Law School Con Law Class Shows Porn So You Know It When You See It
Radical concept, but maybe the students could figure out the law without having to experience the fact pattern first-hand.
(Image via Getty)
According to a now-deleted post on Reddit, a constitutional law course at the West Virginia University College of Law “showed us 3-4 min of hardcore porn in class.” Presumably as part of an unconventional approach to teaching about the Third Amendment’s proscription on quartering troops in private homes.
We reached out to WVU for comment and they did not respond one way or the other, though multiple posters in the ensuing thread either claimed to be in the class and confirmed the story or purported to be past students and confirmed that this comports with their experience in class.
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On behalf of professors everywhere, I am once again encouraging you to read the syllabus. Where it says “Debbie Does Blackacre,” that’s your queue to gear up for a wild ride.
Delivering a cold pizza might trigger the implied warranty of merchantability and that kid is NOT missing those points.
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In fact, this is one of the power moves that forced a federal judge to resign.
But as the response above notes, it does seem as though whatever pedagogical value exists in regaling the class with visual aides would be equally if not better served by showing Last Tango in Paris or something. Deciding not to show the stuff falling on that side of the border in favor of someone riding a sybian (which one post claimed to have been part of the materials) is a choice to be provocative for the sake of provocative without adding much educationally.
Though, and hear me out here, you also don’t have to show anything.
This routinely comes up whenever some white libertarian bro professor decides to drop the n-word in class to talk about free speech. It’s always defended one of two ways (sometimes both at once).
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First, the classroom performance art is described as “necessary” for students to understand the underlying controversy as though every law student in America is breathtakingly stupid. As we wrote before:
This is the recurring theme of every one of these incidents — there’s never a scenario where just saying “racial epithets were used” doesn’t accomplish every conceivable pedagogical goal unless you’re teaching Intro To Correctly Pronouncing Slurs. And yet we keep having these incidents where white professors seem convinced that without their elegant recitation of these terms, law students will be left befuddled as to what could have possibly been said. There is a grand paradox in how these professors routinely manage to cast aspersions on the maturity of students for needing events “sugar-coated” even though it’s precisely because these are highly educated and sophisticated students that they don’t need to a full dramatic reproduction to be able to fill in these gaps.
This goes for porn too. Every other law school manages to teach students how to navigate Jacobellis v. Ohio sufficiently well enough to pass a test without having to watch The Fertile Octogenarian (the most terrifying legally themed porn title).
Second, they’ll dial up the toxic bravado and explain that lawyers need to be tough and if any law student who can’t take a few slurs — or in this case a few… other things — they aren’t cut out for the profession. Which is bullshit. Some aspiring ERISA attorney isn’t disqualified from the profession because they don’t want to be forced to experience the fact pattern of every case they read in law school.
Seriously, do not make people watch porn. This shouldn’t be so difficult.
Earlier: Stanford Joins List Of Law Schools With White Professors Using The N-Word In Class
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
