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How one teaches is necessarily influenced by
what one perceives as the goals of legal education. Certainly, the primary
goal is to prepare you to be effective lawyers, judges and policy makers.
At a minimum, that includes helping you to develop the ability to:
*think critically, precisely, and clearly;
*express yourself succinctly; *understand the expressions of others; particularly
those who are different than yourself; *understand human nature, particularly the motivations
and needs of your clients, opponents, jurors, judges, etc.;
*use the techniques of the legal profession to
represent a client in general matters, to recognize where you lack competence,
and to comply with accepted ethical standards
While it is hardly arguable that preparing you to
be an effective lawyer is an important goal, it is not the only one. Many
of you will be law makers and policy makers, thus training you to understand
the values implicit in the law is an important goal. Another important
goal is to train you to address in a systematic manner your social responsibilities
as an individual lawyer and your collective responsibilities as a member
of the bar. This includes your responsibility to assist your community
in maintaining an accessible, effective and socially responsible legal
system.
Thus, my objective is to help you continue the
process of meeting those goals. The primary focus of my teaching method
is to provide you an educationally sound introduction
to Bioterrorism and the Law. Furthermore, given the impact race
and gender have on the law (and vice
versa) my approach to teaching is to explicitly explore
diversity issues as a component of all aspects of the course.
An educationally sound legal pedagogy is a philosophy
of legal education which is grounded in known educational theory. To be
so grounded, an educationally sound legal pedagogy:
*trains you to solve legal problems by providing you
with working program for solving problem;
*provides you with the opportunity to excel;
*provides you with criteria for excelling and specifically what progress you
are making; *provides you with the opportunity to practice
each new skill throughout the learning process; and,
*provides you with adequate instruction on how
to study for law school and this course.
Thus, it is my goal, through an educationally sound
pedagogy, to provide you with an opportunity to learn and to excel.
Bioterrorism and the Law teaching objectives are those objectives
that relate directly to the substantive area of the law. They can be divided
into two categories: knowledge and skills/abilities. The objectives of
this course are:
*to provide you with a basic understanding of the
law as it relates to Bioterrorism;
*to provide you information about selected principles
of black letter law and significant issues (or unsettled
matters);
*to help you understand the value implications of
legal choices;
*to help you develop and improve your analytical
skills including understanding, issue-spotting, problem-solving, judgment
and synthesis;
*to help you to understand the importance of inference
and intuition in problem definition and problem-solving; and
*emphasize that "personal neutrality" is not necessary
to scholarly objectivity.
C. Teaching Objectives #3: Diversity-Conscious
Legal Pedagogy
Class, disability, gender, race and sexual preference
issues are such an integral part of our society (and the legal profession)
that we often overlook how the law affects individuals with different backgrounds
differently. In a diverse society, such as ours, awareness of how different
class, disability, gender race and sexual preference are effected differently
by the law is essential. This is true whether the person is a defendant,
plaintiff, lawyer, juror, judge or law student. Diversity awareness should
be a normative part of the value system of the practicing attorney. An
education which is aware of diversity:
*explores how racial, ethnic, gender, class, disability,
cultural and sexual orientation are related to and impacted by the structure
of law. In particular, it illuminates the connection between racial and
gender issues and the values, interests, rules and theories that appear
to be neutral but, are in fact a representation of the values of the dominant
culture;
*broadly frames classroom discussion so that we
step outside the doctrinal bounds of the law to critique the rules and legal practice; and,
*focuses discussion on problems, interests
and values that reflect a broad range of perspectives
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