What Does Engaged Scholarship Mean for Seminar Papers and Notes?

We all know that Cleveland State University’s tagline is Engaged Learning™, which is a hands-on educational experience that connects students, ideas and real-world experience. Part of the engaged learning experience is engaged scholarship. What does engaged scholarship mean for legal scholarship? And does engaged scholarship only apply to law professors’ writing?

A forthcoming law review article defines engaged legal scholarship and suggests ways that Associate Deans at law schools can encourage engaged legal scholarship among their faculty members. But engaged legal scholarship doesn’t have to stop at law professors. When you write seminar papers for your classes or notes for Journal or Law Review, you can write engaged scholarship, too.

Based on the article, engaged scholarship

  • Influences the way lawyers, judges, and decision-makers make decisions
  • Incorporates the practical with the theoretical
  • Blends scholarship with community impact or fieldwork
  • Takes an interdisciplinary approach to a topic
  • Uses empirical data
  • Is genuinely helpful to practicing lawyers
  • Generally steers clear of overly academic topics, like say “the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria”

If you’re picking a topic for a seminar paper or note, check out the topic selection tab on our Scholarly Writing Guide.

See Sonia Katyal, Encouraging Engaged Scholarship: Perspectives from an Associate Dean for Research, Touro Law Review (forthcoming) [full text through SSRN]