Those friends from my law school will understand this post, the rest of you might not care.
Having taken Constitutional Law from this professor last year and Federal Courts this year, I feel I am as qualified as anyone to speak about his teaching credentials. I should probably start with a disclaimer that it is rather difficult for me to dislike or talk negatively about a professor. If he or she is a horrible person but a good teacher, I will respect them for that. If he or she is a nice person but a horrible teacher, I will think kindly of them for that.
I haven't spent enough time outside of class with this professor to know whether or not he is horrible or nice in his personality, so I'm not qualified to speak on that issue. And I will admit that I didn't like his teaching style at the beginning of last year's Con Law class. I didn't like his style, so I wrote him off and paid little or no attention during class. Unfortunately for me, I also paid little or no attention to the reading until the end of the semester when I realized how badly I had screwed myself over, not only because I had not been reading, but also because it wasn't until then that I started to understand the professor's teaching style.
I hear so many people say that he is a bad teacher and that they don't learn from him. I personally wonder about that. I came out of his Con Law class with a thorough enough understanding of the content of the law to get a B in the class. I learned the elements of an Equal Protection claim. I learned the theories of Hobbes and Locke. I learned about fundamental rights. I learned about the Takings Clause. If I learned all of that from spacing out 3/4 of the semester, how did everyone else learning "nothing"? Let's drop the hyperboles, okay? The truth usually is not that you didn't learn anything, but rather because you didn't like the way he taught it to you.
He expressly told our class that his teaching method is one that assumes that we've all read the materials and come to class prepared. I often didn't do that, and that's why I wasn't able to appreciate his methods until very late into the class. Personally I appreciate the fact that he goes deeper than just the black letter law of the case, just the holdings. I like that he points of inconsistencies between holdings written by the same justices, how he points out hypocrisy. If all I wanted from class was a regurgitation of the case, I could read it by myself in my spare time. But we're paying tuition for a reason.
Yes, he's a liberal. So what? I've been through five semesters of law school now, and he is the only professor I've ever had here that made his personal political views a part of class. The conservatives in my class just go apeshit over this, and I just roll my eyes. Sure, it's easy for me not to be bothered because I agree with a lot of what he says, but do these conservatives really expect everyone to coddle them? So you have ONE teacher in law school that makes it clear what he thinks of the majority on the Supreme Court. Can your psyche not handle that? Grow up, I say.
I honestly believe that he's not making his "far left" views clear just for the hell of it, but to point out the opposite extreme in order that he can get the students to fall somewhere in the middle. Yes, he refuses to concede his point to anyone that speaks up in class, but that's just part of his style. What are the conservatives so afraid of? That just because our professor is liberal all the students are going to accept his view hook, line, and sinker? Give us a little credit—we can think for ourselves and decide what we believe with or without the professors opinion. Most of the cases are written from the "right" (i.e., conservative) perspective, so why shouldn't the professor bring up the other perspective? Why not try to balance the scales?
Right now everyone is up in arms about him because of some snafu on their final exam. Look, I just took a final from him, too, and it sucked. I felt like I was sucker punched. But even if I were to concede that it wasn't a well-written or executed test, that doesn't change the fact that I learned a hell of a lot about federal courts from him. I have little to no patience with students who are in a professional program and whine and complain about their grades. Yes, grades matter, but learning matters more. It is spoiled brats like that who drove the brilliant organic chemistry professor at my undergraduate chemistry program out of teaching Organic Chemistry. The doctors kids that wanted to follow in daddy's footprints were getting C's—how would they ever get into medical school!—and they complained so much and so many took a summer O. Chem program to avoid the professors class that the administration caved. Now he teaches intro-level chemistry to the general studies students and the nursing and dental hygiene majors. A professor—who is
not an organic chemist—is left with teaching O. Chem. And every single student in that department is missing out on the opportunity to learn Organic Chemistry with a deep and thorough understanding of the subject matter.
I'm not comparing our professor here to my Organic Chemistry professor, but I am comparing the complaining students to the students that drove him out. Haven't we all had to deal with things in life that aren't necessarily pleasant? That don't come easy? Haven't we all had professors that could be better teachers? For pete's sake, we're supposedly going to be attorneys! Can't we handle some adversity without falling apart and whining all the time? So it's not easy for you to learn from his methods. Well,
I am able to learn from them, and I'm probably not alone. So stop complaining—the world (and the law school) does not revolve around you.
That's my piece.
