Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Class 1
What is scholarly writing?
The process of scholarly writing
Inspiration: Choosing a topic &
developing a claim
WHAT
IS Scholarly
SCHOLARLY
WRITING?
What Is
Writing?
1. Implicitly directed to legislative, executive,
and/or judicial decision makers.
2. Normative (informed by a social goal) and
prescriptive (recommending a means to that
goal).
10 Sub-Categories of Scholarly
Legal Writing
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Case cruncher
Law reform article
Legislative note
Interdisciplinary article
Theory-fitting article
On legal profession, legal language, legal argument, or
legal education
7. Continuing a pre-existing scholarly debate
8. Legal history
9. Comparative law
10. Empirical research
Introduction:
II.
III. Analysis
IV. Conclusion
Format (contd):
Extensive Footnotes
Three functions:
1. Authority.
2. Attribution.
3. Textual footnotes.
THEProcess
PROCESS
OF SCHOLARLY
The
of Scholarly
WRITING
Writing
See handout
Inspiration: Choosing a
Subject & Developing a Claim
1. Choose and narrow your Subject
2. Find a Claim
Next Week.
Test Your Claim
Preemption Check
CHOOSE A SUBJECT
What are you interested in?
Try Reading
1.
2.
3.
4.
Medium view
Macro view
FIND A CLAIM
Claim = Your original analysis of the legal
problem and proposed solution.
It is enough to find one point, one new
insight, one new way of looking at a piece
of law, and organize your entire article
around that. One insight is all you
need.
Counter-Argument:
Precedent must be
followed; the material
facts are identical.
Precedent should be
extended from an
analogous situation.
The statute is
ambiguous.
The plain meaning
conflicts with
legislative intent or
creates an absurd
result.
The language must
be read in context.
Normative Argument:
Morality requires this
result.
Counter-Argument:
The result is not moral.
Economic concerns
support this result.
Economic concerns do
not support this result.
Institutional Argument:
Counter-Argument:
Summary of important
parts of source with
pincites.
......
......
......
......