ABSTRACT
This chapter included no judicial opinions, which surprised both professors and students. Professors wondered how they would teach from a book without cases. In this chapter, the authors attempt to explain this success. They review the content of our uncasebook, and then explore the cognitive science principles that prompted readers to write this new type of law school text. The next portion of the chapter turns to the language of the rule analysed in that chapter. The authors reproduce the full language of the rule, re-formatting the rule to aid comprehension. They underline the key words and phrases that set out the rule’s important elements and, often, have prompted judicial interpretation. Textual discussion then briefly examines each of these underlined words or phrases. The inefficiency of the case method may be a worthwhile cost during the first year of law school, because law professors need to teach students how to read judicial opinions and derive legal rules from the common law.
