In-Class Debating in Public Law Classes as a Complement to the Socratic Method

Abstract

In an introductory American politics course students customarily learn a modicum of public by memorizing seminal cases and matching them with concepts relating to larger topics, e.g., rights and liberties or judiciary. Students in advanced courses in public law, however, are usually required to grapple directly with, and to critically evaluate, appellate court cases and constitutional commentaries. Typically, this objective of teaching students how to themselves the law is accomplished by the technique known as the Socratic method. The Socratic method, an approach that dominates legal education in the United States, involves asking students, who have presumably already read the assigned cases, to indicate the facts of the case, the legal questions put before the court, how the court answered each question, the reasoning of the majority opinion, and the reasoning behind dissenting or concurring opinions. Then, often in order to answer a series of hypothetical questions by the instructor, students must harmonize the outcomes of seemingly inconsistent cases so that they are made to stand together. As Howard Abadinsky noted, By taking and putting together different cases, the student acquires a way of thinking and working with cases that constitutes the fundamentals of legal reasoning, as well as knowledge of doctrinal rules presented by these cases.' 1 The Socratic method, however, has not been without its critics. First, it is questionable whether or not instructors want to subject undergraduate students to the same rigors as students. Political science courses in public are not mini-law-school classes, and it is not the objective of most instructors in undergraduate classes in constitutional to get their students to think like lawyers. Second, there are those who argue that the technique itself actually is damaging to students.2 I believe there is a way to teach students to critically evaluate cases, and to expose them to case commentaries as well as the basics of legal research, without relying exclusively on the Socratic method. In my classes in public law, I have each student participate in an in-class debate during the quarter, structured much like competitive debates at the interscholastic or intercollegiate level. Although, for the most part, students are re-arguing cases that have already been decided, they function as the affirmative and the negative terms in traditional academic debating. The cases serve as the resolution. Both sides present constructive speeches and rebuttal speeches, and they answer cross-examination questions. Further, there is a short writing assignment accompanying the project that obliges the students to argue the merits of their case and to anticipate their opponents' arguments. I have successfully used inclass debating in conjunction with lecturing and the Socratic method.