In my view, effective teaching replicates in the classroom the search for truth to which one is committed as a scholar. Consequently, there are three elements to teaching that I try to keep in mind.

First, the search begins where the students happen to be. Their starting point is not that of scholars who have spent years studying a problem.

Second, the students have to travel, as far as possible, under their own power. They should be led to formulate solutions to a problem by themselves, then to see the inadequacies of the solutions they have formulated, and then to formulate more sophisticated solutions. The so-called Socratic method used in law school is an excellent way to teach because the students are constantly challenged to give answers not found in their textbooks, and then to meet objections to these answers. In using the method, however, the teacher should put to the students the next question that they should be asking themselves. The method should not be used to show the students how wrong or foolish they may be.

Third, the students should arrive roughly where the best contemporary scholarship has arrived. In dealing with any really hard problem, most scholars will probably admit they do not know of a single right solution. There are a variety of solutions, each offering something, each with its difficulties. Students should not be given the impression that they have arrived nowhere simply because no single right solution has been found. At least, some clearly unsatisfactory solutions have been discarded, some more or less satisfactory ones have been identified, the difficulties of the problem are better understood, and a thoroughly satisfactory solution may be found someday. In particular, students should not be taught the skeptical lesson that their efforts have been pointless, or were merely a sort of intellectual athletics designed to hone their skills without bringing them any closer to knowledge. Teaching should replicate scholarship, and the point of scholarship is to arrive at knowledge.