The first year of law school has traditionally served as a sort of boot camp designed to “toughen up” undisciplined students through a demanding regimen of instruction using the Socratic method. At least that was the model when I attended the University of Texas School of Law four decades ago. By forcing students to break down and question every assumption, and by insisting that students use logical arguments—instead of emotions—to prove their points, law professors taught their classes how to “think like a lawyer.”
Part of the first-year pedagogy involved learning how to argue either side of an issue—marshaling the facts and law to reach opposite conclusions. Not only does this instill a deeper understanding of the relevant subject matter, it also teaches a skill essential to being an effective lawyer. Practicing lawyers don’t know in advance what side of an issue their client will be on, and being able to anticipate the other side’s argument makes one a more effective advocate or counselor. Moot court competitors—like forensic debaters—have to be able to present either side of the case with equal alacrity.
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Case in point: At UT law school, Professor Richard Alpert gave his 1L Constitutional Law I students a final exam consisting of half multiple-choice questions and half an essay responding to a prompt. The prompt asked students to assume they were advising the Governor of Kansas regarding the legality of segregated schools, prior to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Students were asked to write a memo, no more than 1,000 words, raising the best legal arguments. Given the sensitivity of matters relating to race, it is unlikely that a white professor would have used such a prompt for an essay exam. Professor Alpert, however, is African-American.
After the exam was over, leftist students began to whine. One student, a white SJW, wrote an email to the class objecting that the question left him “shocked and disgusted.” The student encouraged his classmates to complain to the law school’s administration, asserting that “No one should have been forced to write an essay defending segregation.” Another white student defended Professor Alpert’s essay question as a legitimate pedagogical exercise.
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The UT administration quickly assumed the fetal position. Within days, Professor Alpert sent an apology to the class, reproduced in full below
Plenty of people like to dismiss stories of “campus craziness” as if they have no impact beyond Academia. But remember that these are future lawyers. Would you want one of these “forget ‘duty to my client,’ I’ll only argue the side I believe is morally right” kids as your attorney? And part of arguing your case is understanding, and anticipating, the best arguments for the other side, so that you can counter them. Do you want a lawyer whose responds to the other side’s arguments with “I can’t even!”?
