 |
| Pix created with Grok |
This self-reflection examines the
pedagogical framework underlying three law and international affairs courses
taught during AY 2026-2027: Corporations, Constitutional Law of Religion, and
Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs. Drawing on
classical instructional design and the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, the
author articulates a dual commitment: integrating students into existing field
orthodoxies while cultivating their capacity for critique and transformation.
The central operational principle is student ownership of materials, realized
through problem-based learning, collaborative group work, peer teaching, and
individually authored scholarship. In Corporations, a client-centered pedagogy
emphasizes statutory construction, risk assessment, and the mediating role of
law. In Constitutional Law of Religion, students engage with textual
jurisprudence through litigation strategy and cascading precedent. The
reflection develops an ethical pedagogy rooted in classical conceptions of ēthikos
and moralis, connecting professional responsibility to collective
meaning and global practice. The integration of artificial intelligence is
grounded in a four-part research program on AI governance in legal education,
yielding a policy template whose operative principle—"AI assists; you
think, you analyze, you write, you take responsibility"—preserves student intellectual
sovereignty through structured conditionality, deliberate interpretive
ambiguity as pedagogy, and disclosure as professional habit formation. The
author acknowledges the structural tension between collaborative pedagogy and
institutional demands for individual assessment as irreducible but capable of
being softened, and identifies group work mechanics as the first-order
evaluative site for inclusive pedagogy. The reflection positions teaching as
dynamic, iterative practice—its AI policy explicitly framed as a testable first
iteration designed to generate data rather than claim finality.
* * *
For AY 2026-2027 I taught three courses: (1) Corporations (Law 3 Credits Fall 2026; Spr 2027); (2) Constitutional Law of Religion (Law 3 Credits Fall 2026); and (3) Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs (SIA 3 Credits Spr 2025). Discussion follows in the style of a critical “self-reflection.”
(1) Effective Design
(a) Foundational
Principles. Instructional materials draw on both classical theories of
instructional design and those of the school of Paulo Freire and critical
pedagogy, shorn of its contextual ideological predilections that bind the trans-temporal insights to a specific time, place and space. That is,
instruction has as its twin goals first, to facilitate the integration of
students into the logic of the present system and understand the essence of
premises and principles that in the aggregate constitute the practices of
conformity with its expectations, and second to understand the capacity of those
principles and premises to serve as the means of transformation, both in its
classical and critical forms, or to enhance the reform necessary to move it
closer to its ideal state.
(b) Operationalization
Principles. The core object of the courses, the fundamental operational
principle that structures faculty-student interaction in knowledge production
and transmission, is to focus on the creation of pathways for student ownership
of the materials. That requires in the first instance an openness to the
debates within the fields of knowledge that are the object of each course. It
also requires developing the forms by which students can become active
learners. Most important, perhaps, is that this sort of collaborative learning
ought to have as its twin goals first, to facilitate the integration of
students into the ruling ideologies of the field and understand the essence of
premises and principles that in the aggregate constitute the practices and
expectations of orthodoxy, and second to understand the capacity of those
principles and premises to serve as the means of transformation, both in its
classical and critical forms, or to enhance knowledge of the ways in which
structural elements of the field can be understood in a dynamic sense. The
choice is the students', in accordance with their own values, politics, and
views. We start from the assumption that everything is new and then the student
is guided critically through layers of knowledge, each building on what came
before, to become able, at a rudimentary level, to perform as a young lawyer in
the corporate field. Each syllabus includes both a detailed discussion of
pedagogical approaches, goals and methods, and a careful description of
normative goals. The learning trajectory of the materials is explained as well.
Students are exposed to and encouraged to discuss both knowledge and the
pedagogy of knowledge.
(2) Effective Instruction
Effective instruction is intimately contextually based. In
Corporations, I continue to move away from Socratic instruction toward a
problem based approach to the materials. I remain committed to a client
centered approach and focused on the interaction between statute, common law
gap filling, and judicial statutory construction. A client centered pedagogy
was emphasized along with learning through problems approaches. The principal
orientation of my pedagogy continues to move away from the introduction of abstract
concepts to the development of a sense of the relationship between corporate
law, the objectives of clients, risk and risk assessment elements on the
application and development of law (including the new emphasis on ESG
compliance and reporting requirements), and the mediating role of law in
defining the space within which legal risk can be identified, prevented, or
otherwise mitigated or remedied. In the Constitutional Law of Religion the
focus was on the development of a sophisticated approach to textual
jurisprudence intimately tied to historical context, social temporal
trajectories, and the craft of lawyering. The object was to place the students
in the midst of the litigation and in the client engagements in which both
litigation strategy and the underlying "great principles" in the
field meet, engage, and contribute to strategies for court and norms for
society. In "Actors, Institutions, and Legal Framework, students approach
the materials from the perspective of the roles they will undertake in public
and private institutions. The framework is built around ideological analysis
requiring the student to become familiar not just with liberal democratic but
also post-colonial and Marxist-Leninist frameworks as they engage with the
structures, institutions and policy at the international level.
