Rachel López (Temple; Google Scholar), Critical Curriculum Design: 

Legal education in the United States stands at a critical juncture. As democracy faces mounting threats both at home and abroad, law schools must grapple with their role in shaping not just competent lawyers but engaged citizens capable of safeguarding democratic institutions. Yet the traditional model of teaching students to “think like a lawyer” may be inadvertently undermining the very values and norms essential to stabilizing our democracy.

Indeed, from Watergate to the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol, lawyers have played key roles in efforts to undermine democracy. As legal educators, we must ask ourselves, why are our law schools producing lawyers willing to thwart democracy in fundamental ways, sometimes employing their law licenses to do so? 

This chapter argues that by emphasizing textual analysis, issue-spotting, and adversarial argumentation as the central features of legal practice, legal pedagogy promotes an individualistic and decontextualized understanding of the law that undervalues the qualities needed to be good citizens of democracy. Drawing on theories of deliberative and contestatory democracy, I contend that law schools should instead cultivate the qualities of “engaged citizenship,” including the ability to bridge divides among people with diverse perspectives, the readiness to challenge overreach by people in positions of authority, and the capacity to imagine alternative legal frameworks. Through “critical curriculum design,” I propose concrete strategies for regularizing these democratic competencies across the law school experience. By incorporating critical perspectives, emphasizing real-world context, and encouraging reflective practice, we can produce lawyers who are not just skilled technicians, but active participants in sustaining and improving our democracy. At this precarious political moment, reimagining legal education is not just an academic exercise, but an urgent democratic imperative.

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