Storytelling in Appellate Brief Writing

2566241384_4264b1f0f3At the end of July, both Professor Michael Smith and I attended the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.  The conference was entitled “Chapter 2:  Once Upon a Legal Story” and focused on storytelling in “ways that will directly and tangibly benefit law students (i.e. future lawyers) and legal practitioners (i.e. former law students).”  The presentations I attended addressed ways to use storytelling to create a stronger narrative theme in a case and how to handle the ethical issues in storytelling.

One of the most intriguing presentations was Professor Kenneth Chestek’s talk “Judging by the Numbers:  an Empirical Study of the Power of Story.”  Professor Chestek conducted a study where he wrote four fictional test briefs:  two that focused heavily on stating the law and applying it (the “pure logos” briefs), and two that focused on creating a narrative story into which the law was inserted and applied (the “story” briefs).  (He wrote a logos brief and a story brief for both the petitioner and respondent.)  Professor Chestek solicited appellate practitioners, appellate judges, appellate judicial law clerks, appellate court staff attorneys, and legal writing professors to read these briefs and rate their strength of persuasion.  The participants knew they were taking part in a study, but they did not know who was conducting the study or what the purpose of the study was.

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Blood Testing of Athletes

blood sampleUrine testing has become a familiar part of the sports landscape, but less so blood testing.  However, the development of a blood test for human growth hormone has the potential to make blood testing of athletes more common.  Matt Mitten considers legal aspects of such testing in a  new paper on SSRN entitled “Legal Issues Arising Out of Blood Testing for Human Growth Hormone.”  Here is the abstract:

To date, no U.S. or foreign court or arbitral tribunal has directly considered whether mandatory blood testing of athletes for banned performance-enhancing substances, including synthetic human growth hormone (rhGH), violates any internationally or nationally recognized individual rights to privacy or bodily integrity. To determine how this issue is likely to be resolved in litigation or arbitration, this article reviews the developing U.S. law and private international law established by arbitration awards regarding the legality of drug testing at the various levels of athletic competition as well as the compelled taking and testing of a person’s blood outside the context of athletics.

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IP Geeks Rejoice: 13 Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review (2009) is Here

ip-lawreviewThe thirteenth volume of the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review (Summer Edition 2009) has recently been published and is now available.   Our outgoing editor-in-chief, Melissa Benko and her excellent board have done an outstanding job once again.

Highlights of the issue include:

* Jessica Litman’s wonderful and innovative Nies lecture on current copyright reform;

*  Interesting articles by Vanessa Rollins, Amy Tindall, Dmitriy Vinarov (and me, but I am not wearing that hat today!) on diverse subjects such as trademark fair use, the impact of the Seventh Amendment on patent litigation, and the re-thinking of patent fraud enforcement in light of current congressional reform;

*  Our initial entry in the Emerging Scholars Series, which highlights works of intellectual property scholars in the first three years of their career, by Marketa Trimble, on cross border injunctions in the United States; and

* Our Annual Intellectual Property Law Review Banquet Speech, by the General Counsel of the Subway Advertising Trust Fund, Mary Jane Saunders, on her practitioner’s life in copyright.

In particular, I want to highlight the scholarship of two our students—Renee Metzler and Kevin Rizzuto—who in their comments, undertook innovative scholarship on grace periods in patent law as well as an empirical look at fixing continuation application at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

I look forward to the work of incoming Board in the new school year!

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