AMH 3558, Fall 2000

Final Exam

You must do both questions. Each answer should be roughly 5-7 pages, as before, I will accept papers that are slightly longer or slightly shorter. However, a paper of less than 4 pages, or one of more than 9 pages is presumptively too long or too short.

The papers are both due in my office on Thursday, December 14 at 2pm. Each question is worth a maximum of 20 points.

First question:

Read the essays by Bok, Tushnet, and Posner on pages 550-57 in Hall. They are all criticisms of law schools, law, and the legal profession, written in the 1980s. We’ve seen criticisms (and discussions of the purpose of the law) before, from the first half of the nineteenth century. Go and re-read the materials in Hall, pages 305-16, and compare the comments there to the comments by Bok and the others. Are the criticisms similar or different? Does it seems like the roles of lawyers and law have changed over the 150 years that separate the two groups of readings, or does it seem like the roles are mostly the same? Write an essay analyzing the different essays (briefly) and explaining whether you find them different, the same, or somewhere in between, and why. Note, I am not interested in having you tell me that one group (or one essay) is better or worse. This is not an assignment that wants you to explain whether you like lawyers, hate lawyers, or anything of that sort. I want you to see if you think that attitudes towards lawyers and law have changed, or not.

Second question:

Re-read the Path of Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes (there is a copy of the essay in the Hall book, and in the Essential Holmes. My preference is that you will use the copy in the Essential Holmes. Please indicate in your essay which version you rely on.) After having re-read the essay, consider which of the historical studies we read that came closest to Holmes’ ideas, and write an essay explaining why you picked the one you did. You should make specific references to the material in the historical study, and to Holmes’ essay, in your answer.