Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T13:52:26.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Ludic Legal Education from Cicero to Phoenix Wright

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2019

By
Andrew Moshirnia
Edited by
Catrina Denvir
Catrina Denvir
Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria
Get access

Summary

Game-based legal learning has emerged as a topic of intense interest over the last decade as a means of ‘modernising’ legal education, with game-based learning eliciting a wide range of responses from the legal academy. Somewhat unsurprisingly, resistance in the name of tradition has persisted. Yet, the view of game playing as a distinctly modern pedagogical development, and opposition on the basis of tradition is sheer folly. Ludic education has been the dominant teaching method for millennia, with legal game playing traced at least to the time of Cicero. Revealing the rich history of game playing in law, this chapter details ludic legal education from the declamation of Ancient Rome to Nintendo’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It observes the way in which games can operate as a compelling delivery device for instruction, allow for experimentation, and encourage students to voice their opinions in a field where the sheer breadth of precedent and the relative impenetrability of legal texts may prove intimidating. In demonstrating the potential of game playing to overcome barriers to learning, this chapter considers the modern design principles that have enabled games to emerge as robust and enjoyable content delivery devices in legal education.

Keywords

legal educationlegal gamesgame-based learningludic legal educationrhetoric
Type
Chapter
Information
Modernising Legal Education , pp. 166 - 185
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

