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The Language of Law School
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The Language of Law School
Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer”
Elizabeth Mertz
1
2007
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mertz, Elizabeth, J.D.

The language of law school : learning to “think like a lawyer” / Elizabeth Mertz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978-0-19-518286-6; 978-0-19-518310-8 (pbk.)
ISBN 0-19-518286-3; 0-19-518310-X (pbk.)
1. Law—Study and teaching—United States.
2. Law—United States—Methodology.
I. Title.
KF279.M47 2007
340.071'173—dc22 2006045325
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
..
For my daughters, Jenny and Becca
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Preface
T
his is a study whose genesis dates back to the day I first took my seat in a Con-
tracts classroom as a first-year law student, and that came to fruition as I for
the first time taught Contracts to first-year law students. Having participated in
both ends of the process has added depth to my understanding of the law school
experience. As a first-year student, I took notes in my Contracts class in two col-
umns; the first kept track of the concepts my professor was endeavoring to im-
press on us, and the second was a running anthropologist’s commentary on the
studies that someone should do to investigate the social and linguistic processes at
work in contract law—and in legal reasoning generally. This work is an initial ef-
fort to investigate the distinctive shape of a core U.S. legal worldview, empirically
grounded in the study of the language through which law students are trained to
this new approach.

During the first year of law school, students are reputed to undergo a trans-
formation in thought patterns—a transformation often referred to as “learning to
think like a lawyer.” Professors and students accomplish this purported transfor-
mation, and professors assess it, through classroom exchanges and examinations,
through spoken and written language. What message does the language of the law
school classroom convey? What does it mean to “think” like a lawyer? Is the same
message conveyed in different kinds of schools, and when it is imparted by profes-
sors of color or by white women professors, and when it is received by students of
different races, genders, and backgrounds? This study addresses these questions,
using fine-grained empirical research in eight different law schools.
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I
n a fashion that ought to please followers of Carol Gilligan, I began composing
the acknowledgments to this volume long before I started the book itself. This
was because I have at all points felt deeply how much the work depends on a web
of relationships, on the contributions of so many people to whom I feel profoundly
indebted. Before I attempt to do justice to this rich relational context, let me thank
two institutions, the American Bar Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, for
the generous funding that made this project possible. Some of the material from
Chapter 2 is reprinted by permission of The Yale Journal of Law and the Humani-
ties, Vol. 4, pp. 168–173; portions of Chapter 4 appeared originally in Natural
Histories of Discourse, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban (University of
Chicago Press, pp. 229–249; © 1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights re-
served). Chapter 6 contains material from Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory,
edited by Bambi Schieffelin, Kathryn Woolard, and Paul Kroskrity (pp. 149–162,
used by permission of Oxford University Press; © 1998 by Oxford University Press),
as well as material that is revised by permission from Democracy and Ethnography:
Constructing Identities in Multicultural Liberal States, edited by Carol J. Greenhouse
(The State University of New York Press, pp. 218–232; © 1998 by State University
of New York. All rights reserved). Thanks to the editors who worked on these

materials with me as well as to those who helped with articles to which I retained
copyright and from which I have drawn in this volume, which appeared in the
Journal of Legal Education 48(1): 1–87 (with Wamucii Njogu and Susan Gooding),
and the John Marshall Law Review 34(4): 91–117. I am also grateful to the many
colleagues—anonymous reviewers as well as many who are named below—who
have read and commented on parts of or all of the manuscript. Greg Matoesian
and Stewart Macaulay graciously provided thorough reviews of the linguistics and
Acknowledgments
x
Acknowledgments
contract law discussions; any errors that remain despite their efforts are of course
my sole responsibility. Sincere thanks also to my wonderful OUP editors.
I wish to begin by acknowledging the team effort that goes into large-scale re-
search projects of this kind. I have on numerous occasions reflected with some
despair on the inadequacy of any mere acknowledgment to express my apprecia-
tion to the extraordinarily dedicated group of researchers who worked on this
project. Readers who know this field will recognize among the names on this list
gifted scholars who have gone on to make outstanding contributions in their own
right. Despite the sometimes dreary and plodding character of the work, everyone
carried through even the tougher moments with grace and energy, and with a sense
of camaraderie and fellowship. I thank Nancy Matthews, the first project manager,
for her vision, intellectual precision, and good humor in directing the nitty-gritty
daily work as we began the process of gaining access, taping, and formulating cod-
ing categories, as well as for her own contribution to in-class taping and coding of
one of the classes. Susan Gooding had the difficult task of taking over as project
manager in midstream, a job she tackled with a high degree of commitment both
to the people involved and to the project; her insights and conceptual rigor also
greatly enriched the interpretation of the results as they emerged. Wamucii Njogu,
who directed the bulk of the quantitative analysis, similarly insisted on careful
and critical examination of the coding and data; her flexibility and intellectual