(3) Inclusive and Ethical Pedagogy
(a) Conceptual
baselines. I continue to develop a more rigorous focus on issues of ethics
and inclusion. I mean ethics in its older senses—ēthikos "ethical, pertaining to character," from ēthos "moral character." By
moral I stress the marvelous and self reflexive understanding at the
foundations of the socio-culture of the Republic at its origins: "from
Latin moralis 'proper behavior of a
person in society,' literally 'pertaining to manners,' coined by Cicero (De Fato, II.i) to translate Greek ethikos from Latin mos (genitive moris)
'one's disposition,' in plural, 'mores, customs, manners, morals,' a word of
uncertain origin." And from that back to a more generative sense of
justice tied to law, and thus the education of lawyers—as "the set and
constant purpose which gives to every man his due. Jurisprudence is the
knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the
unjust." (Justinian, Institutes, Bk 1, tit. 1.1 (J.B. Moyle (trans, 1913);
in the original: IMPERATORIS IVSTINIANI INSTITVTIONVM LIBER PRIMVS: Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas
ius suum cuique tribuens. Iurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum
notitia, iusti atque iniusti scientia.) Moral character deeply bound up in
mores, customs and manners of collectives and sub-collectives from which
justice can be developed as a collective concept that can then be studied in
its manifestation in the law systems with the state at its hub.
(b) From concept to
action, the phenomenology of the moral-ethical expressed in action by design.
Here one must turn to the action of instruction, to transmission (from the
perspective of the instructor) and owning, acquiring, making something one's
own (from the perspective of the student). The two must align for instruction
to be effective and not merely the performance of roles empty of any connection
with effect other than with the performance itself (sitting in the class,
performing the exam, giving lectures, etc.). Instruction, then, is crafted on
several levels. The first is on ethics (lawyer ethics both as counsel to an
enterprise and as a member of the bar in the law classes; the ethics of
institutional actors understood and transmitted in the sense developed above).
The second touches on the ethics of decision making and counseling within an
ecology of market norms and social expectations. The third is within the
ecologies of national law and international norms. I continue to develop an
ethical and inclusive pedagogy on the basis of the goal that within that
multi-layered behavior expectation universe, students are taught to recognize
issues of ethics as a function of ideals, and ideals as a function of their
grounding ideologies. At the same time students understand the sociology, and
semiotics of ethics as communal expressions of "right", its
contestations, and its dialectics—a moving target that is both individually
embedded and an expression of collective meaning and solidarity (even within
its most profoundly disruptive dialectics). They are exposed not just to the
plausible range of interpreting the governing ideology of this nation, but also
the sometimes quite distinct governing ideologies of other places and peoples.
The context is global corporate activity, with an emphasis on mediating ethical
decision making between Global North and South. But more than that, ethics and
inclusion is performed. And in each of the courses, student performativity—in
group work, presentations, and engagement becomes an integral part of the
learning universe.
(c) Evaluation of
inclusive and ethical pedagogy. The primary site where inclusive and
ethical pedagogy is practiced and can be evaluated is group work. Both law
courses require collaborative production of reports, PowerPoints, and oral
presentations across multiple iterations over the semester (six group
presentation cycles in Corporations; at least six in Constitutional Law of
Religion), creating observable dynamics: internal deliberation, equitable
distribution of intellectual labor, negotiation across difference, and
collective accountability. These group mechanics constitute the first-order
evaluative terrain for assessing whether inclusive pedagogy is realized in
practice rather than merely theorized in aspiration. In this first iteration,
evaluation is qualitative: How do groups function internally? Do patterns of
dominance or marginalization emerge along lines of identity, language
proficiency, or prior experience? Does the oral presentation reflect genuine
collective production or the work of one or two members with others performing
scripted roles? Does group performance improve across the semester's multiple
presentation assignments? From this foundation—group work mechanics as
first-order data—further measures (peer evaluations, structured self-reflection
on collaboration, quantitative participation metrics) may be developed in
subsequent iterations as the data from this approach matures.