3909LLC, ‘Papers, Please’ (2017) http://papersplea.se/ accessed 18 March 2019Google Scholar
Allen, FA, ‘The Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with Legal Education’ (1976) 62(4) American Bar Association Journal 447Google Scholar
Anderson, JR, Language, Memory, and Thought (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1976)Google Scholar
Anderson, JR and Bower, GH, Human Associative Memory (Psychology Press 1973)Google Scholar
Armstrong, S and Sanson, M, ‘From Confusion to Confidence: Transitioning to Law School’ (2012) 12(1) Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal 21Google Scholar
Ashar, SM, ‘Deep Critique and Democratic Lawyering in Clinical Practice’ (2016) 104(1) California Law Review 201Google Scholar
Auerbach, JS, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (Oxford University Press 1976)Google Scholar
Balteiro, I and Campos-Pardillos, MA, ‘A Comparative Study of Latinisms in Court Opinions in the United States and Spain’ (2010) 17(1) International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 95Google Scholar
Barry, MM, ‘Practice Ready: Are We There Yet?’ (2012) 32(2) Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice 247Google Scholar
Bernstein, NW, ‘“Torture Her Until She Lies”: Torture, Testimony, and Social Status in Roman Rhetorical Education’ (2012) 59(2) Greece and Rome 165Google Scholar
Bloomer, MW, The School of Rome: Latin Studies and the Origins of Liberal Education (University of California Press 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brudney, JJ, ‘Legislation and Regulation in the Core Curriculum’ (2015) 65(1) Journal of Legal Education 3Google Scholar
Bunzl, M, ‘Counterfactual History: A User’s Guide’ (2004) 109(3) The American Historical Review 845Google Scholar
Cairns, JW, ‘Rhetoric, Language, and Roman Law: Legal Education and Improvement in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’ (1991) 9(1) Law and History Review 31Google Scholar
CAPCOM, ‘Ace Attorney’ www.ace-attorney.com/ accessed 18 March 2019Google Scholar
Carasik, L, ‘Renaissance or Retrenchment: Legal Education at a Crossroads’ (2011) 44(3) Indiana Law Review 735Google Scholar
Chaiklin, S, ‘The Zone of Proximal Development in Vygotsky’s Analysis of Learning and Instruction’ in Kozulin, Alex and others (eds.), Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context (Cambridge University Press 2003)Google Scholar
Cole, Y, ‘“Prison Architect” Has No Room for Political Action’ (Waypoint, 27 July 2017) https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/d7pw7x/prison-architect-has-no-room-for-political-action accessed 4 March 2019Google Scholar
Cowan, R and Foray, D, ‘Evolutionary Economics and the Counterfactual Threat: On the Nature and Role of Counterfactual History as an Empirical Tool in Economics’ (2002) 12(5) Journal of Evolutionary Economics 539CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper & Row 1990)Google Scholar
Daimsis, A, ‘Creative Thinkers Need Not Apply’ (The Law Times, 26 February 2018) www.lawtimesnews.com/author/anthony-daimsis/creative-thinkers-need-not-apply-15393/ accessed 10 March 2019Google Scholar
Bell J, Derrick A, ‘Law School Exams and Minority-Group Students’ (1981) 7(2) National Black Law Journal 304Google Scholar
Edwards, HT, ‘The Growing Disjunction between Legal Education and the Legal Profession’ (1992) 91(1) Michigan Law Review 34Google Scholar
Evans, L, ‘The Study of Greek and Latin as a Preparation for the Study of Law’ (1907) 15(6) The School Review 417Google Scholar
Fantham, E, Roman Readings: Roman Response to Greek Literature from Plautus to Statius and Quintilian (Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finley, GD, ‘Langdell and the Leviathan: Improving the First-Year Law School Curriculum by Incorporating Moby-Dick’ (2011) 97(1) Cornell Law Review 159Google Scholar
Griswold, EN, ‘Observations on Legal Education in Australia’ (1951) 2(2) University of Western Australia Annual Law Review 197Google Scholar
Gunderson, E, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press 2003)Google Scholar
Hagan, M, ‘Law Games to Learn Smarter Not Harder – Law Dojo’ (Law School Dojo, 2017) www.lawschooldojo.com accessed 10 March 2019Google Scholar
Introversion, UK, ‘Prison Architect’ www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/ accessed 18 March 2019Google Scholar
James, NJ, ‘A Brief History of Critique in Australian Legal Education’ (2000) 24(3) Melbourne University Law Review 965Google Scholar
Kuehn, RR, ‘Pricing Clinical Legal Education’ (2014) 92(1) Denver University Law Review 1Google Scholar
Lepper, MR, ‘Making Learning Fun: A Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations for Learning’ in Snow, R and Farr, MJ (eds.), Aptitude, Learning, and Instruction: Vol. 3. Cognitive and Affective Process Analysis (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1987)Google Scholar
Lepper, MR and Malone, TW, ‘Intrinsic Motivation and Instructional Effectiveness in Computer-Based Education’ in Snow, RE and Farr, MJ (eds.), Aptitude, Learning, and Instruction: Vol. 3. Cognitive and Affective Process Analysis (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1987)Google Scholar
Macleod, PR, ‘Latin in Legal Writing: An Inquiry into the Use of Latin in the Modern Legal World’ (1997) 39(1) Boston College Law Review 235Google Scholar
McGee, H, ‘Minority Students in Law School: Black Lawyers and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the American Social Order’ (1971) 20(2) Buffalo Law Review 423Google Scholar
Morrissette, JJ, ‘Glory to Arstotzka: Morality, Rationality, and the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy in Papers, Please’ (2017) 17(1) The International Journal of Computer Game ResearchGoogle Scholar
Moshirnia, A, ‘The Educational Potential of Modified Video Games’ (2007) 4 Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology 511Google Scholar
Pagán, VE, ‘Teaching Torture in Seneca Controversiae 2.5’ (2007) 103(2) The Classical Journal 165Google Scholar
Pearsall, G, ‘The Human Side of Law School: The Case for Socializing Minority Recruitment and Retention Programs’ (2015) 64(4) Journal of Legal Education 688Google Scholar
Piaget, J, The Psychology of Intelligence (Harcourt, Brace 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, RM and Deci, EL, ‘Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development and Well-Being’ (2000) 55(1) The American Psychologist 68CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ryan, RM, Rigby, CS and Przybylski, A, ‘The Motivational Pull of Video Games: A Self-Determination Theory Approach’ (2006) 30(4) Motivation and Emotion 344CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, D, ‘What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering’ New York Times (New York, 19 November 2011) www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/after-law-school-associates-learn-to-be-lawyers.html accessed 10 July 2018Google Scholar
Stevens, R, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (University of North Carolina Press 1987)Google Scholar
Stewart, S, Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklaw and Literature (John Hopkins University Press 1979)Google Scholar
Stuckey, R, ‘Best Practices for Legal Education: A Vision and A Road Map’ (Clinical Legal Education Association 2007) https://clea.wildapricot.org/resources/documents/best_practices-full.pdf accessed 28 September 2018Google Scholar
Sullivan, WM and others, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (1st edn, Jossey-Bass 2007)Google Scholar
Szczygielski, K, ‘Latin Legal Maxims in the Judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland’ (2017) 49(1) Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 213Google Scholar
Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession – American Bar Association, ‘Legal Education and Professional Development-An Educational Continuum. (MacCrate Report)’ (American Bar Association 1992) www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/misc/legal_education/2013_legal_education_and_professional_development_maccrate_report).authcheckdam.pdf accessed 24 September 2018Google Scholar
Torrey, M, ‘You Call That Education?’ (2004) 19(1) Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal 93Google Scholar
Ulster University Legal Innovation Centre, ‘Gamification: Games to Make Learning Law Engaging and Enjoyable’ (2017) www.legalinnovation.ai/gamification accessed 4 March 2019Google Scholar
University of Kent, ‘Glossary of Legal Latin’ (2019) www.kent.ac.uk/library/subjects/lawlinks/skills-hub/docs/glossaryoflegallatin.pdf accessed 4 March 2019Google Scholar
Van den Berg, CS, The World of Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus: Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×