Had him for Higher Education Law in winter 2010. The class can be a bit boring at time, but JB is a good teacher. Some of the readings were painful, and I stopped doing them halfway through the year. No cold calling. There are two group assignments (20% each) that you do with a student from the school of education. They are basically doing a detailed case brief. There is a 25 question quiz (20%) that is probably one of the easiest things you will ever have to do in law school. There is a 4 question, 4 day take home (40%), with a page limit of about 3 pages per question. I’d recommend it as a good class you can take for slacking off, but still learn some law.
Higher Ed law was great. The class can be boring at times, but as a 1L elective it’s great because the reading is relatively light and it surveys a lot of issues we learn about in our first year (especially constitutional issues). Plus, Jack Bernard is fantastic–such a sweet, incredibly smart guy.
Bernard is an interesting guy, and I don’t mean that just in terms of his pedigree or CV or whatever. He’s super quirky, in a good way, and he’s very empathetic and kind from my experience. He’s just got this vibe that he’s always trying to be responsive to students and improve the experience in his class, and it reflects in how different the experience is from most doctrinals you’ll take in law school. He’s also one of the most senior attorneys in U of M’s general counsel office (I forget his exact role) so he knows the material firsthand.
First of all, he doesn’t cold call, but rather he puts you on call on certain days. This is just a soft push to participate (I never once did, even when I was “on call” and he never questioned it or talked to me about it). I think it’s not because he didn’t notice or care, but because he genuinely wants people to learn and engage with the class however they feel comfortable. You’ll do two required “presentations” in class, but they’re really just explaining an assigned case, for a few minutes, kind of the way you would in a normal cold call except you have advance notice and the prof isn’t grilling you. Super straightforward and humane.
The material itself is largely pretty interesting, the focus is mainly on the big ticket con law issues in the university context. I took the exam during Winter 2020 and he was extremely accommodating and took steps to make the exam as painless as possible. There’s also a group paper, which is kind of awkward to write, but it’s pretty easy and low stress.
The one thing I didn’t like about the class was, frankly, some of the students from other schools. I think they’re from a mix of programs like School of ed and social work, and I don’t know if we just had a bad group that semester or what, but they were super obnoxious–just talking way too many times in class, making it about themselves, bringing up random irrelevant topics… it felt like 1L again.
Overall good class, and a pretty easy lift for a 4 credit doctrinal. Would recommend.
JB is an odd duck. He doesn’t cold call and tries very hard, but is unorganized and gets off track a lot.
For higher ed, he assigns a final group project, an in-class final exam, AND a 48 take-home final exam, which was absolutely insane. He didn’t make it clear that we had basically 3 finals until more than 2 months into the semester- I would have dropped in a second if I knew. It’s also worth noting that the class is a lot bigger now than it was in the past, so it is curved even with the school of ed students being taken out of the curve.
On a personal note, when I had him, JB made a good number of strange and uncomfortable comments in class. He frequently used examples that centered around comparing himself to a Jewish person but never actually made it clear if he was or wasn’t Jewish, so his comments were just unsettling, uncomfortable, and inappropriate. He also compared Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Jonathan Mitchell when students asked about hate speech in academic forums.
MLaw Prof Reviews
Had him for Higher Education Law in winter 2010. The class can be a bit boring at time, but JB is a good teacher. Some of the readings were painful, and I stopped doing them halfway through the year. No cold calling. There are two group assignments (20% each) that you do with a student from the school of education. They are basically doing a detailed case brief. There is a 25 question quiz (20%) that is probably one of the easiest things you will ever have to do in law school. There is a 4 question, 4 day take home (40%), with a page limit of about 3 pages per question. I’d recommend it as a good class you can take for slacking off, but still learn some law.
Higher Ed law was great. The class can be boring at times, but as a 1L elective it’s great because the reading is relatively light and it surveys a lot of issues we learn about in our first year (especially constitutional issues). Plus, Jack Bernard is fantastic–such a sweet, incredibly smart guy.
Bernard is an interesting guy, and I don’t mean that just in terms of his pedigree or CV or whatever. He’s super quirky, in a good way, and he’s very empathetic and kind from my experience. He’s just got this vibe that he’s always trying to be responsive to students and improve the experience in his class, and it reflects in how different the experience is from most doctrinals you’ll take in law school. He’s also one of the most senior attorneys in U of M’s general counsel office (I forget his exact role) so he knows the material firsthand.
First of all, he doesn’t cold call, but rather he puts you on call on certain days. This is just a soft push to participate (I never once did, even when I was “on call” and he never questioned it or talked to me about it). I think it’s not because he didn’t notice or care, but because he genuinely wants people to learn and engage with the class however they feel comfortable. You’ll do two required “presentations” in class, but they’re really just explaining an assigned case, for a few minutes, kind of the way you would in a normal cold call except you have advance notice and the prof isn’t grilling you. Super straightforward and humane.
The material itself is largely pretty interesting, the focus is mainly on the big ticket con law issues in the university context. I took the exam during Winter 2020 and he was extremely accommodating and took steps to make the exam as painless as possible. There’s also a group paper, which is kind of awkward to write, but it’s pretty easy and low stress.
The one thing I didn’t like about the class was, frankly, some of the students from other schools. I think they’re from a mix of programs like School of ed and social work, and I don’t know if we just had a bad group that semester or what, but they were super obnoxious–just talking way too many times in class, making it about themselves, bringing up random irrelevant topics… it felt like 1L again.
Overall good class, and a pretty easy lift for a 4 credit doctrinal. Would recommend.
JB is an odd duck. He doesn’t cold call and tries very hard, but is unorganized and gets off track a lot.
For higher ed, he assigns a final group project, an in-class final exam, AND a 48 take-home final exam, which was absolutely insane. He didn’t make it clear that we had basically 3 finals until more than 2 months into the semester- I would have dropped in a second if I knew. It’s also worth noting that the class is a lot bigger now than it was in the past, so it is curved even with the school of ed students being taken out of the curve.
On a personal note, when I had him, JB made a good number of strange and uncomfortable comments in class. He frequently used examples that centered around comparing himself to a Jewish person but never actually made it clear if he was or wasn’t Jewish, so his comments were just unsettling, uncomfortable, and inappropriate. He also compared Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Jonathan Mitchell when students asked about hate speech in academic forums.