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Legal reading, research, writing
Paul MahargThe Australian National University
Slides @ paulmaharg.com/slides
preview• Reading, memory, maps and music• Organising your research• Academic legal writing – what matters?
• Slides available at: http://paulmaharg.com/slides
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Paul Maharg | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 SCOTLAND |
Dewey: 1916/2016Reflective learning – the relationship between experience and thinking – is characterised as:‘(i) perplexity, confusion, doubt, due to the fact that one is implicated in an incomplete situation whose full character is not yet determined; (ii) a conjectural anticipation—a tentative interpretation of the given elements, attributing to them a tendency to affect certain consequences; (iii) a careful survey (examination, inspection, exploration, analysis) of all attainable consideration which will define and clarify the problem in hand; (iv) a consequent elaboration of the tentative hypothesis to make it more precise and more consistent; (v) taking one stand upon the project hypothesis as a plan of action which is applied to the existing state of affairs: doing something overtly to bring about the anticipated result, thereby testing the hypothesis.’ (Dewey 1916, 150)
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1. The rhetoric of reading
What is everywhere passes unnoticed. Nothing is more commonplace than the experience of reading, and nothing is less well known. Reading is taken for granted to such an extent that at first glance it seems nothing need be said about it.(Todorov, 1978, p. 39).
Q: When you wake in the night, how do you know what to reach for and where, when you can’t see in the darkness?A: The parietal lobe in our brain forms and reforms many different virtual maps of our current location, centred on parts of our body or the space around our body. When you change position in bed, the map shifts with you.
memory, maps and reading
Yes, if we bear in mind the research on •How we read texts•How we understand maps and our positions in the real world•How we read music
can we adapt this for reading law?
strategies for reading …What I said to my adult learners:•Read forward – no recursive reading•Listen to your expectations for word clusters•Be aware of context’s effect on meaning•Cope with loss of power & agency while you’re reading•Form good habits and discipline
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Panmure Lute MSS (c.1632), 5, no.3.
Music for Lute Consort, c.1500
Strategies for reading music…What my lute tutor said to me:•Read forward – no recursive reading•Listen to your harmonic expectations•Be aware of context•Cope with playing and expression while sight-reading music•Form good habits and discipline
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strategies for reading law
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(what I told myself)
the transitive powerof music notation…
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Panmure Lute MS (c.1632), 5, no.3.
Music for Lute Consort, c.1500
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Narrative event diagram, Personal Injury Transaction: Pursuer
… could be used as simulation notation
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Narrative event diagram: Personal Injury Transaction: Pursuer and Defender (Gould et al 2009)
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Compare lute tablature across two staveswith simulation notation
what works:making notes from your reading
Wylie Lochhead v Mitchell1870 8 M 552A. Contracted to build for B. a hearse for a sum, on condition that B. should contribute certain portions of materials and workmanship. B. did so – and materials from were fixed to the hearse so that they could not be detached without injury to it. A. became bankrupt before finishing the hearse which was in his posssession.
Question in law: in a dispute between B. and the trustee in A.’s sequestration, who owned the hearse?
Held: that the parties were joint proprietors of the subject in proportion to the value of their respective contributions.
This illustrates the principle of equity. Where material, skill or labour of 2 or more are involved to produce a corporeal indivisible object, they each have a claim regarding their individual contribution.
• Authors: Dorothy Deegan, James Stratman, Leah Christensen
• Having a purpose for reading is essential – pick a role to read the text from, eg one of the parties in a case.
what works:legal reading research on purpose
AbstractWith an increasing amount of time spent reading electronic documents, a screen-based reading behavior is emerging. The screen-based reading behavior is characterized by more time spent on browsing and scanning, keyword spotting, one-time reading, non-linear reading, and reading more selectively, while less time is spent on in-depth reading, and concentrated reading. Decreasing sustained attention is also noted. Annotating and highlighting while reading is a common activity in the printed environment. However, this “traditional” pattern has not yet migrated to the digitalenvironment when people read electronic documents. (Liu 2005)
•Digital streaming is also changing the way we listen to music…
what works:digital reading
2. Organising your legal research
• Zotero• ReadCube
what works: use citation managers
2. Academic legal writing
essay writing• Forms of writing• Strategies• Planning• Discursive writing• Introductions• Problem-solving writing
forms of writingWRITING
Structured argument Types of writing
Boundaries Writing processes - Time - Planning - Word limit - Strategies - Subject - Monitoring - Purpose
1. Discursive essay2. Problem-solving essay
strategies for reducing constraints
• Throw a constraint away• Partition the problem• Set priorities and ‘satisfice’• Draw on a routine or learned procedure• Plan...
planning• Brainstorming• Content plans?• Method plans• Improvisation
– longhand prose?– Notes?– Diagrams?– Graphics?
questions to ask about discursive writing• Do I agree with the question?
– Disagree with it?– Agree with bits of it?
• Are there any terms in it I want to define?• What structure does the question give to my notes?• What headings can I break this structuredown to?
introductions to essaysYou can:• Refer to the demands of the question
– to show you’re being relevant• Discuss the terms of the question
– that you maybe want to define for yourself• Question the question
– if you don’t agree with any assumptions it makes• Summarise what you say in the essay• Outline what you are going to analyse in the essay
problem-solving writing• Define area of law
– … and identify if you need to define terms in it relevant to the problem
• Establish the rights of the parties– … both parties!
• Identify the option(s)• Decide on the solution(s).
Dewey, J. (1916/2011). Democracy and Education. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. Simon & Brown, New York.
Liu, Z. (2005). Reading behaviour in the digital environment. Changes in reading behaviour over the past 10 years. Journal of Documentation. 61, 6, 700-12.
Maharg, P. (2007). Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching the Law in the Early Twenty-first Century. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey.
Todorov, T. (1978) Genres in Discourse, trans. C. Porter. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
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