This post is part of the Strange Bedfellows series.
In this guest blogging series, I’ve had fun identifying connections between canonical cases not ordinarily taught together. But is it any more than a parlor game?
For a teacher with years of familiarity with the cases, it can be invigorating to rearrange the furniture—and students always benefit from an invigorated teacher. The fear is that giddily wandering away from the orthodox doctrinal silos might create an obstacle for students who need to know and apply the orthodox solutions to problems. I’m convinced that when handled properly, exposure to these strange bedfellows actually leads to better comprehension of the orthodox approach. This is primarily because a semester with a healthy amount of unexpected (but valid) juxtapositions will inevitably take advantage of two strategies favored by researchers into the science of learning: interleaving distinct but related topics, and repeated exposures spread over time.
The silo approach (a unit on the Commerce Clause, followed by a unit on the Spending Clause, and so on) presumes that it would be unduly confusing for students to shift gears, hurting their comprehension. But studies show the opposite: interleaving the presentation of related but distinct topics results in better mastery of each topic. Learners understand the relationships among silos better, and also—perhaps unexpectedly—they understand each silo better.
Comments
Hi Aaron: I applaud your courage for teaching a course and writing a casebook using an interleaving model. I took a seminar last year that discussed interleaving and thought of some ways to teach a first-year criminal course that way — but I was teaching criminal law for the first time and didn’t want to assume risk of a full-on implosion my first time through.
Rather than teaching each discreet topic in a linear fashion (everything you need to know about this element, then this crime, then this defense), I thought about teaching with a fact pattern, where we would work through the case and touch on an aspect of each basic element, look at how the elements came together to form a crime, and then maybe look at one defense. Once that was over, we would start all over with a new case and go over more complex aspects of each element, a new defense, etc. Pulling that off takes serious work (I don’t know of any casebooks organized that way), and students who are receptive to new things.
I ended up using a hybrid model, where I pulled some topics out of the normal linear, discreet presentation (standards of proof, standards of review, all crimes but homicide), and interleaved that stuff as I went through the various elements in detail. I also ended up presenting homicide as a return to mens rea, rather than as “hey, let’s look at this crime.” That was about as much risk as I could handle, and the class went pretty well.
If you can do it in con law and civ pro, maybe there is hope for the rest of us!
Posted by: Eric Carpenter | Jul 3, 2015 3:55:27 PM
You make a good observation that there is already some interleaving of topics within the traditional model of law teaching. Finding the optimal amount will require trial and error, but I suspect that compared to most people’s current teaching, more interleaving would move us closer to the optimum. Good opportunities for interleaving arise when teaching from fact patterns where topics are litigated together (just like the kinds of fact patterns you develop for final exams). You mentioned consideration being logically connected to offer/acceptance, so look for cases where both issues arise. To work through such a case will require discussion of both doctrines to reach the ultimate result, making the interleaving seem entirely fluid and natural. With the right cases to assign, you can move from this format (week 1 is consideration, week 2 is offer/acceptance) to this format (two weeks on the broader topic of “forming a contract” that will acquaint students with two doctrines–but in a way that allows them repeated exposure to each doctrine spread over more time).
Posted by: Aaron Caplan | Jul 2, 2015 12:31:51 PM
I wonder at what level interleaving is optimal in a particular course. For example, in a Contracts course, would it help to study a case on consideration and one on offer and acceptance in the same class, because they often are related (though distinct)? Or is it enough that a single class addresses two distinct kinds of consideration problems, or even addresses the same issue but encounters two cases that draw different conclusions and thus provides an opportunity for synthesizing the cases and identifying the differences that explain the differing outcomes? Interleaving, at least as it is described in the essay, should not lead to the conclusion that one should mix consideration with illegal contracts simply because both are “related” to contract law. So, the level at which one interleaves is a crucial part of the pedagogy. Indeed, comparing the styles of different painters in the same class session might be roughly analogous to comparing the opinions of two courts, even though they address precisely the same issue, not to mention the same topic.
Posted by: Charles Calleros | Jul 1, 2015 5:20:48 AM