TYPES OF TEACHING METHODS

As ethics has developed into more of a mainstream law school class, the different approaches used to teach this discipline have become more varied and increasingly important.

There are still many law schools where ethics is taught primarily as a "rules-based" course, a survey that begins with the rules as the text. This doesn't prevent such courses from expanding into other areas, but the rules serve as the starting point.

Other approaches involve courses more deeply rooted in philosophical or ethical thinking, or courses that involve presenting a more overt dichotomy between morality-based thinking and requirements of the legal ethics rules. Still other courses focus on a practical approach to the discipline-including, in many law schools, teaching ethics in clinics. USF is hardly unique in its emphasis on practicality and student involvement and interaction as the focus of its classroom ethics course.

THE PERVASIVE METHOD

Most teachers of ethics and professional responsibility agree that legal ethics should be taught pervasively. As Stanford Professor Deborah Rhode has put it in her excellent book "Ethics By the Pervasive Method," Professional responsibility questions should be addressed in all substantive courses because they arise in all substantive fields, and because their resolution implicates values that are central to lawyers' personal and professional lives.

Many professors do include ethics components in their substantive classes. But many more do not, or limit their inclusion to an afterthought, or to a single class period covering an entire semester's ethical issues.

To truly teach ethics by the pervasive method, ethics should be an integral part of the journey through a class from its first meeting to its last. Not only does this not occur in most of our law schools, but few professors are familiar enough with ethical issues to teach them dynamically--topic by topic--throughout the semester.

There is no easy--or even likely--near-term solution to this problem. Those of us for whom ethics is a primary subject will undoubtedly continue to raise the consciousness of others. We hope that ethics eventually will take its rightful place in the law school curriculum, and that professors of other subjects will be more engaged in learning the full range of ethical implications in their own subject matter areas.

ETHICS AND THE CLINICAL CURRICULUM

Clinical programs are one area of the curriculum where professors often teach ethics pervasively-and successfully. In litigation clinics, ethics awareness is not a luxury item but a necessity. This is particularly so because the behavior of our students is being scrutinized not only by their instructors but by the court and opposing counsel.

In the last decade, clinical professors have increasingly combined students' clinical work with ethics teaching, both in the classroom and in the direct supervision of students. A growing number of law schools have made it possible for students to fulfill their ethics requirement through a clinically based course.

We see this as a definite step in the right direction. So long as the clinical teacher is fully prepared to deal with ethics--and most appear to be--teaching ethics in the clinical setting makes the subject matter much more real, immediate, and important.

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