Introduction to Reading in Law School

Introduction to Reading in Law School Ante-Law School Camp session 5: Five “Ws” Revisited

Recap of Week 4: • emPOwer • Always (Always!) Read with a Purpose • Get Oriented and Own Your Prior Knowledge and Experience • Intrinsic v. Extrinsic motivation • Reasons Successful Students Read • Extrapolating from exercises – things to read for • Orienting with respect to the text • Owning your prior knowledge

Today: empoWer • Engage with Energy • Monitor Your Reading and Read for the Main Idea • Always (Always!) Read with a Purpose • Get Oriented and Own Your Prior Knowledge and Experience • There’s More to the “Five Ws” (Who, What, When, Where and Why) Than Meets the Eye • Evaluate What You’re Reading: Your Ideas Matter • Review, Rephrase, Record

3 Reasons Successful Students Read • To get an accurate picture of what happened in the case • Legal facts & Conflict facts • To gather information about the legal discourse community and the way it reasons through problems • To understand the “big picture” • Active use of inductive reasoning skills (from many specific instances to a general proposition)

Revisiting Getting Oriented on a Text • When and where was the case decided? • Context helps fill in the images of the story

The facts and nothing but the facts… • “Legal facts” • aka “Procedural posture” • Legal system • Reporter’s/Databases – storage of documents • “Conflict facts” • …meanwhile in the real world…

Selective use of facts • By the time an opinion has been published (in a report/database) the facts have been filtered through numerous filters, including those inherent in the social mores of the time • The parties while selecting an attorney • The attorneys while preparing for trial • The judge or the jury while deciding the outcome • The attorneys while preparing appeal • The judge while deciding the result • Etc…

Exercise 1 • Frames for reading the next slide: • If your last name begins with a letter between A and H • This case is from Illinois in 1928 • If your last name begins with a letter between I and P • This case is from Iowa in 1971 • If your last name begins with a letter between O and Z • This case is from Kentucky in 1945

[D]efendantBertha L. Briney inherited her parents' farm land in Mahaska and Monroe Counties. Included was an 80-acre tract in southwest Mahaska County where her grandparents and parents had lived. No one occupied the house thereafter. Her husband, Edward, attempted to care for the land. He kept no farm machinery thereon. The outbuildings became dilapidated … [T]here occurred a series of trespassing and housebreaking events with loss of some household items, the breaking of windows and ‘messing up of the property in general’. … … They had posted ‘no trespass' signs on the land several years [earlier]. The nearest one was 35 feet from the house. On June 11… defendants set ‘a shotgun trap’ in the north bedroom. After Mr. Briney cleaned and oiled his 20-gauge shotgun, the power of which he was well aware, defendants took it to the old house where they secured it to an iron bed with the barrel pointed at the bedroom door. It was rigged with wire from the doorknob to the gun's trigger so it would fire when the door was opened. Briney first pointed the gun so an intruder would be hit in the stomach but at MrsBriney's suggestion it was lowered to hit the legs. . . Tin was nailed over the bedroom window. The spring gun could not be seen from the outside. No warning of its presence was posted. Plaintiff lived with his wife and worked regularly as a gasoline station attendant in Eddyville, seven miles from the old house. He had observed it for several years while hunting in the area and considered it as being abandoned. He knew it had long been uninhabited. [T]he area around the house was covered with high weeds. Prior to July 16 … plaintiff and McDonough had been to the premises and found several old bottles and fruit jars which they took and added to their collection of antiques. On the latter date about 9:30 p.m. they made a second trip to the Briney property. They entered the old house by removing a board from a porch window which was without glass. While McDonough was looking around the kitchen area plaintiff went to another part of the house. As he started to open the north bedroom door the shotgun went off striking him in the right leg above the ankle bone. Much of his leg, including part of the tibia, was blown away.

The Illinois group • Did the idea that the case was set in prohibition era Illinois affect your reading of the case?

The Iowa Group • Were you puzzled why people would use a gun to protect an uninhabited house full of antique jars and bottles?

The Kentucky Group • Did the moonshine industry that led to NASCAR influence your reading of this case?

Take away from Exercise 1 • Getting oriented helps you find a filter to use and to question from as you read a fact pattern • This filter affects how you answer the questions: Who ,What ,Why, When, Where and How. • Helps you identify filters that may have been applied by the person authoring the opinion

Subjectivity v. Objectivity • Subjectivity may refer to the specific discerning interpretations of any aspect of experiences. Interpretations are unique to the person experiencing them. • This term contrasts with objectivity, which is used to describe humans as "seeing" the universe exactly for what it is from a standpoint free from human perception and its influences, human cultural interventions, past experience and expectation of the result.

Surocco v. Geary

Resources • Ruth Ann McKinney, Reading Like a Lawyer: Time-Saving Strategies for Reading Law Like an Expert • Katko v. Briney, 183 N.W.2d 657 (1971). • McClurg, Andrew J. “Poetry in Commontion: Katko v. Brieny and the bards of First-Year Torts” 74 Or. L. Rev. 823 (1995).1 • Palmer, Geoffrey W.R. “The Iowa Spring Gun Case: A Study in American Gothic” 56 Iowa L. Rev. 1219 (1971).

Introduction to Reading in Law School