(4) Reflective and Evolving Practice
Nothing stands still; not even elements of effective
teaching. As has been my practice since I started teaching, I test course
materials, and the effectiveness of its conveyance to students on an annual
basis. It follows that the specifics of course materials and delivery changes
from year to year. Each year every class is new, sometimes in larger respect
than in other years. For example the Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks
was reworked in real time to reflect the sometimes substantial changes that
have been occurring since January 2025. The Constitutional Law of Religion was
reworked to recognize the effects and challenges to the significant turn in
jurisprudence since 2022 in both the U.S. and beyond its
cultural-jurisprudential limits. The point is to be nimble, and prepared to
change materials, approaches, emphasis to suit time, space, and place. I
continue to refine my practices in light of the changing nature, capacities,
socio-cultural baselines of students and will continue to emphasize respect
both for one's own cultural imperatives and those of others. Active learning
will continue to be emphasized and the cultivation by students of their own
ethical and values based relationship to the materials presented will be
encouraged.
 |
| Image generated with ChatGPT |
(5) The Challenge of Technology
All of this is now mediated through, and perhaps
increasingly as, technology and technologically enhanced (or substituted)
expression. And yet the production and dissemination of knowledge must persist
among humans. A new semiotics of the human-machine system interaction is now
required (my preliminary effort here; On
the Nature of Human-Machine System Interaction: A Conversation with Claude,
Harvey AI, Gemini, ChatGPT and Grok) as a basis for exercising autonomy (on
the human side, one can hardly speak for or to machine systems, which are both
opaque and indifferent to the human condition as such). As I gear up for
teaching the basic course in corporations this coming term, I have been
reviewing and modifying both pedagogy and substance. This year will introduce a
number of changes, starting with a pedagogy that creates strong incentives for
the use of AI and machine systems in approaching learning and in learning how
to learn while using technology to enhance output and test knowledge. I have
already introduced my Instructor's Model
AI Policy Template (see here, English and links to versión en Español).
The AI Policy Template is not merely a compliance
instrument; it is the operational expression of the broader commitment to
student autonomy within the emerging techno-legal order. It emerged from a
four-part research program on AI governance in legal education: first, a
consolidated analysis of how U.S. law schools have approached generative AI in
coursework and exam policies, identifying structural variation and opacity
across institutions (Structure, Opacity,
and Convergence, SSRN July 2026); second, a consultation with five machine
systems themselves on what law schools should do, yielding five distinct
archetypes of response (Five Machines,
One Question, No Consensus, SSRN July 2026); third, an attempt to construct
machine-centric governance frameworks unconstrained by the requirement to
remain human-centric; and fourth, the drafting of the template itself as what I
have called "a first step toward its own phenomenology"—designed to
be tested in an actual course setting and refined based on what that experience
reveals, rather than adopted as a final, fully closed rule.
The policy's governing principle is captured in a slogan
suggested by one of the machine systems consulted: "AI assists. You think.
You analyze. You write. You take responsibility." This formulation
establishes a hierarchy: technology as instrumental means, human judgment as
sovereign, accountability as the binding principle. The policy's architecture
enacts this hierarchy through specific mechanisms. A default of independent
work (Section 1), with AI use permitted only under conditions that preserve
student intellectual sovereignty: substantive legal analysis, arguments, and
conclusions must originate with the student. The boundary between permitted and
prohibited uses is deliberately framed as illustrative rather than
bright-line—a design choice whose justification is itself pedagogical. A
precise mechanical line would produce either false confidence (anything not
listed as prohibited is safe) or a chilling effect on legitimate uses near an
artificial boundary. The deliberate ambiguity creates an occasion for direct
interaction between instructor and student before the fact, in which the
instructor can both assess a proposed use and steer the student toward a better
one—a teaching moment in its own right, and one worth the friction that
ambiguity introduces.
Disclosure and certification serve not merely as enforcement
but as normalization of professional habit—consistent with the emerging
expectation that attorneys disclose AI use to clients, courts, and regulators.
The appendix-and-certification regime creates a contemporaneous record, shifts
the practical burden toward compliance, and converts disclosure obligations
into an affirmative representation whose falsification is itself a separate
violation. Numerical limits on incorporated AI content (100 words per
quotation; 10% per tool; 30% aggregate across all tools) are acknowledged as
necessarily arbitrary but chosen because a fixed number is easier for a student
to self-apply before submission and easier for an instructor to verify after.
The policy is explicitly framed as a testable first
iteration—a companion piece to the broader scholarship, designed to generate
data from its first deployment with students. The equity differential in AI
fluency among students is acknowledged as both a problem to be managed and a
potential teaching opportunity: made transparent through mandatory disclosure,
it suggests a pathway toward using those differences as a subject of classroom
discussion about competent and equitable use, rather than only as a risk to be
suppressed. Whether the working hypothesis holds—that the
disclosure-and-certification regime raises the cost of evasion enough, at the
margin, to shift the balance of compliance meaningfully in the right
direction—is a question for the data, not for the drafting table.
