Using Critical Disciplinary Literacy to Deconstruct Legal Decisions Issued by an All-White, All-Male Supreme Court

• In Event: 61.018 - The Power in the Word: Critical and Conscious Examinations of Text

Abstract

Limited research has examined the relationship between disciplinary literacy and critical literacy. These scholarly silences suggest the need to nuance how disciplines act as unique social constructs that require specialized skills to understand how hegemonies are perpetuated in discipline-specific ways. In an attempt to offer a more comprehensive investigation of critical disciplinary literacy, this paper presents findings from a case study during which secondary students applied both traditional disciplinary literacies as well as critical literacies to unpack legal opinions written by the Iowa Supreme Court, an all-White, all-male group. Findings reveal that as students began to develop, notice, and apply critical disciplinary literacies, they began to see legal decisions as ideologically-laded entities though previously they had not.

Author

• Jeanne Dyches, Iowa State University