Casebooks, Commentaries and Curmudgeons: An Introductory History of Law in the Lecture Hall

Used in the lecture halls of American law schools for a hundred years, the case method is more reviled than beloved. Many of its practitioners accept its dominance blindly, assigning casebooks and preparing questions for classes without regard either for why they do so or for how well they do so, and with little thought of other teaching methodologies. And yet the fuller history of the American law lecture and coursebook suggests that such regard is the basis for healthy skepticism both of defenses and of assaults on case method instruction. This article chronicles the methods and books chosen by law professors for the American lecture hall in the last two centuries, glancing occasionally at some of the rationales for such choices and some of their, often unintended, effects