Memoirs of an Adjunct

What do you get when you combine an energetic young lawyer, the Socratic method of constantly asking questions, and 23 communications students? In the University of Denver’s Department of Media, Film, and Journalism Studies, you get the Media Law class that I was hired to teach this winter quarter.

I’d never before served as an Adjunct Professor. For this role, I felt the need to have a commanding presence. Since I could easily pass for a student, I tried to assert my authority by wearing a black suit with a blazer and my highest, pointiest heels on the first day of class.

I began the session by handing these college students a pop quiz, which asked questions such as “Define certiorari and stare decisis,” “What is the highest law of the land, who interprets it, and which 1803 case established this power?” and “Is America a democracy?” I was pleasantly surprised to discover that most of my class had picked up the answers to these trick questions in high school civics class.

Over the course of the semester, I taught out of Trager’s The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication. We covered the topics of the First Amendment, free speech and free press, defamation, copyright, reporter’s privilege, and invasion of privacy torts. I sent them relevant articles from The New York Times, discussing the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Congress’s “nuclear” option invoked specifically to confirm our own beloved Coloradan, Justice Neil Gorsuch.

I administered to these students detailed exams consisting of twenty multiple-choice questions and a long essay that required students to spot issues from a complex hypothetical fact pattern and separate these issues out using the IRAC (issue, rule, analysis, conclusion) method of explanation. When we reviewed the exams, I implemented a policy of letting students argue for returned points if they felt the questions were too vague or unfair in some other way – provided that these students made their arguments in front of the entire class and convinced me. Finally, I had them partner up and present “May It Please the Court” assignments, explanations of highly relevant Supreme Court cases and arguments contained in visually stimulating PowerPoint presentations.

On the last day of class, I explained to students why I used the Socratic method, a classic in law school. Constantly cold-calling on students by asking them questions required every student to do the reading and participate, rather than allowing the hand-raisers to dominate the class and bore the rest of the students. I recounted the story of Socrates annoying his students like a “gadfly” in the Greek open-air marketplace, or the “agora.” The ultimate philosopher-king faced charges of corrupting the youth and was sentenced to drink hemlock poison. I thanked my students for not condemning me to the same fate.

Published in the August/September 2020 issue of The Docket.