Freedom to Differ

On a windy morning in downtown Washington, a hundred Georgetown Law students gathered in a hall for David Cole's lecture on democracy and coercion. The desks were cluttered with books, Thermoses and half-eaten muffins.

Another item was noticeable in its absence: laptop computers. They were packed away under chairs, tucked into backpacks, powered down and forgotten.

Cole has banned laptops from his classes, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper.

A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming -- all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student's attention.

"This is like putting on every student's desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, 'Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it,' " Cole said.

Professors have banned laptops from their classrooms at George Washington University, American University, the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia, among many others. Last month, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma poured liquid nitrogen onto a laptop and then shattered it on the floor, a warning to the digitally distracted. A student -- of course -- managed to capture the staged theatrics on video and drew a million hits on YouTube.

Cole was among the first professors in the Washington region to ban laptops, in the 2006-07 academic year. He found them an "attractive nuisance." It was a bold decree: Georgetown had only recently begun requiring that first-year law students own laptops, after painstakingly upgrading the campus for wireless Internet access.

I blogged about this back in 2006 (see here and here), and although I feel laptops are a distraction and not conducive to effective learning, I don't think it is the role of the lecturer to dictate to students how they should learn. That is why I would never ban laptops from one of my classrooms.

In honor of the Oscars on Sunday, we humbly nominate these films as the greatest legal movies of all-time:

Drama Division:

1. "12 Angry Men" (1957) directed by Sidney Lumet. Great because: It blew open the door on jury deliberations, helping moviegoers understand how personal relationships influence deliberations and how a first glance at a fact pattern can lead to the wrong conclusions.
2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) directed by Robert Mulligan. Great because: It introduced a small-town defense lawyer as a hero and explored the way the law can provide social justice in the face of cultural prejudice. 
3. "The Thin Blue Line" (1988) directed by Errol Morris. Great because: It exposed major problems with our justice system, particularly the pressures facing law enforcement. Ranks up there with "Rashomon" in its explorations of how truth can be in the eye of the beholder.
4. "A Few Good Men" (1992) directed by Rob Reiner. Great because: The highly quotable Aaron Sorkin script, the performance by Jack Nicholson, and its look into military jurisprudence.
5. "The Insider" (1999) directed by Michael Mann. Great because: Nobody would have expected that a topic like "tortious interference" would yield such edge-of-your-seat drama. One of the best films ever to properly highlight the positives and negatives of legal procedure. 

Runners-up: "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), "Inherit the Wind" (1960), "Judgment at Nurmeberg" (1961), "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979), "And Justice for All" (1979), "Breaker Morant" (1980), "The Verdict" (1982), "Philadelphia" (1993), "The People vs. Larry Flynt" (1996), "Erin Brockovich" (2000)

Comedy Division:

1. "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947) directed by George Seaton. Great because: It cleverly uses a sly plot device — whether a man who believes he's Santa Claus is insane or not — to test notions on what's a triable fact.
2. "Defending Your Life" (1991) directed by Albert Brooks. Great because: It poses some existential questions about life through the vantage point of a court of law. 
3. "My Cousin Vinny" (1992) directed by Jonathan Lynn. Great because: It raises the hopes that we could all become lawyers pursuing criminal justice with only a great wife and access to a legal dictionary. 
4. "Legally Blond" (2001) directed by Robert Luketic. Great because: Harvard Law School is accurately portrayed as the middle ground between being dumped and finding one's calling in life.
5. "Intolerable Cruelty" (2003) directed by Joel Coen. Great because of the Coen brothers' underrated script, George Clooney's charming performance and the hilariously accurate portrayal of what goes through the minds of lawyers as they craft a contract between warring parties.

Runners-up: "Adam's Rib" (1949), "Trial and Error" (1962), "Legal Eagles" (1986), "Liar Liar" (1997), "Devil's Advocate" (1997), "Chicago" (2002)