Nina Kohn (Syracuse) and Ned Spurgeon (Utah/Dean Emeritus at Georgia) have posted on SSRN an engaging article on teaching Elder Law. Their article, "Elder Law Teaching and Scholarship" was published in the Journal of Legal Education this past month. They predict a growing need for law schools to include elder law in their curricula in light of the nation's aging population. This is especially interesting because Elder Law is what I think of as "interdoctrinal" legal studies that engages various fields like trusts & estates, con law, criminal law, and torts. Their work generates an interesting discussion on curricular directions, and is a great window into the needs of legal education in the future.
The SSRN link is here, and the abstract is below.
As the American population ages, the emerging field of elder law stands poised to play an increasingly important role in both legal practice and legal education. Relatively little, however, is known about how elder law is taught in America’s law schools, or about the nature and impact of elder law scholarship. This article fills the void by providing findings from a broad-ranging empirical study of the current state of elder law teaching and scholarship. These findings suggest that elder law is on the threshold of becoming a mainstream part of the American legal academy. They also suggest that, at this critical stage, significant barriers to the field’s development remain. By describing the current state of the field and the challenges it faces, this article paves the way for future efforts to guide and support the field’s growth.
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