Ethics Teaching in Law School

Abstract

Since its entry into the mainstream of common law legal education, legal ethics teaching has been analyzed and critiqued by numerous commentators. United in dissatisfaction with what they perceive as an intellectually uninspired, pedagogically unsound and almost universally unpopular approach to ethics instruction, commentators argue for a diverse variety of reforms. Running through these various reforms is, however, a common thread: Good ethics teaching is viewed as separate and distinct from the teaching of “black letter law” in the rest of the curriculum. This paper challenges this assumption. Through analyzing and comparing ethical and legal problem solving, the paper addresses the commonalities in, and salient differences between, the two. It then suggests an approach to ethics teaching which allows instructors to capitalize on the learning which students have (or should have) done in their law classes, while also emphasizing and teaching the unique analytical and other skills which ethical problem solving requires.