Legal Commentary

                I have been teaching Civil Procedure for about five years now, and every time I begin prepping again, I am overcome by a distinct sense of discomfort with my casebook. Of course, I have looked at, and considered using, various civil procedure casebooks (and believe me, they are legion). I am currently using a different casebook from the one I first taught with, and although neither casebook that I?ve used can be said to be notably defective on its own terms, I still get a feeling that is probably familiar to many of us ? the feeling that we wish the book devoted a little more coverage to this, and maybe a little less to that? that the editing of one case were a little more generous, or a little less so? that it took a different approach to a particular subject... Often, I cast about for supplementary materials ? perhaps a novel, combined with a ?documentary companion? ? and then usually give up, as the amount of material becomes far too voluminous and unwieldy for a one-semester, four-credit course.

                Of course, these are common sentiments and do not necessarily undermine the value of using casebooks in general. So why the provocative title of this post? More after the jump?.

                I have started to think that this discomfort with the books we are using is precisely an indication that we are not sufficiently willing to ?think outside the box? with respect to course materials ? or perhaps more cynically, the we are not willing to do the work that it would take to compile an original set of materials that would allow us to teach the course exactly as we would like. But maybe this is exactly what we all should do. I am unaware of any other graduate-level field of study in which faculty are so dependent on textbooks for their teaching (with teachers? manuals, no less! What is this, elementary school?). And if we don?t like the exact selection of cases in the case book, or how those cases are edited, or if we wish to add supplementary material, doesn?t it just make more sense to put our own materials together, edit our own cases, and provide our own supplemental articles, documents, etc.? As individuals with the title of ?professor,? shouldn?t we be capable of doing this, and perhaps even feel obligated to do so ? to put some thought into how our course is assembled and to put our own ?spin? on it? This approach certainly would save our students a chunk of change, at least in most courses?.

                Are we simply being lazy? Believe me, I can see how difficult it would be to put together a civil procedure course from scratch, especially for someone like me who does not write in the field and does not consider herself a specialist. But is the level of difficulty an excuse for poor pedagogy, especially for someone who, like me, has been teaching the course long enough to have an idea of what I?d like to emphasize and how I?d like to go about it? Of course, we could all still consult the casebooks to assist in our course prep, though I am fairly sure this is not the use that their publishers (or authors) would intend for those complimentary copies.

                I suppose if no one used casebooks, they would stop being written, and then something might be lost. The wise folks who place their accumulated knowledge and expertise into those casebooks might not bother to put similar energy into treatises or other such volumes that would not hold out the possibility of substantial royalties from wide law school distribution. Then we would lose a valuable source of reference material, if you will. And I will admit that the Civil Procedure casebooks I have used have been enormously helpful for prioritizing, synthesizing, and all around just getting my bearings as a new prawf. But I am not sure that I can continue to justify using them on any basis except, of course, my need to find time to write something besides powerpoints and lecture notes ?. Well, then again, maybe I'll assemble my own materials next year....