Kenneth A. Manaster, The American Legal System and Civic Engagement: Why We All Should Think Like Lawyers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
"Before determining whether the legal system's approach to decisions can provide guidance for the citizen, we need to identify the particular legal tools and traditions that might be helpful. Twelve such methods will be explained here. They will be roughly grouped into the following four categories, each of which declares a broad goal for how legal work should be done:
A: Focusing on the task
1. Defining the issue
2. Separating facts from standards and evaluations
B: Taking an organized approach
1. Respecting procedure
2. Taking time
C: Finding reliable information
1. Gathering the facts
2. Recognizing incomplete facts
3. Dividing labor
4. Using expertise
5. Identifying bias
D: Keeping an open mind
1. Arguing and persuading
2. Listening and negotiating
3. Making hard choices in gray areas."
Id. at 39. In reading this text, in general, and this list of lawyerly methods, in specific, I found might thoughts drifting back to the seemingly countless law faculty meeting I have attended over nearly a quarter century. The value of utilizing these methods, the value of 'thinking like a lawyer" among law faculty members, is more evidenced by the absence of the use of these methods than by adherence to them. Academic lawyers, when engaged in faculty business, pretty much resort to power politics. I think such will be true in other areas of civic engagement. True, perhaps academic lawyers are not real lawyers but, since the stakes in legal academia are overwhelmingly trivial, you would expect those "professing" the law to have law's methods nailed down and honored. I suppose, however, there is honor in the breach.
