Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Rutter Award

UCLA School of Law press release:

Stephen Bainbridge, the William D. Warren Professor of Law, was honored with the 2008 Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching, which is presented annually to a professor who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to teaching.

“We are here to celebrate Steve and his accomplishments in teaching,” Dean Michael H. Schill said. Dean Schill also described Professor Bainbridge’s popularity, saying that he taught a Business Associations class that had 154 students in it - the average size for the class is about 70 students.

After being presented with the award by founder Bill Rutter, Professor Bainbridge, a member of the UCLA Law faculty since 1997, gave a thoughtful speech in which he discussed his teaching style, aspirations for incorporating new technologies into his teaching and the public interest aspects of being a corporate lawyer. He reflected on his twenty years of teaching experience, including his gradual move from a Socratic teacher to a lecturer, and said that he looks forward to what he hopes is another twenty years of teaching.

“I’d like to think that this award in some way validates the evolutionary path my teaching has followed,” Professor Bainbridge said.

Here’s the video of the award ceremony and my acceptance speech in which I bash the Socratic method and say a few words in favor of the corporation as an object of study:

The text of my revised and extended remarks, Reflections on Twenty Years of Law Teaching: Remarks at the Rutter Award Ceremony, can be downloaded from SSRN:

Abstract: On April 16, 2008, the author received the UCLA School of Law’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. This essay consists of a revised and extended version of the remarks he gave on that occasion. In it, he addresses his progression from frustrated Socratic teacher to happy lecturer and his aspirations for incorporating new technologies into his teaching. He also reflects on the subject of his teaching - the American corporation - and argues that being a business lawyer is a very real form of public interest lawyering.

Keywords: Socratic method, legal education, public interest law