Beyond Learning Objectives: A Taxonomy to Maximize Outcomes

Hillary Burgess

Charlotte School of Law; Appalachian School of Law

January 14, 2017

Abstract:

If Paul Revere were part of the contemporary legal academy, he might ride out of Boston warning the legal academy, “Outcome Measurements are Coming!” The shift from past accreditation standards to current and future accreditation standards requires such warning and preparation. It is a fundamental shift that could cajole law schools to fundamentally revise their curricula, courses, teaching methods, and assessments. This article will provide a framework of learning objectives that will help law schools revise curricula and courses to meet the coming outcome measurement accreditation standards in the new legal education marketplace.

In the past, the ABA has accredited law schools based on inputs. Specifically, law schools needed to attract a certain caliber of student as measured by GPA and LSAT score. Currently, the ABA has moved toward accreditation standards based on outcome measurements rather than inputs. Law schools will no longer be able to provide curricula as the primary means for judging the quality of the educational program. Rather, schools are going to have to produce data that students met the learning objectives of the curricula. This shift is subtle, yet fundamental. It is no longer acceptable to simply teach the learning objectives. Students must also learn. And law schools must be able to prove that students learned. With the recent decline in law school applications, faculty are faced with a student body that is less and less prepared to begin a traditional legal curriculum. 

Thus, law schools must provide more training and prove more results with students who struggle more. And, this task must be done in an economically viable manner. This “new normal” might seem to present the academy with an insurmountable challenge. However, with curricula that are optimally structured to follow the natural progression of human learning, this otherwise overwhelming challenge becomes possible. 

This article provides a Taxonomy of Cognitive Legal Learning Objectives and Outcome Measurements. The taxonomy can help both the ABA and schools develop standardized language used to communicate learning and assessment objectives. The taxonomy provides a guide as to how to write curricular and course learning objectives. 

The taxonomy also guides law schools to structure curricula and courses to meet these learning objectives to create positive outcome measurements. Specifically, by creating curricula that mimics the natural progression of adult human learning, law students will be able to learn more efficiently and law professors of all experience levels can avoid misalignment between instruction, learning, and assessment. Additionally, by setting learning objectives that internalize the shift to measuring what students should be able to do (the measurable outcomes), the learning objectives could more closely align with measuring and proving student learning. 

In this article, I discuss what learning objectives, assessment objectives, and outcome measurements are and how to write them. Then I review existing taxonomies of learning objectives and discuss why the legal academy could benefit from a discipline-specific taxonomy of cognitive legal learning objectives. I then provide an introduction to Taxonomy of Cognitive Legal Learning Objectives and Outcome Measurements with descriptions of each of the general levels of legal learning objectives. Detailed descriptions of each dimension of the taxonomy will follow in subsequent papers, as will teaching and assessment tips that address specific and discreet learning objectives.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 49

Disponível em: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2898648>. Acesso em 2 fev. 2017.

Liberal Internationalism and the Populist Backlash

Eric A. Posner University of Chicago - Law School

January 11, 2017

U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 606

Abstract:

A populist backlash around the world has targeted international law and legal institutions. Populists see international law as a device used by global elites to dominate policymaking and benefit themselves at the expense of the common people. This turn of events exposes the hollowness at the core of mainstream international law scholarship, for which the expansion of international law and the erosion of sovereignty have always been a forgone conclusion. But international law is dependent on public trust in technocratic rule-by-elites, which has been called into question by a series of international crises.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 18

Disponível em: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2898357>. Acesso em 2 fev. 2017.

SOBRE PLOMEROS Y ARQUITECTOS SOCIALES: ELEMENTOS Y PROBLEMAS DEL FALLO DE LA CORTE INTERNACIONAL DE JUSTICIA SOBRE LA INMUNIDAD JURISDICCIONAL DE LOS ESTADOS

POR CARLOS ESPÓSITO

Este análisis de la sentencia de la Corte Internacional de Justicia en el caso de las Inmunidades de Jurisdicción se lleva a cabo en dos partes. La primera presenta brevemente los elementos básicos del fallo de la Corte en el caso; la segunda identifica y discute algunos problemas que surgen de la decisión. Estos incluyen el carácter jurídico de la regla de la inmunidad de los Estados, los límites de la metodología positivista para establecer la práctica de los Estados como prueba de derecho internacional consuetudinario y sus excepciones, así como los problemas de una aproximación estrictamente procedimental para considerar una posible excepción a la inmunidad por serias violaciones al derecho internacional y al derecho internacional humanitario. El comentario concluye con una breve evaluación general de la sentencia, su influencia y el desarrollo futuro del derecho de las inmunidades de los Estados por los tribunales nacionales.

Carlos Espósito es abogado por la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Doctor en Derecho, cum laude, por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, donde se desempeña como catedrático de Derecho Internacional Público.

Disponível em: <http://www.revistaladi.com.ar/numero3-esposito/>. Acesso em 2 fev. 2017.

