Gerry Spence & the Art of Advocacy
Professor James R. Elkins College of Law | West Virginia University
Gerry Spence
Spence--Wikipedia
Trial Lawyers College
Spence on Video
Spence & the Critique of Legal Education
Bibliography of Spence's Writings
Assignments Archive
February 4, 2008 :: Gerry Spence, Gunning for Justice
Reading: Gerry Spence, Gunning for Justice (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982)
Cases Discussed in Gunning for Justice
Ed Cantrell
Karen Silkwood
Howard Kohn, Who Killed Karen Silkwood? (New York: Summit, 1981)
Richard Rashke, The Killing of Karen Silkwood (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981)(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2nd ed., 2000)(For the Cornell University Press edition, the author has included three new chapters on what has been learned about Silkwood since the book's original publication, and what has happened to individuals involved in the drama.)
The Karen Silkwood Story
[Frontline, PBS]
Assignment: February 11, 2008 :: Gerry Spence: Poet & Photographer
Reading for the Assignment
Gerry Spence's Wyoming: The Landscape: Photographs and Poetry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000)
Introduction to an Anthology of Poetry by Lawyers
[James R. Elkins, Legal Studies Forum]
In Search of the Lawyer Poets
['Art of Advocacy' course webpage]
"Most of the wealthy persons I know have, in the pursuit of the dollar, lost their ability to see value elsewhere. I cannot remember ever having met a wealthy man who was a poet. Most have not read a poem in thirty years." [Gerry Spence, Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: A Handbook 121 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001)]
"The sense of the lawyer's life as one of art suggests a spirit in which we might turn to literature, namely to find an array of texts that can help us see our own situation as artists more fully by comparison with others. The hope would be that we could discover opportunity for art in our life where now we see routine and at the same time develop a sense of what the possibilities for success might be. Comparison with other texts and discourses might expose the characteristics of legal discourse and yield a juster sense both of its limits and of its peculiar resources for meaningful talk and action. In this sense the comparison with literature, which at first may seem out re, could be seen as highly practical, for the aim of the comparison would be to improve our own capacities of mind and language in ways that can affect all that we do.
But the meaning of the humanities can go beyond even that, and in many different directions. Reading texts composed by other minds in other worlds can help us see more clearly (what is otherwise nearly invisible) the force and meaning of the habits of mind and language in which we shall in all likelihood remain unconscious unless led to perceive or imagine other worlds. We can thus learn to read humanistic texts with an eye to understanding: the language and culture in which they are composed; the art by which actors in he worlds defined by these languages (and the authors of texts written in them) struggle to come to terms with them; and the kind of ethical and political relations that speakers within the world of the text, and the author of the text in his writing of it, create with their respective interlocutors. In all three respects we can hope to find in them a ground for the criticism of our own world, of our own texts, and of our own relations with others." [James Boyd White, What Can a Lawyer Learn from Literature? (Book Review), 102 Harv. L. Rev. 2014, 2022 (1989)]
Lawyers, Poets, and Poetry
[a law course taught by James R. Elkins]
Poetry about Law & Lawyers
[poetry collected and/or published by James R. Elkins]
Poetry and the Practice of Law
Tim Nolan, Poetry and the Practice of Law, 46 So. Dakota L. Rev. 677 (2001) [on-line text] [Tim Nolan, a Minnesota lawyer]
Tim Nolan writes: "I write poetry and, from time to time, publish it. I also practice law. The two occupations are not always mutually exclusive. There are interesting moments when one discipline seeps into the other, and there seems to be sense--poetic or legal--as it may be. There are other times when my dual interests could not seem further apart. During a prolonged and boring deposition a few months ago, my attention wandered out the window of the conference room to a hawk spiraling above the river bluffs with perfect grace and intention--making our lawyers' squabbles over construction change orders and contract interpretation seem remote and intensely silly. The poetry of the hawk's flight was obvious. The poetry of the stock phrase in an answer to a complaint--"Defendant is without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the matter, and, therefore, denies the same"--is less apparent.
Yet at the same time, I have come to value the precision and sense of a good legal argument--it is not unlike the argument of a good poem--quick, irrefutable and pressured by precedent. Lawyers cite to state and federal appellate courts. Poets use the precedent of Walt Whitman or Rainer Maria Rilke. The mind--sorting through history, memory, emotion, personal experience--ought to inform both poetry and the practice of law." [Tim Nolan, Poetry and the Practice of Law, 46 So. Dak. L. Rev. 677 (2001)]
Richard Krech reading from In Chambers
[YouTube; In Chambers will be published in 2008][Richard Krech reading: Travel Poems -- Later Poems
-- A Fable]
Assignment: February 18, 2008 :: Gerry Spence & The Lawyer as Photographer
[Art of Advocacy -- course webpage]
Assignment: February 18, 2008 :: Gerry Spence & Opening Statement in "The Smoking Gun" Case
We'll spend most of the afternoon watching actual trial footage of the Spence opening statement in "the Smoking Gun" case.
The Gerry Spence tapes that we're going to be watching over the course of the next few weeks are video footage of the Sandy Jones ("Smoking Gun") murder case in Oregon. There will be a small group presentation on Gerry Spence's The Smoking Gun (New York: Scribner, 2003) before we complete the course. The book is quite good, and I recommend that you read it now. It provides a good deal of context on the prosecutorial misconduct in the Sandy Jones case, a three week pretrial hearing on the misconduct, and Spence's efforts to have the case dismissed. [See: Dana Cole, Gerry Spence's The Smoking Gun as a Teaching Tool]
Footnote (to our discussion of lawyer|poets):
Richard Krech reading of poems from his new book, In Chambers. Krech is an Oakland, California defense lawyer :: Richard Krech reading poems from In Chambers [youTube] [Richard Krech reading: Travel Poems -- Later Poems -- A Fable]
Assignment: February 25, 2008 :: Gerry Spence's Opening Statement in Sandy Jones/ "The Smoking Gun" Case
Continue watching actual trial footage of the Spence opening statement in the Sandy Jones/"Smoking Gun" case. Continue reading Spence's The Smoking Gun.
Small groups (and upcoming presentations):
Assignment: March 3, 2008 :: Gerry Spence|Cross Examination in the Sandy Jones/ "Smoking Gun" Case
Trial footage of the Spence's cross-examination of the ballistics expert in the Sandy Jones/"Smoking Gun" case. Finish reading Spence's The Smoking Gun.
Assignment: March 10, 2008 :: Small Group Presentations on Sam Schrager's The Trial Lawyers' Art
Assignment: March 17-April 21, 2008 :: Small Group Presentations on Trial Advocacy (Gerry Spence's Win Your Case (St. Martin's Press, 2005)
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