curiosity in working across quantitative and qualitative aspects of the study
brought a unique and exciting dimension to the results. And a heartfelt thanks
to the exceptionally talented individuals who did the work of coding, inside and
outside of the classrooms: Jacqueline Baum, Nahum Chandler, Janina Fenigsen,
Leah Feldman, Christine Garza, Carolee Larsen, Mindie Lazarus-Black, Jerry
Lombardi, Kay Mohlman, Robert Moore, and Shepley Orr. Steve Neufeld, Carlos
de la Rosa, and Tom Murphy worked on the quantitative analysis. The tiring task
of transcription was undertaken with care by Diane Clay, Leah Feldman, and Zella
Coleman and her group.
I also thank the “subjects” of this research, the professors and students in the
eight classrooms we studied. Inviting researchers with tape recorders and coding
sheets into one’s classroom takes guts, and the professors who did so deserve com-
mendation for their willingness to take some risks in order to help advance our
understanding of the teaching process. Having now taught law school classes my-
self, I have a better appreciation of the courage it took to allow us to observe and
record in their classrooms.
I feel deeply grateful to the American Bar Foundation, my home since the
project began and one of the major funding sources for this research. The Foun-
dation has provided a uniquely congenial setting for this kind of work, with one of
the premier groups of sociolegal scholars in the country. I have enjoyed and learned
from my colleagues in that community, and I thank them for providing such an
encouraging and intellectually rich context in which to do research. I am particu-
larly grateful to the director of the Foundation during the time of this project, Bryant
Garth, for substantial support and encouragement, and for the vision of interdis-
ciplinary community that he has helped to make real. I owe much to all of my
colleagues, past and present, at the ABF for their incisive critiques and their humor,
Acknowledgments
xi
and above all for their exercise of maturity, reason, and care in managing the ups
and downs of institutional life. For colleagueship above and beyond the call of duty,

I thank Carol Heimer and Bob Nelson, each of whom in different ways has pro-
vided highly valued support over many years now, as well as John Comaroff, Shari
Diamond, Chris Tomlins, Mary Rose, William Felstiner, Susan Shapiro, Laura Beth
Nielsen, Karyl Kinsey, Tracey Meares, Bonnie Honig, Annelise Riles, Steve Daniels,
Bette Sikes, and Roz Caldwell, from each of whose expertise I have drawn in spe-
cific ways. And Joanne Martin, of course—an indomitable force at the heart of the
ABF for years—provided her own eagle eye on our numbers as well as unflagging
enthusiasm for the project. In the final stages of preparing the manuscript, I was
very fortunate to have the assistance of Molly Heiler and Stephanie Lambert.
During the conclusion of the project, I had the good fortune to be invited to
join the legendary law-and-society community at the University of Wisconsin Law
School in Madison, for generations a leader among law schools in its insistence on
the study and teaching of “law in action.” I have learned a great deal from the per-
spectives and scholarship of my new colleagues, and from their insistence on un-
compromising standards for bringing together legal and social scientific work. In
particular, I thank Howie Erlanger and Stewart Macaulay for sharing their insights
on law teaching and sociolegal studies as well as for their stalwart friendship and
support, Jane Larson for the ongoing education I receive from our discussions, Art
McEvoy for his encouragement and colleagueship, and a growing list of valued
Madison compatriots for all that I am learning from them about sociolegal inquiry.
Our dean, Ken Davis, and associate deans Alta Charo and Peter Carstensen have
been generous in their patience and support as I’ve negotiated the completion of
this project across institutions (and states!).
During several years of the project, I held in addition to my ABF appointment
a position at the Northwestern University School of Law, where I had also been a
law student. Much of the initial impetus for this study came from some of my
observations as a student at Northwestern and from the insights of my fellow stu-
dents there. In particular, I want to remember my classmate Cathy Novak, whose
experiences during our first year challenged me to ask more about the process of
legal education. My good friends Joe Margulies and Jonathan Turley learned with

