Law School Innovation

A True Innovator: Stanton Wheeler, 1930-2007

This past Friday, Yale Law professor Stanton Wheeler died in New Haven.   His influence both on students and cross-disciplinary scholarship was profound.  Prof. Wheeler came to Yale Law from the Harvard sociology faculty in 1968; a non-lawyer, he was one of the first "pure" Ph.D.'s to teach in law school.  His focus was largely on criminal subjects; his book with Austin Sarat, Sitting in Judgment:  The Sentencing of White Collar Criminals, remains one of the best studies of how, exactly, sentencing disparities come about as judges look at individual defendants.

From 1989-1990, I was Professor Wheeler's research assistant.  I put together material for a class on music law and worked with him on other projects.  The whole time, I was primarily watching his mind work.  More specifically, I was watching his eye.  The same way an artist has an eye for shape or color, Prof. Wheeler had an eye for that meaningful intersection between law and person, where the true effects of law become known.  For example, one project we worked on involved New York City's cabaret laws.  Those laws dictated that no more than three musicians could play at one time in many establishments.  We followed that law to where it mattered, to the place where musicians had to either work with or around that (somewhat bizarre) restriction.  On the one hand, it meant that trios predominated in New York clubs, and that sidemen had to be chosen carefully; on the other, it explained the existence of illegal clubs (featuring larger bands) in New York well after the end of prohibition.  The law shaped choices, he showed me, and even framed the sound of Miles Davis.

He may not have been a lawyer, but I have yet to meet someone else who so clearly saw what was real about the law.  I hope that his lessons live on in myself and others as the best legacy any teacher can leave.

-- Mark Osler

Just Released: Law School Leadership Strategies

Law School Leadership Strategies: Top Deans on Benchmarking Success, Incorporating Feedback from Faculty and Students,and Building the Endowment outlines the role of today's educational leaders and discusses the current state and future shape of law school management. Details at Law Librarian Blog. -- Joe Hodnicki

Georgia State Hosts the Conference on the Future of Legal Education, February 20-23, 2008

Excepted from the conference website:

This conference will take as its point of departure a highly critical report on American legal education recently issued by the prestigious Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: Educating Lawyers. The report calls for fundamental changes in both the structure and content of legal education in the United States to integrate realistic and real-life lawyering experiences throughout the curriculum, and challenges American law schools to produce lawyers who are not only smart problem-solvers but also responsible professionals committed to service of both clients and the larger society.

The conference will ask two related questions:

• First, if one was charged with starting a new law school, how would one implement the Carnegie recommendations? What would the budget look like? How would the faculty be recruited and structured? What would one want the student body to look like? What would be the curriculum?
• Second, how would an existing law school transform itself into the kind of law school envisioned by the Carnegie Report? What would a 5 year transition plan look like?

For further information, visit the conference website.

-- Joe Hodnicki