By: Lisa M. De Sanctis*
Abstract
When the Pinball Wizard asked his well-timed question, he not only lit up the 1L classroom with a cacophony of opinions but also illuminated deep confusion about the meaning of, and distinctions between, “rules” and “holdings.”
The practice of both oversimplifying and conflating the parts of a judicial opinion, particularly rules and holdings, is common among law professors, law school success materials, and, to an extent, even legal writing texts. Coupled with the novice law student’s search for right answers and found meaning, 1Ls often find themselves understandably frustrated and confused. This Article argues that the resulting confusion about rules and holdings is an opportunity ripe for introducing contextual understanding and for modeling this metacognitive approach to reading legal texts. Further, it demonstrates how to persuade 1Ls, even the doubters, that contextual understanding will enable their early fluency in the logic of judicial opinions.
With buy-in for contextual understanding achieved, this Article next proposes teaching holdings as hypotheses and offers two detailed examples for doing so. Finally, it explains how teaching holdings as hypotheses—itself an example of contextual understanding—will achieve at least three classroom objectives: (1) focusing 1L attention on constructed meaning and the malleability of law; (2) emphasizing the evolution of law, including how holdings themselves can be fundamentally altered without being overruled or criticized; and (3) enhancing classroom engagement, particularly among Gen-Z students who may otherwise be reticent to participate.
* Legal Skills Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law (UF Law). I presented earlier versions of this Article at the 2022 Legal Writing Institute’s Western Regional Conference, held at the University of Oregon, and at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) 2023 Annual Conference. I am deeply grateful to Professors Suzanne Rowe and Elizabeth Frost for their suggestions on earlier drafts and to all conference participants who provided feedback. I am also grateful to Dean Sabrina Lopez and to my UF Law legal writing colleagues for their support and willingness to share course materials on a moment’s notice, to the UF Law administration for funding this writing project, and to the larger legal writing community for being wonderfully welcoming. I am indebted to my research assistants A.J. Fernandez, Ariadna Perez Mendez, and Serina Combs for their helpful suggestions, thorough research, and edits on previous drafts. I am thankful for the detailed editorial and technical support of Jenn Bauer, Faith Anderson, Morgan Ryan, Grace Filohoski, and the rest of their team on the Penn State Law Review. Any errors that may remain are my own. I am grateful to my son, Jake Pingree, for being even more self-reliant than usual during my writing and editing periods, for taking an interest in cooking at just the right time, and for queuing up motivational music when I needed it most. Finally, I am grateful to my husband, Greg Pingree, for sharing his thoughts about legal writing with me some 30 years ago. Thank you, Greg, for your patience then and now, for never tiring of the conversation, and for steadfastly rooting for me in all regards, even under the most challenging circumstances.