Court cases can be very useful in classroom, but pedagogical
shortcomings exist.
I am in court a few times each year as a litigation support
consultant and use some of my materials in class.
POSITIVES
One valuable aspect of a court case is that evidence, such as
testimony is "a matter of public record" thus privacy issues may not
be relevant.
NEGATIVES
Decisions in court cases are based in the law of the jurisdiction,
which is often different that the subject of the course. Thus, in my
experience, only peripheral references to a case are useful in my
classes. For example, there may a wide gap between law and ethics.
Thus, there is a danger that students will leave an Ethics course
with an understanding of law and not an appreciation of ethics.
I teach both Accounting and management courses. The Accounting area
is full of wonderful Ethics cases, but much of the subject of the
instructional case may not be illegal, just unethical, as judged by
the standards of a particular profession.
EXAMPLES
1) I saw a tough fit case study in print recently. The pamphlet
explained how to teach the O.J. Simpson case (ongoing at that time)
in class. Try as I could, I could not use it in any class that I
taught.
2) Yet other court cases have proved to be rich material for cases.
The famous Johns-Manville asbestos litigation has spawned a few
excellent cases. Art Sharplin's cases are wonderful. Ethics is
explored within the context of several other topics.
3) A terrific ethics and corporate culture case can be made from a
Wall Street Journal article on IBM's approach to accounting for
certain sales in the early 1990's. Yet the actions reported in the
WSJ were not illegal. Thus ethics is quite different from the law.
Just some of my rambling thoughts.
Jim Carroll
Georgian Court College (New Jersey)
Home email:
drjamesjcarrollcpa@prodigy.com
Home office voice (908) 658-4998