and taught me about the problems and possibilities of the law school environment,
as did many other friends, including my Articles Office “family”: Rick Sander, Krista
Edwards, Sue Tuite Kirkpatrick, and Mark Challenger. As my third-year research
supervisor, David VanZandt encouraged my initial interest in this project. While
a professor at Northwestern, I also benefited from the intellectual insights and
support of the short-lived but productive “Friday Faculty” group, including my
friend and coauthor Cynthia Bowman, Jane Larson, Bob Burns, Clint Francis,
Stephen Gardbaum, Ray Solomon, and Len Rubinowitz (known to generations of
Northwestern law students and junior faculty, including me, as an exceptionally
supportive colleague and friend). I warmly thank Michael Perry and Kathy Abrams,
fellow NU departees, for sharing their perspectives in discussions pertinent to this
work, and a number of other colleagues on whom I leaned for insights and advice,
including Vic Rosenblum, Marshall Shapo, Theresa Cropper, Laura Lin, Charlotte
Crane, Helene Shapo, Dick Speidel, Judy Rosenbaum, and Ron Allen.
xii
Acknowledgments
To the inspiring groups of students in my Law and Language, Law and An-
thropology, Legal Process, and Legal Profession classes at Wisconsin and North-
western, my gratitude for their invigorating discussions and research on topics
pertinent to this study. I have also gained fresh perspectives from the graduate stu-
dents with whom I’ve worked, with particular thanks to Jonathan Yovel, Jason
Freitag, Susan Gooding, Mark Goodale, Elizabeth Hoffman, Maud Schaafsma, and
Scott Parrott.
Outside of my home institutions, I have drawn on a wealth of knowledge and
support from a network of colleagues from whom I have been so fortunate to learn:
Martha Fineman, scholar and mentor extraordinaire, to whom I owe a special debt
of gratitude; David Wilkins and Joyce Sterling, my “legal profession” buddies;
Martha Minow, who provided invaluable practical aid and encouragement at the
outset of the project; and the gifted group of legal anthropologists, law-and-
society scholars, and anthropological linguists from whom I continue to learn: Carol

Greenhouse, Greg Matoesian, Sally Merry, Susan Hirsch, Charles Briggs, Marianne
Constable, Susan Philips, Don Brenneis, Bambi Schieffelin, John Conley, Mindie
Lazarus-Black, Ross Cheit, Lisa Frohmann, and many others. I owe a great deal of
my trajectory as an anthropologist of language to my early teachers at Bryn Mawr
and Duke—Judith Shapiro, Nancy Dorian, Jane Goodale, Frederica de Laguna,
Virginia Domínguez, William O’Barr, Jim Boon, and Larry Rosen—as well as to
the wonderful group of scholars who were part of the Center for Psychosocial Stud-
ies network during the time I was there. And I wish to acknowledge a special debt
to Michael Silverstein, on whose pathbreaking work in linguistic anthropology I
have drawn heavily.
I pause to express particular appreciation for the example set by my colleague
Jane Larson, whose dignity and whose insistence on values that I respect, particu-
larly regarding law and legal education, have pushed me and others to stand up for
what we believe, at whatever cost. I also am grateful to Ian Macneil and Marshall
Shapo, conscientious and sturdy voices in defense of academic freedom at a time
when many of us thought that this freedom was very much imperiled.
At key turning points toward law in my career, I was fortunate to have the en-
couragement and support of two generous senior mentors. I thank Judge Richard
Cudahy, who has stood strongly for a vision of justice in law while also insisting on
meticulous and rigorous legal thought, for a clerkship experience that was the high-
est form of legal education. I also thank Barney Weissbourd, with whom I coau-
thored two of my earliest articles on language and law; if it weren’t for our friendly
but spirited battles over the proper interpretation of H. L. A. Hart’s work, I might
never have decided to go to law school.
Finally, I want to express my thanks to other friends and to family who have
helped to make this work possible. To my mother, Barbara Mertz, a heartfelt thank
you for all your help and support over the years, and for flying in to sleep on our
couch during my law school exams so that I could study in peace knowing that
Jenny had top-of-the-line attention. I am deeply grateful as well for the rich net-
work of friends whose many kindnesses have greatly enriched my life and that of

