Now the students become doers, struggling to calculate their best precedents, to maneuver around the worst, and to advance sound policy arguments. Chapter 2 of On Law in Courts is a magnificent treatment of the fundamentals of case law development, utilizing a series of privacy cases. Chapter 2 contains classic, full-bodied opinions like Roberson v. Rochester Folding Box Co. and Pavesich v. New England Life Ins. Co. We Legal Method teachers, unconstrained by the need to cover substance, can luxuriously dwell on these masterpieces, exploring the judicial art in full and asking multiple questions about philosophy, precedent, policy, principles, rules, holding, dicta, overruling, rhetoric, argumentation, and other fundamentals . Chapter 2 later moves to a series of eleven Kentucky privacy cases.
Students see an ordinary high court developing and applying the common law in ordinary ways.
This is their likely fare in future years. As usual, the cases are edited lightly so students can learn from full judicial products. I culminate the section with a practice exam. Students are challenged to apply the string of privacy cases in a new context, once again calling upon their ability to synthesize case law, to determine the weightiest precedents, to reason by analogy, to choose between arguing from language in the precedents or arguing from their facts or their holdings or their reasons. My final exam is yet another learning opportunity.