Anna P. Hemingway (Widener), The Case for Kindness: Gender, Pedagogy, and Power in Legal Education, 35 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 1 (2025).

The abstract of this important teaching article explains the authors argument.

Abstract

Kindness is undervalued in legal education. It is too often treated as incompatible with rigor or professionalism and it is rarely positioned as central to the serious intellectual and professional formation of law students. This article rejects that framing, demonstrating how dominant norms of detachment and hierarchy marginalize relational teaching practices, particularly those associated with feminized traits such as empathy, in ways that limit both inclusion and learning. 

In response, this article introduces affirmational engagement, a structured pedagogical framework that pairs uncompromising academic standards with intentional relational affirmation. This approach offers a replicable, equity-oriented alternative to shame-based instruction, reframing kindness as a rigorous and purposeful stance that fosters resilience, deep learning, and the capacity for ethical lawyering. By linking classroom pedagogy to the reproduction of institutional power, the article offers law schools a framework in which intellectual rigor and human connection operate not in opposition to one another, but as mutually reinforcing foundations of transformative legal education.

Definitely worth the read!