By Kristen David Adams & Brooke J. Bowman*
“There are easy cases and there are hard cases, and this is a hard case.” The newly minted law school graduate looked confused.
Analogical reasoning is at the core of legal education, but it is not the only form of legal reasoning that lawyers employ. Lawyers can also expect to face open questions of law that will require skills and strategies not emphasized in the traditional pedagogy for first-year law students. These same skills and strategies are also crucial competencies for members of moot court boards, who are faced with open questions of law, or cases of first impression or circuit splits, in competitions every year. The Virgin Islands Supreme Court case of Banks v. International Rental & Leasing Corp. provides a tool to assist law students and practicing lawyers alike in presenting compelling, persuasive, well-organized arguments whenever open questions of law arise. In this Article, we propose that the traditional law-school pedagogy be modified to incorporate the Banks analysis as a teaching tool.