MILAWYERSWEEKLY.COM
VOLUME 34 NUMBER 29
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MAY 18, 2020
A sidebar with … Otto Stockmeyer Otto Stockmeyer, Western Michigan University Cooley Law School distinguished professor emeritus, received the 2020 Cohn Prize for Law and Public Policy from the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts & Letters for his work titled “Three Faces of Restitution.” The Cohn Prize, named after Judge Avern Cohn for his patronage of legal scholarship and the academy, recognizes the best scholarly paper on law or public policy. Stockmeyer, a prolific writer, shared with Michigan Lawyers Weekly his top writing tips, and how his favorite article tells the story behind one of Michigan’s most famous cases involving a pregnant cow. You received the 2020 Cohn Prize for Law and Public Policy from the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts & Letters for “Three Faces of Restitution.” Can you share what the piece is about? Restitution was once a mainstay of the first-year law school curriculum but has become sorely neglected. Today it makes only a brief guest appearance in Contracts and may be folded into a Remedies course (which is usually an elective, if offered at all). Judge Cohn shared with me recently that Restitution was his hardest course in law school. But that was 1949. My goal was to explain Restitution by using leading cases to illustrate its three major components: as an alternative Tort remedy, as an alternative Contract remedy, and as an independent cause of action. Shortly after I wrote the paper, the Michigan Supreme Court released a path-breaking new case confirming Restitution’s place as a freestanding source of recovery for unjust enrichment — Wright v. Genesee County (2019). You’re an accomplished author. What’s your favorite piece of writing? My favorite is an article I wrote for the Cooley Law Review in 2007 on the story behind one of Michigan’s most famous cases, Sherwood v. Walker, the “pregnant cow” case. I used it with PowerPoint slides to address the 2009 annual meeting of the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society. And the journal Green Bag selected the article for
inclusion in an anthology of exemplary legal writing. What writing tips do you have for lawyers and law students? First, get over your reticence and any feeling of inadequacy. Sure, there are people who know more about your topic than you do or ever will. The point of the exercise is to be a writer, not to be the foremost authority. Second, start now! Don’t wait for inspiration to hit or for your research to be complete. Getting your thoughts on paper — or the screen — will generate further ideas and research leads. Large undertakings should be outlined first, but feel free to modify it as your work unfolds. Third, if you are writing for publication, study back issues of the periodical to get a feel for the types of articles published — their length, depth, and so forth. Then adhere strictly to their manuscript instructions. Make your submission “publication ready” in every respect. As a former editor of a couple legal publications, I know that can make the difference. You’ve been retired from teaching for a few years now, but you’re still involved with the law school and its students. What are you doing to help law students succeed? Even before the coronavirus, my involvement has been at a distance, through blogging. Using WMU-Cooley Law School’s blog, and other hosts, I have been posting tips on law school success, writing and speaking skills, the bar exam, and more. One current effort is encouraging adoption of the Uniform Bar Exam. It would be a great boon to Michigan law students that do not have a job lined up by graduation. It would allow them to transfer their Michigan score to their choice of 36 UBE jurisdictions. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten? My mother was a disciple of William James. She drilled into us his law of habit formation: Start now and never let a single exception occur. It works. Tell us something your colleagues might not know about you. Given my “urbane countenance,” I’m pretty sure they don’t know that I was raised on a farm and once maintained one of the largest goat herds in western Wayne County. — Kelly Caplan
Reprinted with permission from Michigan Lawyers Weekly, Inc., 900 West University Drive, Suite J, Rochester, MI 48307, (248) 865.3112 © 2020