DEADLINES. Here are the deadlines for students
writing comprehensive papers during the Fall
semester, 2001. Use these deadlines unless you
have made other arrangements with me. These
deadlines are firm, for your own good. If you miss
them, you'll find yourself trying to finish your
comprehensive paper during final exams.
Monday, September 24, 2001 -- outline due
Friday, November 9, 2001 -- first draft due
Monday, December 3, 2001 -- final draft due
GENERAL. The faculty enacted the comprehensive
writing requirement some years ago, and it is an
important component of your legal education. You
can find a description of the requirement in "The
Holding." Here is the pertinent part of that
description:
The comprehensive writing requirement is
satisfied by completion of a written work product
that the supervising teacher certifies as
evidencing:
extensive and thorough research;
a high understanding of the topic;
creative and original thinking;
competent use of the English language;
good organization; and
thorough editing.
In addition, it is ordinarily expected that the
student write and submit to the teacher at least
one working draft or extensive outline of the
paper, that the draft be critiqued by the teacher,
and that the student revise and reedit the paper
before submitting the final version. There are no
specified page requirements for the project; a
highly polished, competently prepared work product
meeting all of the foregoing criteria meets the
requirement. (Solely for guidance, it is suggested
that the work product typically should be between
20-40 double-spaced pages in length, exclusive of
footnotes.)
I follow these guidelines closely when I
evaluate comprehensive papers. I expect papers to
be about 30 double-spaced pages in length --
including footnotes, which ordinarily should be
placed at the bottom of the page.
SELECTING A TOPIC. Finding a great topic is
sometimes the most difficult part of the
comprehensive project. It is important to write
about something that excites you, and you should
expect to take several weeks choosing, and then
refining, your topic. Consult the following
sources, among others, for ideas:
- current events and/or news about a criminal
trial or appeal;
- reporting services that collect recent cases
(such as BNA's Criminal Law Reporter and U.S.
Law Week);
- cases pending in the United States Supreme
Court (consult the ABA's Supreme Court Preview),
federal appellate courts, and state appellate
and supreme courts
- treatises (such as LaFave);
- law review articles (a Westlaw search using
the "JLR" database is particularly
helpful);
Once you have a broad topic concept, refine it
by researching it and determining just what it is
about that topic that you want to focus on. If you
are writing a paper in the traditional law review
format, you must have a thesis -- a proposition
that you seek to advance in your paper. The thesis
might be that a court made a mistake (or did the
right thing) when it decided a case in a
particular way, or that an entire doctrine is
flawed (or brilliant), or that legislatures ought
(or ought not) to enact a certain statute, or ...
?? Plan to speak with me and other faculty members
about your thesis as you develop it.
SELECTING A FORMAT. Most students write their
comprehensive papers in traditional law review
format, and you should use that format unless you
get my approval to do something less traditional.
If you choose to write in traditional law review
format, your comprehensive paper ought to resemble
a student-written law review article in tone,
object, structure, and citation style. If you are
writing in this format, you must read several
student-written law review articles before
beginning your paper. You can find such articles
easily in the Oregon Law Review and other law
journals. Law journals usually place
student-written articles after
professionally-written articles (which are often
too ambitious in scope to provide good examples
for your paper), and they typically designate
student-written articles as Comments, Case Notes,
or Notes. I recommend that you write in
traditional law review format because it is easy
to learn, provides you with a good writing sample
for employment purposes, makes it possible for you
to seek publication of your paper, and permits you
to focus on a specific case (as would a "Case
Note") or analyze an entire issue (as would a
"Comment"). On the other hand, the traditional law
review format can be stultifying. For an amusing
critique of law review culture, see Keith Aoki and
Garrett Epps, Dead Lines, Break Downs &
Troubling the Legal Subject or "Anything You Can
Do, I Can Do Meta," 73 Or. L. Rev. 551 (1994).
Alternatives to traditional law review format
include nontraditional law review formats --
narratives, dialogues, etc. (for an example of a
great nontraditional law review article, see
Frederick Dennis Greene, The Resurrection of Gunga
Din, 81 Iowa L. Rev. 1521 (1996)) -- and non-law
review formats such as appellate court briefs,
historical analyses, and so forth. Be sure to
speak with me if you choose to write in a
nontraditional format. The faculty enacted the
comprehensive paper requirement with a traditional
law review format in mind, and while I don't wish
to discourage your creativity, I also want to make
sure that your format accomplishes the objectives
of the comprehensive paper requirement. What are
those objectives? Read the quotation from "The
Holding" that I reproduced above and let's
talk.
