Teaching Criminal Procedure: Why Socrates Would Use YouTube

Abstract

In this invited contribution to the Law Journal’s annual Teaching Issue, we pay some homage to the great philosopher whose spirit allegedly guides our classrooms, in service of two concrete goals. One, we employ dialogue to describe the "nuts and bolts" of teaching Criminal Procedure, most of which are equally relevant to any doctrinal law school course (including course description, office hours, seating charts and attendance, class decorum and recording, student participation, laptops, textbooks, class preparation and presentation, and exams). Two, we explain the benefits of using multimedia in the classroom, including a few of the many modules found on our Crimprof Multipedia service. We organize its benefits into four “h’s” (humor, humanization, headlines, and hypotheticals), and we give several examples of each for a topic that pervades criminal procedure: racial (in)justice.

Keywords: teaching, pedagogy, criminal procedure, race

JEL Classification: K10, K14