This webinar will introduce lawyers to tools of analytical jurisprudence that will enable them to make more precise and effective arguments and to critique their opponents’ arguments. It will focus on the taxonomy of rights developed by the jurisprudence scholar Wesley Hohfeld. It will demonstrate how Hohfeld’s scheme of rights can help lawyers (a) understand the differing jurisprudential assumptions of U.S. Supreme Court justices, (b) frame their own arguments in more precise and helpful terms, and (c) critique imprecise, sloppy, and misleading legal arguments. It will draw examples from recent landmark and high-profile cases.
Adam J. MacLeod is Professor of Law at St. Mary’s University, lecturer in the Alabama Judicial College, and Research Fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy. He has been a fellow at Princeton University and George Mason University, a special Deputy Attorney General of Alabama, Auxiliary advisor to active duty and auxiliary commands in the U.S. Coast Guard, and an attorney in private practice. He served as law clerk to Chief Justice Christopher Armstrong and Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Appeals Court and then-Chief Judge Lewis T. Babcock of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. He is the author of four books, dozens of book chapters and scholarly articles, and more than one hundred essays and book reviews. His published writings include Property and Practical Reason(Cambridge University Press 2015), peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Modern Law Review and Journal of Law & Religion, and law review articles in journals such as the Notre Dame Law Review and Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. He received his B.A. summa cum laude from Gordon College and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame.
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