Five questions for Frederic Bloom
When Frederic Bloom, J.D., joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Law School at CU Boulder in 2012, it was a homecoming of sorts.
“I grew up in Colorado, long ago, and though I left the state for college without any clear plans to return, I’d always thought it would be wonderful to get back here eventually,” Bloom said.
After earning his law degree from Stanford Law School, where he graduated Order of the Coif, he clerked for the Honorable Sidney Thomas of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for the Honorable Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
“My path kept me away for a good long while, weaving back and forth between the coasts with plenty of stops besides, and I am grateful for each step along the way,” Bloom said. “But when a chance to join the faculty here emerged, I jumped at it. The University of Colorado is a special place in a special state. Amazing things happen on all four of CU’s campuses every single day. I am glad to be a part of the exciting, essential work this institution does.”
Bloom’s scholarship concentrates on issues of structure, method and design in modern federal courts. He teaches Civil Procedure, Evidence, Federal Courts and related courses. Earlier this year, he was named to the newest cohort of President’s Teaching Scholars, high recognition for excellence in and commitment to learning and teaching, as well as active, substantial contributions to scholarly work.
1. In creating coursework, you have traveled to the original sites of legal disputes and interviewed the individuals involved. How does this enhance your teaching?
One of the first things I did as a law student, way back when, was help a professor track down some of the key players in a somewhat (in)famous case about the use of statistical evidence. I wasn’t the most talented gumshoe, and I stubbed my investigator’s toe more than once. But I was exposed right away to the human element of the law – the expert witness who botched his analysis, the prosecutor who overplayed his hand, the defendant who paid the price. It was an unsettling lesson for a brand-new law student but also a gripping one, and it made the stakes of the cases I was only beginning to learn how to read feel significant, contingent and real.
I think it’s essential for my students to experience that feeling, too. I want them to remember, all the time, that what we’re learning about has real impact on real people trying to live real lives. Law school has a way of flattening human experience: People’s lives become their conflicts; those conflicts become cases; cases become names; and names become rules. All the while, the lives actually lived get smoothed over, condensed, erased. That’s probably inevitable in a semester jam-packed with challenging material. But I think it does a disservice to the people whose names we memorize and whose stories we use to build our lessons. I also think it hamstrings our understanding of the law. When we flatten the human side of things, we learn less than we might, so we know less than we should. That’s a plight we likely can’t avoid, sadly, but we can still acknowledge it and try to address it.
So when I speak to the songwriter in a prominent copyright dispute, for example, or visit the depot home to a famous railroad mishap, I’m trying to provide more than interesting background or intriguing context. I’m trying to reveal an often-elided side of the law.
And many people I contact are quite eager to share. The lawyers in familiar cases are often keen to explain their strategic choices. Their clients are often happy to discuss how they experienced the law on the ground. The law is a distinctly human enterprise: It is made by people, with people, for people. I sincerely believe that my students will be better attorneys, better advocates, better neighbors and better leaders if they remember that important fact. So I try as often as I can to connect the rules we’re learning with the people those rules impact.
2. You have served as an associate dean and have taken part in the evaluation of tenure and promotion cases via an advisory committee. Why is it important to you to take on these additional responsibilities?
Universities are remarkable places. Where else could you find an expert on, say, string theory just a building away from an expert on Romantic poetry or forensic accounting – with experts on French cinema and mechanical engineering right next door? It’s astonishing, fragile and wonderful.
But it is not accidental. It takes vision, commitment and work. Some of that work happens at a departmental level by way of things like associate deanships. And some of that work happens at a campus level by way of groups like the Vice Chancellor’s Advisory Committee. I’ve been fortunate to serve in both capacities, and while the work is often demanding, it is essential and often invigorating, too.
