So, I have been thinking about a lot of my favorite “law” professor. Rick and David‘s wonderful posts on their favorite law professors were, of course, inspirational. I am, however, much more indecisive than Rick and David, so I may try to sneak in a little more variety than just “one” law professor (the all powerful Michael may police me for straying a bit from the post of the month!). I actually am picking five (!) because I think about the lessons they taught me everyday:

James Cox, Duke University School of Law: Professor Cox, bar none, was the best teacher I had in law school. I remember being engaged and excited by Business Associations and White Collar Crime, like no other classes. As a student, when you are engaged by agency and partnership law, then you know the teaching is good. Why was I engaged? First, Professor Cox made business law seem relevant by bringing passion and commitment to his subject. Second, he encouraged us to talk and debate in class. Sometimes, in law school, everyone gets really quiet and it gets boring. He never countenanced that. So, class was a bit of an intellectual scrum, and thus, a little messy, and ultimately, quite good. And such classes prepared me for all those things in practice, because what is law school and its ultimate practice, but an intellectual scrum?

Despite my best intentions, I’m about to break the promise I made in my last post (and what better way to celebrate an election than by breaking a pre-election promise?).  I thought about whether I could do another Malcolm Gladwell post, based on his latest piece, but haven’t quite been able to find an angle on that that I like.  And so, it’s back to the judicial process.  I’ve posted a “tentative draft” of my course materials on SSRN.  As I note in the abstract, these materials are a work in progress, and are surely incomplete in many important respects.  I welcome all feedback concerning how they might be improved.

Cross posted at PrawfsBlawg.

The law school professor who most influenced me is Philip Frickey.

I didn’t take a course with Professor Frickey until I was a third-year student, but his thinking began to influence me, indirectly, during my first year, in the half-semester Legislation course that the University of Minnesota required me to take in the spring. My section of Legislation was taught by Jim Chen, then (the 1995-96 school year) a relatively new law professor, and now Dean of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. Professor Chen led my small section of students through discussion of what it means to interpret a statute, guided by Professors Eskridge and Frickey’s conception of the “funnel of abstraction” (the same funnel that now guides my own students in our discussions of how to interpret a statute).