my family, often providing the missing pieces we needed to keep schedules and
lives running smoothly: Eva, Karen, Joe, Jim, Kathy, Carol, Jeanne, Dave, Laurie,
Acknowledgments
xiii
Dean, Connie, Terry, Mary Jo, and the rest of the Skokie extended family who have
been part of the “village” that has helped to raise my children. I will also always
remember with appreciation and great affection the invaluable support I received
from Katherine Shea, including her tireless renditions of Irish lullabies for my
colicky newborn Becca as I struggled in that time to balance work and family.
And to my children, Jenny and Becca, I owe the debt of all working moth-
ers—that they have shared me with my work, and that my connection with them
continually brings renewal and joy to my life. Becca, born after I received my JD,
knows the law school as one of the places where I work, and she is a veteran of many
office visits, which she has weathered with characteristic good humor and artistic
contributions. I have learned from her about resilience and resourcefulness in the
face of change. Jenny was two years old when I began law school, and she experi-
enced much of it with me, from Estates and Trusts class to the Law Review office.
From her early willingness to last through the occasional Legal Writing class to her
current vibrant concern about politics and injustice, I have learned alongside and
from her about law and society. I dedicate this work to my daughters.
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Contents
Notes on Transcription xvii
I INTRODUCTION
1. Entering the World of U.S. Law 3
2. Law, Language, and the Law School Classroom 12
3. Study Design, Methodology, and Profile 31
II SIMILARITY
:
LEGAL EPISTEMOLOGY

4. Learning to Read Like a Lawyer: Text, Context,
and Linguistic Ideology 43
5. Epistemology and Teaching Styles:
Different Forms, Same Message 84
6. On Becoming a Legal Person: Identity and the Social Context
of Legal Epistemology 97
III DIFFERENCE
:
SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN LEGAL PEDAGOGY
7. Professorial Style in Context 141
8. Student Participation and Social Difference: Race, Gender,
Status, and Context in Law School Classes 174
IV CONCLUSION
:
READING
,
TALKING
,
AND THINKING
LIKE
A LAWYER
9. Legal Language and American Law: Authority, Morality,
and Linguistic Ideology 207
Notes 225
Bibliography 279
Index 301
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(1.25) Numbers in parentheses indicate length of turn (here,
one minute and two and a half seconds). Turns are
measured to .005, or half of a second.

(.) Enclosed dot indicates a very short untimed pause.
// // Parallel lines indicate overlapping speech.
[[laughter]] Double brackets indicate backchannel sounds, laughter,
etc. (Occasionally backchannel comments are indicated
this way for ease of reading; more usually they are
indicated using //parallel lines// to mark overlapping
backchannels.)
emphasis Underlining indicates emphatic stress.
() Single parentheses indicate inaudible or barely audible
speech.
[says name] Italicized material in italicized brackets is descriptive
commentary, summaries of omitted portions, and
metacommentary from EM regarding transcript, as well
as paraphrases and substitutes where necessary to protect
confidentiality.
[ . . . ] Ellipses in italicized brackets indicate omitted material.
*oh* ((*sarcastically*)) Italicized material in double parentheses describes
aspects of speech delivery (intonation, etc.); asterisks
mark the relevant transcript passage.
You- Hyphen indicates a cut-off, usually one that is turn-
internal.
I--
--you Parallel dashes refer to coordinated speech, where one
speaker stops before finishing an utterance, and another
speaker begins speaking smoothly immediately thereafter
(i.e., immediately latched utterances).
Notes on Transcription
xvii
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I