Brexit at BIICL

The future of UK membership in the European Union has given rise to intense debate in a number of fora. Since its July 2015 event with Herbert Smith Freehills on Coping with a UK withdrawal from the EU in Practice, the Institute continues to provide a forum for debate on the impact of a potential Brexit. All of our activities on Brexit can now be accessed on our dedicated Brexit Activities webpage. This page provides links to all upcoming and past events, and includes a number of items for download, such as summaries of events, professional and public affairs pieces, and reports from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Rule of Law for which our Bingham Centre acts as Secretariat. We will continue to update this webpage, including with a number of upcoming Brexit Fact Sheets on various topics, such as Article 50, migration and civil justice. Watch this space!

Disponível em: <http://www.biicl.org/brexit>. Acesso em: 29 jan. 2017.

Yale Law School Global Constitutionalism Seminar, E-Book Volumes 1-5, 2016

Judith Resnik , Yale University - Law School; Rosalie Silberman Abella , Government of Canada - Supreme Court of Canada; Marta Cartabia , Constitutional Court of Italy; Manuel Cepeda-Espinosa , Constitutional Court of Colombia; Brenda Hale , Government of the United Kingdom - The Supreme Court; Amy Kapczynski , Yale University - Law School; Helen Keller , European Court of Human Rights; Harold Hongju Koh , Yale Law School; Douglas A. Kysar , Yale University - Law School; Douglas NeJaime , University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law; Robert Post , Yale Law School; András Sajó , European Court of Human Rights; Reva Siegel , Yale University - Law School; Patrick Weil , Yale University - Law School; John Fabian Witt , Yale University - Law School

2016

Yale Law School Global Constitutionalism Seminar, E-Book Volumes 1-5, 2016 

UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 16-56

Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 566

Abstract:

For the first time, five volumes of constitutional case law and commentary provided for the seminar on Global Constitutionalism (a Part of the Gruber Program on Global Justice and Women’s Rights) at Yale Law School have been published to enable open access. The five chapters in the 2016 Volume, Acts of State, Acts of God, address Sovereign Immunity of Foreign States and Their Officials (exploring when and how courts respond to claims of horrific wrongdoing conducted in the name of the state); Prisons, Punishments, and Rights (focusing on the relationship between the law of sentencing and the law of prisons, including why and when courts have a role to play in deciding the forms that punishment takes); Constitutional Emergencies (tracking debates about the judicial role in responding to crises in the environment, public health, the economy, and when proposing to exile citizens); Religious Accommodation and Equality (examining claims that religious belief should permit deviation from legal duties required of other members of the polity through generally applicable laws); and Blasphemy and Religious Speech (evaluating how commitments to freedom of expression either constrain or license state responses to blasphemy, defined as speech that violates the dignity of God and more recently speech that violates the dignity of religion and religious groups).

Also just published is the volume, The Reach of Rights, focusing on the crossing of borders — by migrants searching for safety, by internet technologies disseminating information, by governments seeking to enhance national security, and by courts analyzing legal claims and crafting remedies. Its chapters include Migrants, Citizens, and Status (with cases addressing claims of non-nationals challenging the power of nation-states to make migration a crime; to disrupt citizen-families through deportation; to link access to health, welfare, and employment to citizenship status; and to discriminate in the distribution of benefits among kinds of migrants); Constitutional Rights to State-Subsidized Services (exploring governments’ relationship to individuals in the context of “social rights” and individuals asking courts to mandate that governments provide services as a constitutional imperative); The EU, the ECHR, Constitutional Pluralism, and Federations (reviewing the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU’s) 2014 ruling that the draft European Union (EU) accession agreement to the European Convention on Human Rights was not compatible with EU law and more generally issues of constitutional pluralism and the interactions among courts in federated and quasi-federated states); Extraterritoriality and Human Rights (considering how fundamental rights alter the obligations of nation-states to individuals, within and beyond their borders); and Extraterritoriality, Privacy, and Security (analyzing CJEU’s 2014 ruling on “the right to be forgotten”).

A third volume, Sources of Law and of Rights, includes chapters on Surveillance and National Security (exploring how the intersection of new technologies and concerns for national security affect constitutional commitments to privacy); Religion as a Source of Law (looking at whether claims of right sourced in religion have a distinctive status in constitutional democracies); Judicial Enforcement of International Human Rights (asking about whether and how international human rights are incorporated in national and supranational jurisprudence); Equality in Democracy: Legislatures, Courts, and Quotas (exploring efforts in many jurisdictions to make good on the promise of equal citizenship through measures known as “positive action,” aiming to promote the inclusion of groups that have historically been disadvantaged); and Constitutional Constraints on the Power to Punish (considering whether and how constitutions place boundaries on sentencing decisions crafted by legislative and executive branches and imposed by judges).

