Legal Anatomy of a State Museum: Law, Lawyering, and Governance Explored

Abstract

This article introduces the pedagogical tool of using a public building, specifically the Indiana State Museum, to explore law, lawyering, and governance with clinical law students. The legal anatomy of the museum used for this case study consists of laws and legal documents shaping the museum and, in turn, reflecting the law and governance of the state it honors. From its nineteenth century beginnings as a legislative effort to preserve Indiana's geological history to the modernist civic building that houses the museum today, the Indiana State Museum case study also demonstrates a wide variety of lawyering skills. Through the case study, students see how lawyers' work effectuates laws and principles of governance at issue in the museum's creation, development, and operation. Students enrolled in the Program on Law and State Government (PLSG) internship course work in field placements throughout the executive and legislative branches of Indiana's state government. Taught in conjunction with those placements, the internship course consists of individual tutorial sessions, individual experiential assignments, reflective learning assignments, and a seminar class component. All of the coursework focuses on the foundational aspects of lawyering in a state government setting. First introduced in 2002, the case study described in this article has developed into the curricular capstone of the internship course. The architectural case study described in this article invites students to learn inwardly, centripetally, to discover and explore their own educational choices and professional development. Conversely, the architectural case study also opens the door for students to experience the law in the context of their community, their government, and their world. The Indiana State Museum case study widens the ways in which PLSG internship course students experience the law, lawyering, and governance. In so doing, the case study expands teaching and learning opportunities in the clinical classroom. Perhaps most important, the case study serves as a unique platform to build ways to learn and keep learning about the skills and values necessary to practice law. Part I of this article provides a brief history of the PLSG and its internship course. Part II explains how principles of clinical pedagogy and emerging principles of cognitive science and biology support using architectural case studies in the clinical law school classroom. Because the history of the Indiana State Museum is inextricable from the history of the state it honors, Part III provides a brief history of both and explains the choice of the museum as the subject for the case study. Part IV describes the objectives, materials, and methods of the Indiana State Museum case study in the PLSG intern.