Abstract: This presentation will examine an approach to teaching digital epistemic responsibility that focuses on cultivating students’ awareness of modal language rather than treating AI outputs as fixed products. As generative AI becomes increasingly embedded in legal education, students often encounter authoritative-sounding responses without recognizing how linguistic modalities—such as “must,” “may,” and “might”—shape legal reasoning, signal degrees of certainty, and influence their trust in automated sources. Traditional instruction tends to treat modal usage as a settled feature of legal genres, offering prescriptive guidance that provides clarity but may limit students’ ability to evaluate how AI constructs or performs legal authority.

In this presentation, I introduce an approach to “modal language awareness” that invites students to analyze the epistemic signals embedded in generative AI responses and to reflect on how these modalities affect interpretation, accuracy, and the reasoning process. The objective is to strengthen students’ digital epistemic responsibility and enhance far-transfer by preparing them to navigate the new communicative and analytical demands posed by AI in both legal education and practice. This contribution aligns with the symposium’s broader themes of digital literacies, ethical integration of AI, and the evolving skills required of future lawyers.

Abstract:  This presentation examines how key ideographs in racial justice discourse—particularly “diversity” and “affirmative action”—have been rhetorically transformed in the aftermath of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC. In recent years, conservative advocates have recast these terms as mechanisms of discrimination against whites, aligning with a broader political movement that reframes remedial racial policies as threats to colorblindness and, by extension, to democratic legitimacy. This rhetorical shift reflects the larger historical moment described by Critical Race Studies scholars, in which narratives of white grievance and reactionary reinterpretations of racial equality have been mobilized to constrain, rather than expand, the possibilities of racial justice.

In this presentation, I analyze how these hijacked ideographs function within legal and political discourse following SFFA, focusing on the Court’s erasure of racial categories and its narrowing of permissible diversity rationales in higher education. I argue that understanding these linguistic and ideological transformations is essential for resisting contemporary distortions of race, equality, and constitutional meaning. The objective is to reclaim “diversity” and “affirmative action” as concepts grounded in multiracial solidarity and in a realistic account of racial power, thereby contributing to broader efforts within Critical Race Studies to illuminate how law constructs and contests racial hierarchy.

Abstract: This Essay explores how discourse surrounding Supreme Court nominations reflects broader societal debates about merit, representation, and inclusion. Through analysis of the controversy surrounding President Biden's commitment to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, this piece examines three interconnected themes: the embodied nature of representation, the relationship between diversity and judicial legitimacy, and the problematic nature of "best candidate" narratives. It challenges traditional conceptions of merit in judicial nominations and argues for a more nuanced understanding that recognizes the value of diverse lived experiences on the bench.

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Abstract: The primary goal of this Discussion Group is to engage in a thoughtful exploration of how generative AI like ChatGPT can make essential functions in legal education and legal services more efficient, particularly for populations that may struggle with the dominant culture in a legal ecosystem. These populations are law students, law professors, and lawyers who are first generation, who learn or communicate differently, or who face resource constraints. By centering our discussion on these groups, we hope to foster a more inclusive and equitable approach to the integration of generative AI into legal education and practice.

Abstract: This discussion group provides emerging scholars in consumer law, commercial law, and bankruptcy with an opportunity to discuss early-stage scholarship in a warm and supportive setting and to receive feedback from more senior scholars in these fields. The scope of topics is intentionally broad and encompasses any consumer, commercial and/or bankruptcy law-related theme. Discussants briefly present an idea for an early-stage project (5-10 minutes) and receive feedback from other discussants.

Abstract: As James Boyd White has written, law “is a way of telling a story about what has happened in the world and claiming a meaning for it by writing an ending to it.” This panel examines how law inscribes those stories and how literature can function to recover the stories concealed or disguised by law and to illustrate law’s devastating “real-life” effects. For example, an archaeology of a will contest might reveal the movement of wealth from Native Americans to white settlers and a struggle for freedom by enslaved African-Americans.

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Abstract: This presentation explored the transformative impact of generative AI on the field of legal writing. The presentation delved into the evolving role of AI in the legal writing classroom, law practice, and legal scholarship, encouraging attendees to think creatively about the future possibilities of AI integration in their work. The presentation emphasized the importance of understanding both the potential and the limitations of generative AI tools, urging the legal writing community to remain at the forefront of these technological advancements.

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Abstract: Often, the discourse surrounding the incorporation of GAl in academic settings is narrowed down to issues of academic integrity, such as plagiarism. While these issues are crucial, they fail to encompass the broader ethical obligations tied to legal writing. This presentation introduces the concept of Digital Epistemic Responsibility (DER), which evolves from philosophical and rhetorical traditions that address the ethics of knowledge creation and dissemination. DER becomes particularly pertinent when students employ GAI tools for crafting legal arguments or drafting memoranda. I argue that DER offers a more nuanced framework than mere Academic Integrity for exploring the ethical ramifications of employing generative AI in legal writing.

Abstract: This presentation provides a case study of the role of narrative (fiction and non-fiction) in a shared understanding of the ethics and efficacy of police procedures. It examines the role of drama in focusing attention and changing attitudes toward interrogation practices, especially with respect to juveniles and attempts to explain why we put so much stock in evidence that the empirical data suggest is faulty. 

Abstract: In bankruptcy, the debtor is often featured as either the victim or the villain in the story of the debtor’s financial woes. When a debtor is accused of being unworthy of relief, interested parties present conflicting narratives. Ultimately, the bankruptcy judge weaves the narrative that determines the debtor’s fate. We examine these narratives and the factors that influence them. 

