shapes our conceptions of what the law is, because the law is also a practice of reading. Focusing on the works of key Victorian writers closely associated with legal practice, this book addresses the way in which the identity of the reader of law has been modelled on the identity of the political elite. At the same time, it shows how other readers of law have been marginalised. The book thus shows how a construction of the law has emerged from the ordering of a power that discriminates between different readers and readings. More specifically, and in response to the emerging media of photography – and, with it, potentially subversive ideas of exposure and visibility – the book shows that there have been dominant, hidden and unrecognised guides to legal reading and to legal thought. And in making these visible, the book also aims to make them contestable. This secret history of law will appeal to legal historians, legal theorists, those working at the intersection of law and literature and others with interests in law and the visual.


Reading Like a Lawyer

Reading Like a Lawyer

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  • Author: Ruth Ann McKinney
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9781594600326
  • Category : Law
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

The ability to read law well is a critical, indispensable skill that can make or break the academic career of any aspiring lawyer. In the first semester of law school alone, for example, it is not unusual for law students to read well over 2,500 pages in their assigned casebooks. This reading is challenging not only because of its sheer volume, but also because it is comprised largely of material that is unfamiliar to even the best-educated pre-law students. The reading is critical because it forms the foundation upon which all classroom discussion is built'and upon which exam content ultimately rests.Fortunately, the ability to read law well (quickly and accurately) is not a gift that you're either born with or are not born with. Rather, reading law well is a skill that can be acquired through knowledge and practice'an ability that can be masted, improved, and perfected by any motivated student. The sooner the student masters these skills, the greater the rewards.Using seven specific reading strategies, reinforced with hands-on exercises at the end of each chapter, this book shows you how you can read law like expert law students and expert lawyers do'efficiently, effectively, powerfully, and confidently. Part I introduces the reader to the fundamentals of legal reasoning upon which law-based reading builds; Part II introduces the reader to concrete strategies for reading effectively in law school; and Part III teaches strategies for reading law outside of the law school context.Law students, pre-law students, and any professional whose work touches on law will all find Reading Like a Lawyer to be an engaging, easy-to-read guide to the complex and powerful world of law-based reading.


Reading Like a Lawyer

Reading Like a Lawyer

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  • Author: Ruth Ann McKinney
  • Publisher: Carolina Academic Press LLC
  • ISBN: 9781531024864
  • Category : Law
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

The supplemental materials website containing feedback to the end-of-chapter exercises has been changed to www.caplaw.com/rll From Reading Like a Lawyer: "Just as storytelling is rooted in a rich oral history, and art is rooted in a rich visual history, law is rooted in a rich history of the written word. . . . the development of law rests primarily on written precedent and written rules housed in centuries of court opinions and statute books. To be understood, law has to be read, and read well." Written in an engaging style and full of real-life examples, Reading Like a Lawyer approaches the topic of reading law with contagious enthusiasm and an abiding respect for the importance of learning to read law well. Now in its third edition, Reading Like a Lawyer enjoys a fresh new look and continues to include practice exercises at the end of each chapter and an accompanying website that allows students to test their growing knowledge about legal reading against that of the author. Written for law students, pre-law students, paralegals, and the public, Reading Like a Lawyer uses active learning principles to help readers adapt their incoming reading skills to the skills needed to succeed in law: how to read legal casebooks and engage confidently in class; how to use assigned reading and class time to prepare for exams; how to read published court cases outside of a casebook; how to read legislative material (statutes) accurately; and how to make wise reading choices online. For faculty, Reading Like a Lawyer includes a separate teacher's manual with ideas for using the book and its examples with individuals and groups, a list of additional cases for more student practice, and access to a Powerpoint they can use to illustrate the book's principle lessons. Included on the American Bar Association's "Summer Syllabus: List of Books to Read Before the Start of Law School," Student Lawyer magazine, June 2019, Reading Like a Lawyer can be assigned in a class setting or as a recommended summer read, or can be read independently by anyone who has ever wondered, "how do lawyers read the law?"


Strategies for Legal Case Reading and Vocabulary Development

Strategies for Legal Case Reading and Vocabulary Development

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  • Author: Susan M. Reinhart
  • Publisher: University of Michigan Press ELT
  • ISBN: 9780472032020
  • Category : Law
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Many law students feel that they are learning a new language during their first year of law school. For those students who are not native English speakers this process can be even more overwhelming. Strategies for Legal Case Reading and Vocabulary Developmentwas written for just these students. The goal of the text is to help students develop the case reading and vocabulary strategies they will need to compete and succeed in an American law school. Strategies for Legal Case Reading and Vocabulary Developmentbegins with an overview of the American legal system and relevant research and guidelines relating to case reading. The book is divided into sections on common law, statutory law, and constitutional law. Approximately twenty cases (some abridged) and eight readings are included in the text. Questions for Discussion follow each case to help students prepare to actively participate in class case discussions. Additional features include hypotheticals (often posed by law professors), vocabulary tasks, and short writing assignments.