..
INTRODUCTION
Law, considered as a science, consists of certain principles or
doctrines. To have such a mastery of these as to be able to apply
them with constant facility and certainty to the ever-tangled
skein of human affairs, is what constitutes a true lawyer, and
hence to acquire that mastery should be the business of every
earnest student of law.
1
The school is not a neutral objective arena; it is an institution
which has the goal of changing people’s values, skills, and knowl-
edge bases. Yet some portions of the populations . . . bring with
them to school linguistic and cultural capital accumulated
through hundreds of thousands of occasions for practicing the
skills and espousing the values the schools transmit.
2
T
his introductory section discusses the overarching questions motivating this
study. It also provides the review of background concepts and literatures nec-
essary for understanding the basic model of language used throughout the book.
Put simply, this book is organized around two core questions:
* Is a common vision or language of law being taught to initiates across diverse
U.S. law school classrooms? (And if so, what is it?)
* What kinds of differences among classrooms, students, and professors seem to be
salient in creating any divergent refractions of a common vision?
Part II focuses on the first question (similarities among classrooms); Part III ex-
amines the second (differences). Part IV, along with other overall observations,
concludes that both in content and form, U.S. law school classrooms are per-
petuating a vision of law and human conflict that in effect erases certain key as-
pects of social experience. In sum, the language of U.S. law works to create an

erasure or cultural invisibility, as well as an amorality, that are problematic in a
2
Introduction
society seeking to be truly democratic. Yet, at the same time, we can see a genius
to some aspects of this at once abstract and concrete legal language.
We begin, in Part I, by setting the scene for the rest of the book. Chapter 1
outlines the central conclusions of the study and then takes the reader into the law
school classroom, stepping into the shoes of law students who are beginning to learn
legal language. Chapter 2 provides a more detailed statement of the study’s research
agenda and of the cross-disciplinary perspectives that inform it. Chapter 3 explains
the methodology used and sketches an initial profile of the data.
Entering the World of U.S. Law
3
1
..
Entering the World of U.S. Law
3
M
uch has been written about the first year of law school. There have also been
many attempts to define core aspects of U.S. legal reasoning. This book
considers these two issues together, using a study of the initial law school expe-
rience to shed light on legal worldviews and understandings. One focus of this
research is the content of U.S. legal epistemology (i.e., distinctively legal ways
of approaching knowledge), as revealed in the training of initiates into the
world of law. The study uses close analysis of classroom language to examine the
limits that legal epistemology may place on law’s democratic aspirations. It also
asks whether legal training itself may impact the democratization of the legal
profession—that “public profession”
1
that figures so prominently in the govern-

ing of our country.
An important corollary of this focus on language as the window to legal epis-
temology is the central role of discourse to law and other sociocultural processes.
In particular, the ideas that people hold about how language works (linguistic ide-
ologies) combine with linguistic structuring to create powerful, often unconscious
effects. In recent years, linguistic anthropologists have made much progress in
developing more precise analytic tools for tracking those effects.
2
In addition to
studying spoken discourse, they have turned their attention to the impact of writ-
ten texts on social interactions in ritual and institutional settings. This book uses
linguistic anthropological analysis to uncover the ways microlevel processes in lan-
guage embody and perpetuate powerful linguistic ideologies. These ideologies struc-
ture and reflect the social uses of language and text in legal contexts, and thus, I
argue, provide a key foundation for “thinking like a lawyer.”
3
In this sense, one
thinks like a lawyer because one speaks, writes, and reads like a lawyer. Some would
associate thinking like a lawyer with superior analytic skills in a neutral sense; I
4
Introduction
would instead characterize the acquisition of lawyerly “thinking” as an initiation
into a particular linguistic and textual tradition found in our society.
To develop a detailed picture of the epistemology and process of legal train-
ing, I obtained tapes and observational notes from a full semester of Contracts
classes in eight different law schools. The law schools range in status from “top five”
to “local” law schools; the professors were diverse in terms of gender, race, and
legal training. Observers (including myself) taped and coded the interactions in
these classes throughout the first semester of law school. Coders then worked with
full transcripts of the tapes and in-class observational notes to quantify aspects of