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Abstract: This presentation will explain an approach to teaching genre forms that focuses on process, rather than product, and on descriptive rather than prescriptive instruction. Traditionally, genre is taught through prescriptive instruction where a scholar of a particular genre (e.g. an appellate brief) gives explicit instructions about the common features of the form. This type of instruction provides comfort to both students and professors because it, arguably, communicates the most amount of information in the least amount of time. But prescriptive instruction tends to focus on near rather than far transfer and therefore may not always be the most effective method for teaching real-world genres. In this presentation, I introduce the “Comparative Genre Analysis,” an assignment developed by a researcher in writing pedagogy, Joanna Wolfe, which I have adapted into a series of small assignments to be deployed in a legal writing classroom. It asks students to create their own “how-to” manuals for how to write memos and briefs in order to practice the skill of learning how to write in a new genre. The objective is to increase far-transfer and give students the skills to apply to the new genres they will be asked to learn in practice.

Abstract: The force of the law comes not only from the way in which language from court opinions engenders assent to it but also from the ways in which legal language can dictate access through a highly formalistic set of rules and potentially inaccessible language and archaic jargon. The legal community is defined through a common education and bar membership but legal education does more than ensure a common knowledge base, it trains us to “think like lawyers” and in doing so, to replicate the practices of thinking and speaking that are entrenched in the law. While this is not a unique feature of a legal discourse community,  it can help to reify linguistic and rhetorical practices that can marginalize outsiders to the law community. 

For my analysis, I have looked at a corpus of hundreds of opinions from three Supreme Court jurisdictions - U.S., Navajo and U.K. - across time to compare linguistic complexity from the past, present and ultimately make predictions about and recommendations for the future. I survey these texts using metrics for the standards of plain language set out in Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42-152 to analyze the extent to which the courts are serving the public through their speech. First, it does so through an analysis of syntactic complexity, as understood both by the statute and using digital tools developed to measure complexity. Second, it analyzes word usage for difficult-to-comprehend words as defined both by the statute and by linguistic tools. I then compare each of the three Courts in terms of the accessibility to the texts by laypeople. I compare these texts across time to account for the trajectory of the language in Supreme Court Opinions. Finally, an analysis is given of the fit of the language of the Plain English statute to give an accurate representation of how accessible a text is. 

Abstract: The presentation will begin with a brief discussion of theories of modality, borrowed from Systemic Functional Linguistics. Next, the panelist will illustrate the instruction and learning process from reading and applying an “easy” statute to muddying the waters with jurisprudence that interprets the statute and sometimes provides a different outcome.  The presentation will focus on the modal language used when applying jurisprudence and/or facts to that statute.  Specifically, she will illustrate the modality of an obligatory statute and then explain how students learn to then apply that statute and write a cogent analysis of the issue using the modality aspects of certainty, probability, or possibility. The final presentation will discuss effective modal language for persuasive documents filed with courts, the difference between the modal language used in those documents as opposed to the that used in office memoranda, teaching students to transition from predictive language used in office memoranda to persuasive language used in documents filed with the court, and the use of objective language in persuasive documents. 

Abstract: Recent popular documentaries and docudramas have brought into question the reliability of confessions. Documentaries like The Central Park Five and Making a Murderer helped to illustrate to a broad audience the fallibility of confessions, be they coerced, compelled, or cajoled. The power of narrative in these instances to shift popular attitudes of police power is clear and direct. The stories narrate the injustices faced in real life by real victims of police overreach and demonstrate the ways in which vulnerabilities can be exploited by investigators trained to elicit confessions. But attention to these cases, cases which are assumed to be rare outliers of a system that usually only extracts confessions from guilty parties, brings into question the law’s assumptions about the reliability of confessions more generally. Without clear empirical evidence about the reliability of confessions, we must extrapolate reliability through our own speculations about what we, ourselves do in a given situation. How could anyone who has never faced a scenario where they were being interrogated about a crime of which they were innocent understand how they would respond to the techniques of police trained in obtaining confessions? This presentation examines one explanation for our presumptions about the relationship between guilt and confessions: our understanding of police interrogations as depicted on police dramas. To do so, I analyze the narrative arc of police interrogations in four of the most watched TV shows of the 2020-21 season, according to Neilson ratings: NCIS, FBI, Blue Bloods and Chicago PD. If, as Paul Ricœur asserts, we understand ourselves in relation to the narrative framework around us, this project can help us to understand how we might understand the interplay of police and suspects through the narratology of police dramas. 

Abstract: In order to understand the interplay between the corpus juris and the interpretation of our codified laws, I study the ways in which privacy law concepts are encoded in a line of Supreme Court privacy law opinions. Using theories of entextualization, or "the process of rendering a given instance of discourse a text, detachable from its local context" (Urban), this paper analyzes instances of intertextuality in three Supreme Court privacy law cases, and finds that, unsurprisingly, specific prior texts command a large proportion of the legal opinions. What is surprising is the way in which prior utterances are framed and used for different rhetorical purposes. The opinions make extensive use of direct quotations, citation of prior cases and reference to legal concepts derived from prior case law and legal scholarship. To analyze how a text is entextualized, the paper tracks the way in which the Fourth Amendment is taken up variously as a text, a concept, and a law through the examination of the context surrounding its use and finds that the Court engages The Fourth Amendment to different ends to justify its reasoning in the instant case