Climbing Bloom's Ladder with the Confidential Settlement

• Date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12076
• Author: Amy Criddle,Eric D. Yordy
• Published date: 01 June 2018

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 35, Issue 2, 231–254, Summer 2018

Climbing Bloom’s Ladder

with the Confidential Settlement

Eric D. Yordy∗and Amy Criddle∗∗

Mr. Hart, will you recite the facts of Hawkins v. McGee? I do have your name

right—you are Mr. Hart? . . . Loudly, Mr. Hart. Fill this room with your

intelligence. . . . 1

Professor Charles Kingsfield, The Paper Chase

I. INTRODUCTION

In 1974, John Houseman won the Academy Award for best actor in a support-

ing role for his portrayal of Professor Charles Kingsfield, a contracts professor

at Harvard Law School.2That character from the movie The Paper Chase has

come to exemplify for some the tormenting use of the case method, also

∗Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics and Interim Executive Director of the School

of Hotel and Restaurant Management, The W. A. Franke College of Business, Northern Arizona

University.

∗∗Assistant Professor of Practice in Business Law, The W. A. Franke College of Business, Northern

Arizona University.

1THE PAPER CHASE (20th Century Fox 1973). This quote is from the opening scene of the 1973

movie where Professor Charles Kingsfield uses the Socratic method to elicit information from

the student concerning a leading New Hampshire contracts case, Hawkins v. McGee, 84 N.H. 114,

146 A. 641 (1929). While fictional, Professor Kingsfield lives in infamy as a tormentor of law

students. The opening clip of the movie is available on YouTube.

2INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE,THE PAPER CHASE:AWARDS, http://www.imdb.com/title/

tt0070509/awards (last visited Mar. 21, 2018).

C2018 The Authors

Journal of Legal Studies Education C2018 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

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232 Vol. 35 / The Journal of Legal Studies Education

known as the Socratic method, in the legal classroom.3In the days of The

Paper Chase (and at least through the early 1990s per the recollection of the

authors), being called on to discuss a case in a law school class was a call to

quickly move from the low-level learning activities of remembering informa-

tion (or at least minimal organizational skills) to the higher-level learning

activities of evaluation of a judge’s opinion and the application of the legal

principle to alternate facts.4

The case method of teaching using judicial opinions like those in The

Paper Chase is an effective way to engage students in a series of progressively

more complex learning skills—from the recollection and recitation of facts

to the evaluation and critique of the expert opinion. Analysis of the judicial

opinions, paired with the questioning of a faculty member who leads the stu-

dents through a series of hypothetical modifications to the facts, can be used

to challenge a student’s understanding of the law, to demonstrate nuances

in the law through the hypothetical twists, or to teach students to engage in

professional skepticism. In legal environment and business law classes, the

case method of teaching legal principles can be very effective for those same

purposes, though the pace of the discussion and the depth of the analysis

may vary for undergraduates.

For undergraduate students, the use of the case method to move from

low-level learning activities to the much higher-level activities of critiquing

may be overwhelming early in the term. In fact, for law courses taught in

business schools, the in-depth understanding of the law that comes from

critiquing the judicial opinions may not be the primary learning objective.

As such, some business law and legal environment of business faculty use

the case study method. In this method, which is more common in busi-

ness courses than in law courses, students and faculty discuss stories, not

judicial opinions. The cases used are real, or realistic, business situations

3See THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL,The Socratic Method, http://www.law.uchicago.

edu/prospectives/lifeofthemind/socraticmethod (last visited Mar. 21, 2018) (“[p]erhaps

because of the unrelenting style with which the Socratic Method is used by this fictional Professor

in The Paper Chase, the very mention of the Socratic Method strikes fear in the hearts of those

considering attending law school. John Houseman may have won an Oscar for his impressive

performance, but if anyone ever did teach a law school class like his Professor Kingsfield, no one

at UChicago does today”).

4ATAXONOMY FOR LEARNING,TEACHING,ANDASSESSING:AREVISIONOF BLOOM’STAXONOMY OF

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES 310 (Lorin W. Anderson & David R. Krathwohl eds., 2001) [hereinafter

Anderson’s Taxonomy]. The taxonomy is discussed infra Part II.