Evidence-Nesson

704-7241-41

Student: What were you trying to teach your Winter Evidence class?

Nesson: "To go where no man has gone before."

Within the precedent-bound and authority revering institution that is HLS, Winter Evidence has dared to break the mold and encourage innovation. What you seem to demonstrate and encourage is an independence of thought, which frees us, in as much is feasible for aspiring attorneys, from authority and convention. The innovative and unconventional manner in which the Winter Evidence class is taught is but one way in which creativity is espoused: from the democratic and evolutionary process by which you receive and implement student input to your focus on the opportunities and capabilities presented by the Internet, you have taught us to think beyond the boxes constrained by precedent and tradition.

Presumably, the purpose of law school is to teach us to "to think like lawyers." In most classes at HLS, this purpose is achieved almost exclusively through the analysis of appellate court opinions. While such training effectively develops one’s analytical skills, it underemphasizes innovation and the value of independent, critical judgment and problem solving. Justice John Marshall Harlan had a vision of an academic institution expressing the community at its best. "The aim must be high," he declared, "and the vision broad." Regrettably, modern legal education emphasizes following convention, and scant emphasis on innovation and taking risks.

In order to accomplish critical judgment necessary for a successful lawyer, one needs to be able to challenge authority. Law must be analyzed critically, the theories on which it rests must be questioned, and the appropriateness of its application needs to be challenged. Your analysis into King Solomon’s decision started the winter term brilliantly. The fact that there are holes in our accepted and even revered and unchallenged decisions started the class onto the mode of more critical thinking.

Far from emphasizing on decided appellate cases of yesterday, Winter Evidence encourages my legal innovation and input today. The benefits of the group project goes beyond the idea of the sum exceeding its individual members. Through my group project, I was able to appreciate the significance of not only my evidentiary, but legal training and its possible impact. The HLS name does carry with it some credibility—the existence of our web pages on international sites could lead towards adding credibility to one side of a dispute. If I can have such an effect, it would seem that I than have a duty to use this privilege and "power" towards progressive, innovative uses.

There are, admittedly, inherent risks in bringing innovation to the classroom, not the least of which is criticism. In pushing any institution towards progress, one opens self to criticism. The transitional decisions of the Supreme Court during Jeffersonian Democracy, the Age of Jackson, and in the wake of the Dred Scott decision fostered what Alexander Bickel called it the "countermajoritarian difficulty"—the apparent tension between judicial review and the democratic process. In much of the same way, legal education is bound by norms and precedents. If these comforts are challenged, some students are bound to feel threatened—for some, the lack of structure can be unsettling.

Yet at the same time, there is much freedom that comes with innovation. Not knowing the next step means shaping one’s own future and feeling that one actually has an affect on the outcome of one’s education and life. Litigating on the Internet and taking advantage of our expanding world and audience, I delved into the evidentiary nuances and difficulties in a case against CIA experimentation in the MK Ultra case. Further, I learned and benefited tremendously from my observation of, and my conversations with, my fellow students in their engagement of other real cases. The challenges of working in a collaborative effort towards new ways of presenting and advocating—or telling the story of –parties of actual cases has engaged me in much more active creativity on my part than would be involved in any traditional class setting.

This class has renewed in me something that I had brought with me to HLS, and have almost discarded. I started law school as myself, an individual and somehow evolved to a comfortable mold that is the HLS/law firm bound student. My exposure to new and fresh approaches towards creative innovation—even within the bounds of HLS—has given me a new lease and a sense of responsibility and obligation to seek to use my talents progressively. This is what you have taught me.