From Remembering to Analyzing: Using Mini Mock Arguments to Deepen Understanding and Increase Engagement

• Author: Julie Furr Youngman
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12101

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 37, Issue 1, 53–85, Winter 2020

From Remembering to Analyzing:

Using Mini Mock Arguments to

Deepen Understanding and Increase

Engagement

Julie Furr Youngman∗

I. INTRODUCTION

In one of the more memorable scenes in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde,

the protagonist, sorority-girl-turned-Harvard-Law-student Elle Woods, de-

bates her estranged boyfriend, Warner Huntington, III, over a fact pattern

involving a sperm donor’s right to visitation with a child produced from

his donated sperm.1Elle and Warner take turns making compelling argu-

ments, first from the position of the donor who wants visitation rights and

then from the standpoint of the sperm-recipient parents who have accused

the donor of stalking and harassment. Their classmates are transfixed, a

desirable state-of-affairs for any professor who has ever noticed a waning

of enthusiasm midsemester. Even more relevant to this article, the scene

marks a milestone along Elle’s path from lower-ordered to higher-ordered

learning: she has progressed from merely showing up to class ready to re-

ceive information passively on the first day of law school, past struggling

to demonstrate that she can recall and understand concepts such as malum

in se and malum prohibitum in a scene from later in the semester, to finally

engaging in the complex processes of applying concepts to new situations

∗Director of the Law, Justice and Society Program at Washington and Lee University (W&L), as

well as Assistant Professor of Business Law in W&L’s Williams School of Commerce, Economics,

and Politics and Adjunct Professor at W&L School of Law.

1LEGALLY BLONDE (MGM Distr. Co. 2001).

C2020 The Authors

Journal of Legal Studies Education C2020 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

53

54 Vol. 37 / The Jour nal of Legal Studies Education

and critiquing legal arguments during the sperm donor debate late in the

semester.2

This article proposes a mock oral argument exercise that is similar to

Elle’s sperm donor debate and that can be used periodically throughout

the semester to enliven undergraduate business law classrooms and guide

students to higher-ordered learning and deeper understanding: pairing stu-

dents to argue the two sides of actual court cases that illustrate class topics,

with the remainder of the class serving as jurors. The exercise has been suc-

cessfully implemented as a means of actively involving the entire class in a

discussion of legal principles and giving each student a stake in the outcome

of the debate, in a way that both implements education theory and satisfies

business school accreditation standards. Other scholars have written about

the effective use of full-blown moot appellate arguments3and mock trials4

as educational tools. In typical moot appellate arguments, students may be

required to conduct research, draft lengthy appellate briefs, and present

full-length oral arguments before actual experienced judges. Mock trials typ-

ically involve complete jury trials with students playing lawyers who present

opening statements, examine witnesses, introduce evidence, and make clos-

ing arguments, while other students play the roles of witnesses and jurors.

This article describes a less formal exercise in which two students make short

arguments in the style of a brief closing argument at trial, based on an abbre-

viated summary of the key facts from an actual case, applying legal principles

described in the assigned reading for the day, with the remaining students

serving as jurors, as a means of involving the entire class in the discussion of

an illustrative application of a legal principle to a set of facts.

Part II of this article describes the theoretical foundation for the

mock oral argument exercise, including a discussion of Bloom’s Taxonomy of

2Id. The scenes described in this paragraph are available at www.youtube.com, under the ti-

tles “Legally Blonde (5/11) Movie CLIP—Kicked out of Class” (https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=gwY85_MC_AY), “Legally Blonde Malum in Se v. Malum Prohibitum,” (https://www.

youtube.com/watch?v=EK6Xa1Tz-8w), and “Legally Blonde (7/11 Movie CLIP—Impressing

Professor Callahan” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs3_hNYAVRw) (last visited Oct. 25,

2019).

3William J. McDevitt, Active Learning Through Appellate Simulation: A Simple Recipe for a Business

Law Course,26J.L

EGAL STUD.EDUC. 245 (2009); Charles R. Knerr et al., Undergraduate Appellate

Simulation in American Colleges,19J.L

EGAL STUD.EDUC. 27 (2008).

4McDevitt, supra note 3, at 246 n.4 (citing several articles describing the educational benefits of

mock jury trial exercises).

2020 / From Remembering to Analyzing 55

Educational Objectives (Bloom’s Taxonomy)5and a review of business school

accreditation standards that encourage the use of active learning techniques.

Part III describes the actual exercise, with step-by-step instructions for select-

ing and summarizing appropriate cases and guiding the students through

the exercise. Finally, Part IV explains how the exercise promotes learning at

a higher level on Bloom’s Taxonomy and enhances the business law class-

room experience, while Part V describes student reception of the exercise.

The appendices provide helpful resources for implementing the exercise,

including a sample sign-up sheet for students to select the date and topic for

their argument, a list of appropriate cases, and a grading rubric.

II. COGNITIVE THEORY BACKGROUND

The exercise described herein offers professors a way to move from lower- to

higher-ordered learning processes in the classroom as well as a way to answer

the call to increase the use of active learning methods in the modern class-

room. This part explains the theoretical and pragmatic bases for doing so.

A. Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy is perhaps the most influential authority on classifying

educational objectives in use today, and it is nearly universally viewed as one of

the most useful tools for developing effective curricula.6In 1956, educational

psychologist Benjamin Bloom and several colleagues developed a “frame-

work for categorizing educational objectives.”7Although they originally set

out to develop such a framework in three spheres (cognitive, affective, and

5BENJAMIN S. BLOOM ET AL., THE TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES:THE CLASSIFICA-

TION OF EDUCATIONAL GOALS,HANDBOOK 1: COGNITIVE DOMAIN (1956) [hereinafter BLOOM’S

TAXONOMY].

6E.g., Eric D. Yordy & Amy Criddle, Climbing Bloom’s Ladder with the Confidential Settlement,35J.

LEGAL STUD.EDUC. 231, 234 (2018); Dinc¸ay K¨

oksal, Language Assessment Through Bloom’s Taxon-

omy,14J.L

ANGUAGE &LINGUISTICS STUD. 76, 77 (2018); Brett Bertucio, The Cartesian Heritage of

Bloom’s Taxonomy,36S

TUD.IN PHIL.&EDUC. 477, 477 (2017); see also ATAXONOMY FOR LEARN-

ING,TEACHING,AND ASSESSING:AREVISIONOF BLOOMS TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES,

xxi–xxix (Lorin W. Anderson et al. eds., 2001) [hereinafter REVISED BLOOM’STAXONOMY](re-

counting the critical reception of the original Bloom’s Taxonomy and describing the reasons

for revision).

7REVISED BLOOM’STAXONOMY,supra note 6, at xxi.