Critical Introduction to Law Portfolio Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4750 words

Critical Introduction to Law Portfolio - Essay Example Much like Poe’s Prefect, I came into the law course, an unthinking member of society, taking the study of law for granted. The second seminar began to reverse my attitude as it engaged thought and reason. Without the benefit of Schlag’s The Enchantment of Reason, I might have read, Poe’s The Purloined Letter as nothing more than detective fiction. However, with the hindsight of Schlag’s The Enchantment of Reason, I not only felt compelled to re-evaluate my own view of the law, I was also able to interpret Poe’s The Purloined Letter differently. I focused on logic and more importantly flawed logic and the power of the human mind and reason. As a result, I was prepared to study law with an open mind. Reading and discussing the Purloined Letter and Schlag’s The Enchantment of Reason I came to appreciate a new perspective on law. Looked at as a system of rules and regulation, Schlag and Poe’s works draw attention to fallacy of blindly sett ing rigid rules and regulations and then following those rigid rules and regulations even when, they do not produce desirable outcomes. I came to the realization that I had a lot to learn about the law, how and why law is made and what compels people to follow and to not follow the law. I also realized that disobeying rules and regulations and finding alternative solutions were not always wrong. The second seminar therefore changed my expectations. I found that I was eager to learn more about the rights and protections anticipated by the law and when and how unanticipated situations would or should be treated by the law. In other words, the second seminar drew specific attention to procedural rather than substantive law, but invokes thoughts of both. Essentially, the second seminar taught me that procedural rules and regulations rarely anticipate every possibility. Rule makers, such as the police in The Purloined Letter who refuse to modify rules when they are inappropriate in an un anticipated situation, end up with rules and regulations that are ineffective. Therefore reason and logic dictates that there are often justifiable grounds for going around the procedural rules and regulations or modifying them to meet a new set of circumstances. The third seminar provided a more direct experience with the law with an introduction to 19th century English legal scholar A.V Dicey. Dicey invited critical thinking about the law and what it takes to learn the law. In Dicey’s Can English Law Be Taught At The Universities? reinforced my enthusiasm to study the law. Dicey admits that the best place to learn the law is in the courtroom. However, he also notes that there are some things that cannot be learned by mere practice and that learning law in university fills that gap. The gap is learning to think critically about legal concepts. That can never be learned in the courts and in the law chambers. I was also encouraged by Kennedy’s First Year Law Teaching as Political Action which encouraged legal scholarship as a tool for encouraging critical thinking rather than merely learning the law as a means to a career. Kennedy encouraged creativity and a unique approach to learning and teaching law. Thus far, I felt that I was already becoming a creative and critical thinker. Introduction to law was nothing like I expected learning the law to be. I always thought studying law meant learning and thinking codes and cases. Now I was thinking about logic and analysis and