But new technology also appears to make inevitable the need
to revise pedagogy (the mechanics of the transmission of knowledge) and using
that to reconsider the way we approach the production and application of
knowledge in the substantive field of U.S. law courses, and especially those
which—one that in parts will include a strong comparative element.
So, the cascade effect of change has produced a new basis
for the project of justice encased in the science of jurisprudence and tasked
with its own production and dissemination of knowledge to the community of
believers and to those who must be taught, those who must teach, and those who
must internalize both in their societal roles and within structures of social
solidarity in political communities.
(6) The Structural Tension in Assessment
Lofty language, indeed, as the basis for introducing my own
modest contribution in the form of my course syllabus for two quite different
courses: an advanced introductory course to the law and jurisprudence of the
corporation, and an advanced course in the constitutional law of religion
(mostly US but with a substantial peek at the goings on elsewhere and beyond
the state).
A word on assessment is warranted, because the assessment
structures of the courses embody a tension that is structural rather than
inadvertent. In Corporations, the course grade is based on Group Presentations
(15%), submission of assigned problems (15%), and an in-class final examination
(70%). In Constitutional Law of Religion, the grade is based on Group
Presentations (25%) and a final paper (75%). In both cases, the collaborative
components constitute the minority of the grade, and the individual assessment
dominates. This reflects a tension between two competing institutional logics
that I cannot overcome, though I can soften it. On one side: the collaborative
work models the professional reality in which lawyers work in teams, produce
jointly, negotiate collective outputs, and learn through the give and take of
practice—the core of future professional life. On the other: institutional
custom, tradition, and expectation—reinforced by bar examiners, accreditors,
and grading norms—demand that students demonstrate individual competence
through individual assessment. The two are not reconcilable at the course
level; they coexist as expressions of competing demands on legal education.
The softening occurs in two ways. First, by ensuring that
the collaborative components carry sufficient weight to be taken seriously as
integral elements of the course rather than ornamental additions. Second, and
more important, by designing the individual assessments to draw upon and reward
the habits developed through collaborative work: the Corporations final exam is
patterned on the problems discussed collaboratively in class throughout the
semester—practice with those problems aids immeasurably in preparation for the
exam; the Constitutional Law of Religion final paper explicitly invites
students to weave together relevant themes raised in each of the presentations
and reports produced by the groups during the course of the semester.
Individual assessment thus becomes, in part, the site where the student
demonstrates capacity to marshal what was produced collectively into
individually voiced analysis. The assessment structure mediates between
collaborative pedagogy and institutional grammar, and the mediation is
deliberate.
(7) The Courses in Practice
The corporate law students will be engaged in working
through increasingly more sophisticated problems, analyzing statutes and cases
in the context of human "puzzles." Their technology focus will be on
the production of group reports and the presentation of approaches to
counseling clients related to the "problem" they bring to the lawyer.
The constitutional law students will wrestle with the semiotics of a
jurisprudence that is deeply interlinked with some of the most interesting political,
social, moral, and collective debates that have generated tremendous interest
and action in the Republic, in present form, from the 1940s. The narratives of
cases, their "flow"—sequential, sometimes multi-tracked, dialectic,
and inherently a textualization of the structures and framework of the Republic
as a cascading phenomenology—is realized through group wrestling with issues,
cases and flows, as students teach themselves, teach each other in groups to
arrive at a joint position, and then engage in the dissemination of the
knowledge they have produced in their exposition of the product of their work
to the class. The performance—group presentations—can aim to something more
than its sometimes justified caricature. And then all of this leads to the
production of a paper that represents the essence of the knowledge the student
has acquired in class and its dissemination to the group.
Or, as I put it to my students:
Those of you who have looked at the syllabus know that we
will be experimenting this year by permitting (I don't want either to encourage
or discourage) the use of AI for the production of "course related
output" (I believe that is the current administrator-speak). There is a
pedagogy here—you will be increasingly expected to have a facility with output
production that involves, to some degree or other, use of AI and machine system
tools and capabilities. We will chat about the mountain of helpful materials
that Penn State has produced for your use. But also, to those ends I have been
trying to develop some materials (apologies they are fairly abstract but
necessarily so to prove my point) to give students a better sense of what they
are dealing with with AI, even those who now feel themselves competent and
adept in the "AI arts"). The best teacher, though, is experience, and
experimentation. And we will be doing both this semester in pursuit of
knowledge using contemporary tools in a contemporary environment in which the
hope is that you become more autonomous actors in the emerging techno-legal
order.
The Syllabus for both courses have been posted
for those interested (they may be found HERE); along with an
Executive Summary for the General Reader and Policymaker and a Note on Student Group Assignments, Teaching Notes, and Infographics. The relevant language relating to
AI Instruction and grading may be found below. Further engagement with hopes of
refinement is always welcome off line!