OUTLINE. Your outline need not be formal, but
it should communicate the paper's thesis -- the
proposition that you will advance -- as well as
the paper's organization. You can do this in a
one-page outline. Before preparing your outline,
think seriously about your paper's organizational
structure. Read one or two student-written law
review articles in order to become familiar with
organizational structure in legal scholarship.
This exercise also will familiarize you with the
style and depth of scholarly research that your
paper should achieve. In addition, by the time you
submit your outline, you should have identified
and read the major source materials that you will
use, although you need not list these in the
outline.
FIRST DRAFT. Submit only a complete draft --
one that you have already finished and edited. I
suggest that you edit the first draft at least
three times before submitting it. Professor Mary
Wood uses the following editing approach, which I
think is particularly effective:
During the first edit, focus on the paper's
conceptual framework. Make sure that your ideas
and arguments are supported logically and, where
appropriate, by citations to cases, law review
articles, and other sources. Since this first edit
focuses on the paper's structure, pay particular
attention to your introduction, transitions, and
conclusions. Provide frequent "road maps" so that
your reader is aware of what proposition your
paper advances and in what order the argument will
proceed. Tighten up the paper's organization and
close any gaps in your argument.
The second edit focuses on writing style. Make
sure that your sentences flow well, that your word
choices are good, and that grammar is correct
throughout. In addition, excise passive
construction, lengthy quotations, and other
weaknesses. Use law review articles as a guide to
writing style, and consult other writing manuals
if necessary (The Elements of Style, by William
Strunk and E.B. White, is a classic, as is Kate
Turabian's Manual For Writers of Term Papers,
Theses, and Dissertations). Writing manuals are
available in our library, the Knight Library, and
at the University Bookstore.
Use the third edit to check your citation form
and catch spelling errors. Consult the Harvard
Blue Book, the Chicago Manual of Style, and/or law
review articles for citation form. Use your
computer to do a spell check. Get out all of the
bugs at this stage and turn your paper into a
professional product.
FINAL DRAFT. I will give you oral and/or
written feedback on your first draft, and your
final draft should respond to that feedback. If
your first draft was thorough and well done, you
won't have much to do at this stage. Your final
draft should also reflect another edit of your
own, but if the first draft was well done, this
should be a light edit. The final draft is the one
on which you will be graded. See below for my
grading standards.
ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR SOURCES. Your paper must
reflect your own research, analysis, and writing.
Obviously, your analysis will be heavily based on
other people's words and ideas, and there is
nothing wrong with this, so long as you use
quotations marks and footnotes appropriately. Even
where you are using another person's ideas but are
not quoting that person, use a footnote to
acknowledge your use of that person's ideas. The
basic rule is easy: attribute generously and
joyfully! There is no shame in using other
people's ideas -- to the contrary, building on the
ideas of others advances legal scholarship. I have
learned a lot about how to attribute ideas from
reading articles by our own Keith Aoki, a graceful
and nationally-renowned scholar, and I suggest
that you check out some of his articles. If you
have any questions about how much attribution is
appropriate, please come see me. In addition, you
may refer to the following law review articles for
help in determining the appropriateness of your
use of source materials: Patsy W. Thomley, In
Search of a Plagiarism Policy, 16 N. Ky. L. Rev.
501 (1989); Comment, Plagiarism in Legal
Scholarship, 15 Tol. L. Rev. 15 (1983).
GRADING. In grading your paper, I will look for
(1) clear and professional writing [impeccable
grammar is a must]; (2) thorough and extensive
research reflected in citations and/or footnotes,
(3) thoughtful analysis, and (4) good
organization. I give top grades (As, A-minuses,
and A-pluses) only to those papers that are of
publishable quality--in other words, that manifest
excellence in the four categories mentioned above.
Papers in the B range (Bs, B-minuses, and
B-pluses) are of almost-publishable quality. They
are above average in the four categories. Papers
in the C to C-plus range demonstrate competence in
the four categories. Papers that do not display
minimal competence in the four categories will
receive less than a
C.