Law students can get a clue to close reading in fantasy card game-inspired class
In the popular fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering, players act as wizards who cast spells that summon creatures to defeat their opponents in strategic combat while they obey intricate laws set forth in a 300-page rule book.
Playing the game has many parallels to practicing law, says Mihailis Diamantis, a constitutional professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and a lifelong enthusiast of the card game.
In the next academic year, he plans to launch Introduction to Interpreting Text, a one-week, elective intersession class for 2L and 3L students that will emphasize close reading of texts, such as statutes, rules and regulations—an essential skill for future attorneys, he says.
The course reading is not a case book but the game’s “Comprehensive Rules,” which provides detailed definitions of all game mechanics and card interactions governing the players’ acceptable moves.
“We have found that most a lot of students leave law school without the ability to read a sentence and understand the importance of each and every word in it,” he says. “It affects their drafting; it affects their reading.”
Magic: The Gathering’s rule book is ordered like a legal code with amendments, comments, errata and card-specific rulings.
“It’s not meant to be read from front to back like a traditional board game book. It is more like rules of civil procedure,” Diamantis adds, “and you are working your way through a case.”
This class follows Diamantis’ one-credit simulation-based course last year called Foundations of Corporate Law that was loosely based on Dungeons & Dragons-style quests. Although that game also follows the procedures spelled out in a dense rule book, it requires more cooperation, with players creating characters to role play as they collectively tell a story guided by a dungeon master.
The new course’s syllabus is still in development, but Diamantis says he envisions that the two hours of daily class time for 12 students will start with discussions, such as the role of precedent, context and purpose. Next, students will play the game, using oral and written arguments to resolve the complex textual ambiguities that can happen in interactions among the game’s 27,000-plus unique cards, he says.
“What they’re going to learn is how to work with a book of rules in an adversarial setting. When their opponent tries to do something, they have to check to make sure that what they’ve done is consistent with what the rules permit,” he adds.
How will the students’ games of Magic: The Gathering play out?
“I can’t predict,” he says. “Situations will arise where there’s not a clear answer to the question of how the game is supposed to move on. It’s going to require spontaneity, being able to think on your feet—and that’s the point where the most interesting things happen.”
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