the turns in each class. They also qualitatively assessed aspects of developing class-
room dynamics. The overall results provide our first detailed observational data
on racial dynamics in law school classrooms; they also are the first to allow com-
parisons across a full range of diverse law schools. Although there has been more
observational study of gender dynamics in law school classrooms than of race,
previous studies of gender did not use methods that permitted fine-grained analy-
ses of aspects of talk in classrooms beyond broad tallying of numbers of turns.
Working from transcripts, we have been able to track both differences and simi-
larities among a broad range of law school classes. A combination of qualitative
and quantitative methods allows us to explicate in detail the language of U.S. law
as it is taught in diverse law schools.
4
The first part of this chapter presents, in summary form, the core argument of
the book. The second part takes the reader inside the law school classroom, sketch-
ing more concretely the kind of discourse found in U.S. law teaching. Our focus is
on the very first semester of law school, when students are initiated into a new way
of thinking and talking about the conflicts with which they will be asked to deal as
attorneys.
Legal Epistemology and Law Teaching
Although much of this book deals with the nuances and complexities of analyzing
U.S. legal language, its central conclusions can be stated in seven relatively simple
propositions:
1. There is a core approach to the world and to human conflict that is per-
petuated through U.S. legal language. This core legal vision of the world and of
human conflict tends to focus on form, authority, and legal-linguistic contexts
rather than on content, morality, and social contexts. We can trace this view
through close analysis of the content and structure of the language found in
law teaching and written law texts, as law professors inculcate this distinct
approach and as law students learn to speak it. In the law school classroom,
initiates to the legal profession take their first steps into a world in which the

linguistic processes of combative dialogue and textual exegesis substitute for
substantive, socially grounded moral reasoning.
2. This legal worldview and the language that expresses it are imparted in
all of the classrooms studied, in large part through reorienting the way students
approach written legal texts. This reorientation relies in important ways on a subtle
Entering the World of U.S. Law
5
shift in linguistic ideology. We find this common approach across the many
differences among teachers and classes. Thus, a key function of law school is
actually training to a common language that lawyers use to communicate about
the conflicts with which they must deal. An important part of this shift in-
volves learning to read the “conflict stories” contained in legal cases in a new,
more dispassionate way—guided by a new ideology about language.
3. Although apparently neutral in form, in fact the filtering structure of legal
language taught to students is not neutral. Legal training focuses students’ at-
tention away from a systematic or comprehensive consideration of social
context and specificity. Instead, students are urged to pay attention to more
abstract categories and legal (rather than social) contexts, reflecting a quite
particular, culturally driven model of justice. One aspect of this model is the
idea that justice will emerge from a process that is heavily dependent on lin-
guistic exchange or dueling, which moves back and forth between at least two
positions. The social context of the exchange is less important than the form,
and this form is echoed in role-play in class as well as in “legal reasoning” more
generally (often taught as a form of internal dialogue). Another feature of the
linguistic ideology that emerges in law school classrooms is an emphasis on
layers of textual authority as neutral sources for legal decision making. Legal
pedagogy perpetuates this model using a linguistic approach that combines
attention to specific details of particular cases with the ongoing development
of abstract categories for processing these details and contexts. Students learn
to select those details and aspects of context deemed salient for the analogies

