Reference no: EM133200756 , Length: word count:1500

Assignment

This is not a research paper. Rather, you need only answer the questions below with respect to your chosen law journal article. Turn it in will flag the use of external sources and your grade will be adversely affected.

Question 1: Summarize the legal argument made in the paper. What is the main point of the Article?

What evidence does the author use to support the main point of the Article? What are the key assumptions? How does this article appear to fit within a larger academic literature?

What is the basic structure of the argument? The goal here is to break down the argument to its essential core elements (i.e., how would you summarize what the author is trying to accomplish in a page or two?).

Question 2:

What criticism can you make of the argument? Are the assumptions unrealistic? Has the author made assumptions about human nature that strike you as incorrect? Is there a hole in the logic? Is all the discussion relevant to the main point that author is attempting to make? To the extent that the paper argues for a certain tradeoff of costs and benefits, would you personally weigh things differently? In the end, does the author make a point that is, in fact, novel or interesting? The idea here is to think of yourself as a litigator who has been paid a considerable sum to crush the argument presented in this law journal article. How would you go about dismantling what the author is trying to do in the paper? Do not be afraid to be critical here.

Question 3: Approximately 1 page

What is the next paper that you would write after having read your chosen law journal article? Specifically, if you concluded that the paper gets it wrong, what paper would you write instead. How would your paper get it right? Or, alternatively, if you concluded that your chosen law journal article did, indeed, have something worthwhile to say, how would you extend this paper? Can the same point be applied to other areas of the law or different fact patterns? Can the author's main point itself be fleshed out in some "interesting" way? The idea here is not to write any of these suggested papers, of course. Instead, the idea here is simply to pitch a possible future project based on your law journal article in a paragraph or two. Just give me a very general sense of what this paper might look like. Unlike other assessments in this class, answering this question requires you to think creatively and imaginatively about the material you carefully analyzed to identify an "interesting" issue worthy of further exploration.

How to Choose a Law Journal Article?