The Open Casebook Revolution

Samuel Beswick (British Columbia; Google Scholar) & Maddison Zapach (British Columbia), The Open Casebook Revolution, 3 Sup. Ct. L. Rev. __ (2024): 

The open-access casebook revolution is gaining momentum. Open casebooks are compiled and edited teaching materials, typically hosted as webpages and available as downloadable, searchable, printable, mark-up-able documents. In the United States, dozens of open casebooks can be found on platforms such as eLangdell, H2O Open Casebook, Open Textbook Library and SSRN. Outside of the United States, however, open casebooks for law school courses remain underutilized. This paper provides insights on the power and limits of open casebooks from the perspectives of a teacher and a student. It draws on our experience creating an open casebook for a Canadian law school torts course. It addresses some practicalities of designing and creating an open casebook and the benefits and challenges of doing so.

In our view, open casebooks have clear pedagogical, practical, financial and societal advantages. On the pedagogical side, open casebooks empower flexibility and innovation. They can be readily structured to suit the editor’s teaching aims, particularly as the online format opens up new ways to present readings and integrate materials such as podcasts, videos, blogs, news, articles, books, statutes, and judgment transcripts. Open casebooks can also be embedded with self-assessment quizzes, exam exercises and feedback tools. On the practical side, open casebooks can be accessed digitally via laptop, tablet, or phone, reducing the amount of physical paper students need lug about school. They can be hyperlinked, keyword-searched, annotated, downloaded, and digested through text-to-speech software. On the financial side, students benefit from free digital access or at-cost printed copies, as well as the ability to retain their reading materials in different formats after they graduate. On the social side, open casebooks bring structure and context to case law and statutes that, though typically publicly available, can often be impenetrable to members of the public. Open casebooks help to keep the law accessible.

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