The university will remain a place of knowledge, learning, inquiry and excellence only to the extent it remains tangibly and unapologetically committed to those things. That’s not an empty statement or abstract commitment. It reveals itself in the work of the people in the labs and classrooms and offices all across campus, and it reveals itself in our processes of mentorship and evaluation, too. We sustain the university by remembering and reinforcing what our commitments are. We protect our astonishing, fragile and wonderful community by devoting ourselves to it. And we encourage great and innovative and world-changing work by supporting and sustaining the colleagues who do it.
3. You were the featured speaker at the Law School’s commencement ceremony last year. What was that experience like, and how would you summarize your message to the graduates?
It was a tremendous honor. To speak to a group of graduates as they stand at the world’s door is an incredible prize and an indelible privilege. I will be forever grateful to the Law School Class of 2025 for entrusting me with the opportunity.
But it’s also a serious challenge. I wanted to say something meaningful and memorable, but I didn’t want to lose sight of the fact that no one was actually at the ceremony to listen to me. So I tried to speak to the graduates directly, candidly and unflinchingly. I spoke to them about the challenges of our often-unpopular profession, and I encouraged them to be conscientious about the power that they as newly minted lawyers now had. But even more than that – and in a way very different than the typically sunny, cheery, conquer-the-world stuff that fills most graduation speeches – I tried to be honest with them about how hard the world can be. We all struggle with something. We all fail sometimes. What we do with that fact, though, is what defines who we are.
I tried to suggest to the graduates that there is nothing braver, more heroic or more human than facing hard losses honestly and embracing small victories excitedly. I tried to say that there’s nothing more important than trying your best even when trying your best seems inadequate. And I hoped to express to them that the greatest gift is not the victory, whatever it may be, but the chance to do just a little bit better today than you did yesterday. “Just keep going,” as the great poet wrote. “No feeling is final.”
4. What does it mean to you to be named a President’s Teaching Scholar at CU?
There’s an old quip – I think from Groucho Marx – about not wanting to be a member of any club that would accept me. I’m thrilled to flip that quip on its head here: I’m honored to be a member of the President’s Teaching Scholars Program, and I’m delighted they accepted me.
One of my wonderful Law School colleagues, Helen Norton, was named a President’s Teaching Scholar a number of years ago, and I know firsthand what a terrific teacher, scholar, mentor and colleague she is. I am excited and humbled to join all of the President’s Teaching Scholars and to hold this important distinction. I will do my best to live up to the standard my Teaching Scholar colleagues have set.
A lot of incredible things happen at the University of Colorado outside of the classroom. Those things help make the university truly world class. But we are, fundamentally, a teaching institution, and the classroom sits at the heart of almost all that we do.
What that classroom looks like may be changing. Technology has reoriented our systems and disrupted our structures in profound and sometimes problematic ways. But the core of our enterprise is impressively durable: We are trying to connect with our students, to communicate with them and to teach them something meaningful in authentic and lasting ways. I am grateful to be named among those who do that deliberately, devotedly and well.
5. What’s next for your teaching and research?
If anything is true about the law, it’s that things are always changing. Nearly every doctrine I teach has changed since I started teaching, often in substantial ways. It can be a sprint just to keep up, but a necessary one at that: I can’t even pretend to teach my students the law without updating my own understanding at every turn.
That’s part of the reason why I’ve now penned the primary textbook for two of my classes. It’s also related to my commitment, enduring but especially urgent, to find ways to engage and support students who learn in different ways and whose educational paths involve less time in a classroom and a lot more time on the screen. (Folks who were in high school during the harshest days of COVID are filing into law school classrooms even now.)
The material I teach is also the material at the core of my research. I write about things like hearsay, character evidence and the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction, and I often try to write about those kinds of seemingly disparate concepts at the same time.
Much of my research involves teasing out and highlighting threads that, while often overlooked, actually link doctrines together. (I’ve been working for quite some time on silence as a legally salient concept, for example.) This kind of eclectic, integrative work seems especially important in an era of political polarization and judicial interventionism. I hope it also helps me teach my students both the trees and the forest.