The fourth volume, Governments’ Authority, takes up several interrelated questions of courts’ roles in constitutional orders. Its chapters include Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments (with case law from many jurisdictions on how and why constitutional amendments can be “unconstitutional”); Puzzles of State Identity, Privatization, and Constitutional Authority (looking at governments’ decisions to outsource some of its activities — either to private entities or to other governments); Privatization and Regulation (presenting another aspect of the public/private mélange, namely the outsourcing of executive, legislative, and judicial functions, including policy-making, decision-making, and standard-setting); Innovation in Public Law Remedies (analyzing innovative remedies that courts have shaped in response to constitutional failures of other branches of government); and The Enforcement of International Law, (analyzing enforcement of international law and the role of courts in interpreting and implementing international obligations).

The fifth volume, Law’s Borders, raises fundamental questions about the contours and content of law in times of war and in times of peace, including which national, transnational, and international institutions have what authority to make decisions for and determine the rights of individuals. Its chapters include Targeting, Detention, and Punishment: Problems in the Relationship of War and Crime (with cases on “targeting” individuals that a country perceives to be its enemies, and exploring how parallel the rules governing the detention of opponents in war ought to be to the prosecution of criminals in peacetime); (Dis)uniformity of Rights in Federations and Unions (looking at when subnational rules — on abortion or prisoner voting, for example — are permitted to vary from the larger regime through doctrines such as the margin of appreciation); Constitutional Pluralism and Constitutional Conflicts (also looking at conflicts, tensions, and coordination among courts and the autonomy and interdependences); International Investment Law and Arbitration Amidst Global Change (reflecting on the development of diverse institutions regulating transnational actors and mediating conflicts); and Future(s): The Sustainability of Transnational, National, and International Courts (with critical commentary on the plausibility and desirability of international, transnational, and comparative law).

Number of Pages in PDF File: 461

Disponível em: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2869857>. Acesso em: 23 jan. 2017.

Liberal Internationalism and the Populist Backlash

Eric A. Posner 

University of Chicago - Law School

January 11, 2017

U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 606

Abstract:

A populist backlash around the world has targeted international law and legal institutions. Populists see international law as a device used by global elites to dominate policymaking and benefit themselves at the expense of the common people. This turn of events exposes the hollowness at the core of mainstream international law scholarship, for which the expansion of international law and the erosion of sovereignty have always been a forgone conclusion. But international law is dependent on public trust in technocratic rule-by-elites, which has been called into question by a series of international crises.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 18

Disponívem em: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2898357>. Acesso em 16 jan. 2017.

From International Law to Jessup's Transnational Law, from Transnational Law to Transnational Legal Orders

Gregory Shaffer

University of California, Irvine School of Law

Carlos Coye

University of California, Irvine School of Law

January 6, 2017

UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2017-02

Abstract:

In Jessup’s 1956 Storrs Lecture he defined transnational law as “all law which regulates actions or events that transcend national frontiers,” which includes public international law, private international law, and “other rules which do not wholly fit into such standard categories.” Considerable recent scholarship on transnational law has focused on that residual category of “other rules” and their “private” character. There has, however, been a revolution in international law itself since 1956, reflected in a proliferation of international institutions, international courts, treaties, and so-called “soft law” technologies of governance. This chapter assesses the role of international law in the creation of what can be viewed as “transnational legal orders” that penetrate and imbue state law, shape social identity, and inform public and private legal practice. International law, this chapter contends, is even a more important shaper of the transnational than in Jessup’s time, and, in turn is shaped by it.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 14

Disponível em: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2895159>. Acesso em: 10 jan. 2017.

Legal Pluralism As a Human Right and/or As a Human Rights Violation

Eva Brems 

Ghent University-Universiteit Gent

December 29, 2016

Forthcoming, Giselle Corradi, Eva Brems and Mark Goodale (eds), Human Rights Encounter Legal Pluralism, Oñati International Series in Law and Society, Hart Publishing (2017), ISBN: 9781849467612 

Abstract:

International human rights law is a complex multilayered reality that can be analysed in terms of legal pluralism. The paper submits that it is highly relevant for scholars of human rights law to study human rights law as an integrated whole: looking amongst others at issues of consistency and alignment as well as divergence, at gaps in the overall protection system, and at all kinds of cross-cutting or isolated dynamics.

One such inconsistency in international human rights law concerns the attitude towards the recognition of legal pluralism, in the sense of an official legal system making room for a system of ‘traditional law’, a term which I intend to cover indigenous law, customary law as well as religious law. There is one field of international human rights law (the global regime concerning the rights of indigenous peoples, as laid down in ILO Convention 169 (1989) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries and in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007)) that considers such a recognition as mandatory, and non-recognition as a violation of human rights. And there is another field of international human rights law (ECtHR case law) that considers such a recognition as a violation of human rights. The paper details each of these positions before examining whether their co-existence within international human rights law is sustainable or not.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 18

Disponível em: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2891284>. Acesso em: 2 jan. 2017.