Toni Rembe Lecture on Curriculum Modernization

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025

This year’s Toni Rembe Lecture features three co-authors of the paper “Langdell’s Subjects.” The speakers are leaders in legal education who will speak on modernizing the law school curriculum: Mary Lu Bilek, Joan Howarth, and Deborah Jones Merritt.

From the abstract:

When Christopher Columbus Langdell founded the law school curriculum that we teach, Jim Crow flourished. Women could not vote. The Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to invalidate worker protections, but not racial apartheid. In that backwards era, more than 125 years ago, Langdell established our familiar first-year curriculum consisting of courses examining appellate cases in Property, Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure, and Criminal Law.

Today, our law schools continue to graduate lawyers whose required course of study inscribes nineteenth century notions, categories, and values. Is this really the right foundational curriculum for today’s lawyers?

You can read the full abstract of their paper, “Langdell’s Subjects,” on SSRN, where you can also download the paper as a PDF.

When and Where

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025
12:30–1:20 p.m.

William H. Gates Hall, Rm. 127

Following the lecture, please join us for a 1:30 p.m. reception in the Macfarlane Lounge (Rm. 447).

Pre-registration is not required.

Speakers

Mary Lu Bilek

Former Dean and Professor of Law, CUNY School of Law and UMass Law

Joan Howarth

Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, and Dean Emerita, Michigan State University Law College

Deborah Jones Merritt

Distinguished University Professor and Professor Emerita, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University