Legal Commentary

It's that time of year, so I'm working on my final exams. In my 1L structural constitutional law course I'm giving a take-home exam, as I have done for the last two semesters in this course. My sense with this subject had been that I was reading too much of a rushed exam when I tried to test in three hours what I thought the students should take out of the semester, which made me less confident that the better-prepared students could distinguish themselves consistently.

The biggest challenge has been how to schedule a take-home exam in the midst of the 1Ls' very structured final exam schedule. But overall, I have been happy with this exam format for this particular course. In other courses, though, I find the timed in-class exam more effective for assessing my students. I haven't polled my students formally, but they generally seem pretty split on which format they prefer.

What leads professors to give take-home exams in certain courses but not others? The nature of the subject generally? What a professor wants to test in a particular semester? Whether the course is a 1L or upper-class course? What specific testing goals do professors pursue with a take-home exam that differ from an in-class exam, and how are these goals reflected in the exam itself? And, do some professors object to take-home exams in law school?