Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1978
Publication Information
53 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 561 (1978)
Abstract
This Article is the result of a weekend in December 1976 at the Sterling Forest Conference Center. Several legal educators came together there to explore the possible relevance of humanistic educational psychology to legal education, and the pieces that follow flow from the experiences in learning we shared there. The concerns that brought the ten of us together were not new; rather, they emanated from a longstanding challenge within the profession.
Although we taught at different institutions and in different fields, our experiences had led us to a common dissatisfaction with legal education and a hope that more was possible. We had all experienced the aspirations, as well as the alienation, of students and teachers. We had all seen classroom learning fall short of the excitement and promises we shared with students but often could not realize. We all believed it was important to open education to allow for fuller expression of the human aspects of learning and lawyering, and we wanted our coming together to be something more than another critique of legal education. We knew our frustrations and hopes were hard to articulate to ourselves and even harder to share with others. We had all settled for educational experiences more limited than need be, perhaps because we had long been taught that we ought not bare our deepest aspirations or seek to achieve them by questioning the nature of legal education.
Although we were not uniformly familiar with or committed to humanistic educational psychology, we were all willing to explore educational approaches that went beyond the cognitive framework of the traditional law school class. We agreed to depart from the typical discussion format of education meetings and be open to learning about and sharing who we are as legal educators; how who we are personally relates to who we are as law teachers; and how a better understanding of the relationship between the personal and the professional could lead to a deeper appreciation of the human dimensions of legal education and practice.
Recommended Citation
Thomas L. Shaffer,
Reassessing Law Schooling: The Sterling Forest Group,
53 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 561 (1978).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/543
Comments
Reprinted with permission of New York University Law Review. Professor Shaffer's article begins on p. 562.