The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore—or Are We?
A focus on particular states or locales follows from two different legally framed
dictates. First, the doctrinal focus on occupational categories brings with it an oc-
casional pedagogical attempt to invoke related geography, asking, for example, if
anyone in the class is from a farm or has worked in a certain locale that is relevant
to the occupation in question. Second, differences between states are relevant to
jurisdictional rules, which determine whether a particular court can decide the issue
and which state’s law it must apply. Finally, apart from its use inside strict legal
frames, geographical context may occasionally be invoked in much the way other
kinds of social context are: at the margins of legal discourse, as professors invite
students to imagine what kinds of “nonlegal” considerations might be affecting
decision making.
In the following excerpt, we find geography raised as part of an inquiry into
jurisdiction:
Transcript 6.26 [4/13/16]
Prof.:
Put it like this, is it the only mortgage on the cottage?
Student:
We don’t know.
Prof.:
We don’t know, it could be a second. But, where is it? Where is the
cottage?
Student:
In Michigan.

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On Becoming a Legal Person
129
Prof.:
In Michigan. Where are we in the case?
Student:
We’re in Wisconsin.
Prof.:
We’re in Wisconsin. Does that raise any problems?
Notice how voice and footing work in this passage. The first “we,” introduced by
the student, asserts a shared position based on a common predicament as readers
of a text that gives only limited information. The second “we,” used by the profes-
sor, moves into the shared reader role, accepting the footing and adopting the voice
proffered in the previous turn. The third “we” (also from the professor) goes fur-
ther, to a position defined by the legal institutional setting from which the written
case text was generated (asking the student the location of the court that wrote the
opinion: “Where are we in the case?”). Note what use of “we” accomplishes here:
1. It again unites professor and student, as readers and also as legal professionals
who read the text for certain (contextual, pragmatic) technical framing
information, of which the location and kind of court issuing the opinion count
among the more important.
2. It places the student and professor 
in
the case, as it were, uniting them now
with the authoring court, creating a momentary equation that allows the
student to imagine himself as an authoritative legal source. (Note also that it
elides the case as written and the case as enacted in court, “in the case” referring
to both; a wonderful example of how salient and vivid written contexts are in
legal epistemology.)
3. It foregrounds the location of the court, as opposed, for example, to other
places that are loci for the story unfolding in the case.
In focusing on the location of the court, the professor’s questions highlight a
potential problem: the laws in Michigan might vary from those in Wisconsin.
Additionally, where several locales are involved, difficulties can arise over whether
a particular court has authority or jurisdiction to hear the case. Legal training trans-
forms geographic and sociopolitical locations into “jurisdictions,” where the cru-
cial borders are defined by the boundaries of legislatures’ and courts’ authority.
Just as characterization in law school classrooms produced a kind of abstract
individual, the reliance on geography just described results in an oddly acontextual
context. In one sense, we are given spatial coordinates for the narrative that is
unfolding. But the context thereby configured is understood in typified or abstract
dimensions, in tropes of jurisdiction or economically delineated geography (farms,
homes, businesses). This is even more the case when we move into a landscape
defined purely in terms of legal argument.