Strategic Advocacy

Catalog description

Law students' steady diet of appellate opinions tends to eclipse the role of the advocacy that leads to decisions. In fact, lawyers make countless strategic decisions about how best to present the facts and law, and how best to advance their clients' interests. These decisions include issues of substance and tone, as well as building coalitions to support the positions being advanced. In this seminar, we will explore various elements of lawyers' advocacy by examining a series of criminal appeals. Some of these will be cases (including capital cases) that the instructor handled; some of the others will involve significant criminal law and/or criminal procedure cases of the modern era. We will read the briefs, decisions, and (in some instances) secondary materials relating to the cases we will be studying. We will also consider how some general literature on strategic advocacy relates to the cases we are examining. Our discussions will include a critical assessment of the strategic decisions the prosecution, the defense and (in some instances) amici made in these cases. In several of the cases we will also be examining the lawyers' relationships with the media and the community during the pendency of the case, as well as the ethical implications of the lawyers' conduct in those and other areas. Although the matters to be examined are all criminal appeals, the underlying focus on strategic advocacy applies to any kind of advocacy--criminal or civil, trial or appellate, judicial or administrative, litigation-oriented or negotiation-focused. Each student will write a final paper on a subject to be discussed with the instructor. After the term begins, students enrolled in the course can transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement, with consent of the instructor. Grading is on the H/P/RC/F system and will be based on class-participation and…