The Law School has always fostered unconventional approaches to teaching the law, and last semester was no exception. In one instance, Pamela Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, welcomed students into her home to discuss recent Supreme Court decisions. And in another, Professor George Fisher, Robert E. Paradise Faculty Scholar and Academic Associate Dean for Research, sponsored students who created their own seminar on legal ethics.

Learning Ethics from Classmates

The seminar is 15 minutes past break time, yet none of the law students complains.

 “Professors never get away with going over like this,” remarks Professor George Fisher. It’s technically his class, but he has been silent for the previous hour. The evening’s instructor is a student, David Kovick ’04, who also assigned the discussion readings. 

This ethics class is not following the usual Socratic approach with a professor questioning students. Instead, a different student leads it every week. Indeed, the idea for the course came from students. 

Last spring, Kovick, Catherine Crump ’04, and Dan McConkie ’04 found themselves often talking over ethical dilemmas they faced in their clinical work. These discussions were so useful—and interesting—that they asked Fisher if he would help to organize a student-taught ethics seminar. 

On this particular evening, Kovick’s topic is whether negotiations outside of court impose any unique demands on lawyers. “You mean, is it okay to lie?” one participant remarks wryly. Another student answers that the lawyer’s first obligation is to his or her own client. Students go back and forth, drawing out guidelines to follow. 

But the lesson isn’t so much the rules as the process. “You learn that the answers to your ethical dilemmas don’t just come from books,” Kovick says. “They come from raising the questions with your colleagues.”

Homemade Pizza and the Supreme Court

Twenty law students gather around a crackling fire while munching on homemade pizza. It’s a festive gathering, but the conversation is more elevated than the most hightoned dinner party. 

The class, “Supreme Court Term,” is meeting as usual at Professor Pam Karlan’s house. The students flip through their well-marked copies of two decisions from the previous Court term—State Farm v. Campbell and Ewing v. California. “They can throw you in jail for life, but they can’t take all your money,” remarks Melvin Priester ’04, referring to the Court’s decision in Ewing to uphold the California law permitting a lifetime sentence for a defendant who had committed a third felony (the theft of some golf clubs), while rejecting $145 million in punitive damages in State Farm. 

Karlan responds, elaborating on the nuances of the 8th Amendment’s wording about excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. For every session she assigns two decisions that, when juxtaposed, raise deeper questions about the Constitution. 

Still, the class is as much about reveling in the law as it is about studying it. “The setting puts people in a different mood about learning,” says Ray Bennett ’04. “It turns discussion of the law into a social activity.”