Lon Fuller: A Progenitor of the Pedagogy of Skills?

Becky Jacobs, University of Tennessee College of Law

Abstract

This essay examines Professor Fuller’s Mediation—Its Forms and Functions article for passages that describe a number of the specific skills that students learn in law school mediation courses today and that reflect his recognition of, and admiration for, their essentiality. Professor Fuller passed away in 1978, long before the legal academy’s reorientation toward a pedagogy of skills. Influenced by the MacCrate and Carnegie Reports and Roy Stuckey’s Best Practices and by the recommendations of its Task Force on the Future of Legal Education, the American Bar Association (ABA) approved Standard 303 in 2014, pursuant to which law schools must offer a curriculum that requires each student to satisfactorily complete six credit hours of experiential course(s) in the form of a simulation course, a law clinic, or a field placement that “integrate(s) doctrine, theory, skills, and legal ethics, and [that] engage[s] students in performance of … professional skills. …” (ABA Standard 303(a)(3)(i), 2017–18).