that are used to bridge concrete cases and abstract doctrines. A standard legal
reading conceals the social roots of legal doctrines, avoiding examination of
the ways that abstract categories, as they develop, privilege some aspects of
conflicts and events over others. Instead, the core issue is one of textual analy-
sis—of parsing written legal texts for the correct reading, which is focused on
issues of linguistic authority. A new orientation to the world is subtly conveyed
through the filtering linguistic ideology implicit in law school training.
4. There is a “double edge” to the approach found in U.S. legal language; it
offers benefits but also creates problems.
5
One benefit of this approach is that
the language appears to ensure the same treatment for everyone, regardless of
the specifics of their situation, and this appearance can sometimes become a
reality. U.S. legal language also generates an enormously creative system for
processing human conflict, one that can at times provide the flexibility needed
to accommodate social change and the demands of different situations while
also promoting some stability and predictability. However, there are also prob-
lems with this approach. In some cases, it obscures very real social differences
that are pertinent to making just decisions; it can also create an appearance of
neutrality that hides the fact that U.S. law continues to enact social inequities
and injustices. Through an anthropological lens, we can identify these twin
difficulties as a simultaneous problem of “cultural invisibility and dominance”;
that is, some aspects of context and cultural viewpoints become invisible while
others dominate (and this process itself is largely invisible, hidden beneath the
apparent neutrality of legal language and approaches to reading written texts).
6
6
Introduction
Similarly, legal language in many ways discourages students from overt con-
sideration of morality, while still packing a hidden normative punch.

5. There is also a cultural invisibility/dominance problem in law school class-
room interactions, where learning the apparently neutral language of the law
appears to have different effects on students of different races, genders, and class
backgrounds. Some of these effects are common to many kinds of classrooms
as well as to other speech situations in our culture, especially formal ones, and
they reflect fundamental aspects of our social structure. However, these ef-
fects can have an impact particular to law school training when combined with
peculiarly legal modes of talking and reasoning. The classroom is just one lo-
cation, a beginning or foundational place, in which these different refractions
initially emerge. The book’s conclusion suggests lessons to be learned through
a careful examination of this foundational moment.
6. Although this study finds a shared underlying epistemology imparted in
diverse classrooms, it also delineates significant differences among law schools and
law teachers. The conclusion also urges more fine-grained and contextual at-
tention to the ways that school status and culture, as well as aspects of profes-
sorial style and classroom dynamics, may affect equality of opportunity in law
training and subsequent practice.
7. Both in terms of content and form, legal education and the language it
inculcates mirror a “double edge” arguably found in capitalist epistemology more
generally. This double edge offers the possibilities but also the problems that
come with moving to a particular form of abstraction, which can erase both
those aspects of social context that lead to bias but also those that permit in-
depth understanding of social inequalities. Facing this dilemma is a crucial task
for any legal system with democratic ideals—as well as for the legal language
through which such a system operates.
Note, then, that this research uses the study of language to track underlying
cultural worldviews or epistemologies, drawing on anthropological linguistic ap-
proaches.
7
In particular, the analysis traces the contours of a distinctively legal epis-

temology, furthering attempts to uncover and explicate a basic structure to U.S. legal
reasoning begun some time ago by scholars such as Edward Levi.
8
This part of the
analysis is, in my view, distinct from the ensuing examination of the power dynam-
ics and capitalist epistemology that I hypothesize as specific to U.S. law. Taken on its
own, the linguistic analysis maps the way language interacts with and embodies so-
cial worldviews and institutional practices, and as such speaks to issues of language
and epistemology apart from any consideration of power. When it focuses on the
nonneutral character of legal language and reasoning, this study does move on to
also consider the interaction of language with social power and democratic ideals,
building from scholarship in anthropological, legal, and social theory. However, I
also argue that the language of law has its own dynamics that are not transparently
reducible to issues of power or social structures. In this sense, this analysis rejects
visions of legal language as either an entirely autonomous arena, divorced from so-
cial impacts, or as a mere reflex of external social forces. Rather, combining both lin-
guistic and social perspectives, we can find in the first-year law school classroom a
fascinating prism through which to view a part of the world of U.S. law.