Bartholomew and the Oobleck is also a story teeming with crimes and torts — fraud, negligence, trespass, battery, even treason.  

Josh Compton & Paul Klaas

The primary goal of the assignment is to offer students guided experience in analyzing, crafting, and delivering arguments. In our legal rhetoric course, our assignment goals reinforce our two primary learning objectives:

(1)       to become more informed about legal rhetoric in myriad forms; and

(2)       to engage in legal rhetoric with informed understanding.

Additionally, this assignment helps students meet two secondary learning objectives:

  • use rhetorical lenses to analyze trial arguments, including ancient Greek rhetorical strategies and contemporary jury summations; and
  • prepare and deliver clear, convincing, dynamic trial arguments.

The assignment also meets a number of learning goals outside of the context of legal rhetoric, including: evidence analysis, argumentation, public speaking, organization, audience analysis, and rhetorical analysis. 

Compton, J., & Klaas, P. (2012, November). Oh, the places legal rhetoric can go: Prosecuting and defending characters of Dr. Seuss’s Bartholomew and the Oobleck [paper presentation]. National Communication Association, Orlando, FL, United States.