I have encountered the phenomenon Bruce Fisher reports, and I think
it is a matter of students basically not liking legal
reasoning or legal realities, that is of wanting the world to be the
way they want it to be, and wanting to describe the world out of
their comfortable frame of reference. And also, perhaps, of holding
law professors personally responsible for "law" (as opposed to
legislatures and judges). I  have found that early-on use of cases to
"reality-test" helps disabuse students of these notions. The
Pennzoil-Texaco case that appears in many text books is a favorite in
that respect. MBAs are quite certain about "the way things are really
done" and that case hits one upside the head. One can insist that
Texaco's actions were business as usual and perfectly reasonable but
the reality is that it cost them an $11 billion judgment, and it's
not just some Texas oddity, so one might want to pay more critical
attention to contract formation and real human contractual
expectations, as an example. [It occurs to me that I am not
emphasizing traditional legal reasoning in this example. I sound like
Holmes -- Oliver W., not Sherlock.]
 
In this morning's Wall Street Journal appear two editorial items on
contracts. One is an argument of an AEI staffer (I assume a lawyer)
explaining why Congress is not, in fact, contractually obligated to
pay its UN assessment. The other is an argument from a Sunbeam
executive explaining why Sunbeam is suing the American Medical
Association for breach of contract. Next time I use the Pennzoil case
with MBA -- this January -- I plan to juxtapose these articles and
various others.
 
Ginny Maurer