Spring 2022 Course Evaluations

once understood or correctly answered a students question (he has severe hearing trouble). This is not meant to be mean, I simply firmly believe he does not have the capacity to teach any longer and Suffolk is doing its students a huge disservice by keeping him on the faculty. Sometimes Professor Robertson does not fully and directly answer a question being asked of him. There is too much material and Prof. Robertson moved lethargically through the realm of intentional torts when the other section (1D2) had already flown through them. We have no time for strict liability or damages. Reading cases is obviously helpful, but there was not much outside reading that actually aided in our summarization of contemporaneous tort law. Finally, although not his fault, Prof. Robertson had a lot of difficulty hearing us and required some students to ask questions 2-5 times, and sometimes he still could not understand the question being asked. He is a great guy, but this posed difficulties with class discussion and communication. Professor Robertson is a wonderful person and an engaging legal thinker, but is well past the point of being an effective teacher. His classroom discussion is unclear, disorganized, and confuses students more than communicating any semblance of coherent legal concepts/ideas Sometimes, Professor Robertson couldn’t hear us or understand our questions/comments. This impaired the classroom environment sometimes because we had to repeat ourselves multiple times. I give props to Professor Robertson for continuing teaching, but I felt like this class may have been better as an online/zoom course! I have no doubt, Professor Robertson, is a qualified teacher but I don’t feel he is an effective teacher. He mentioned all his health issues and it genuinely seemed like he was not in a physical condition to teach. He confused case names and facts on multiple occasions and was frequently late to class. I would recommend for the next spring Torts class that they do not spend more than one class laying the foundation of torts. We spent 3 classes on Garret v. Dailey and almost 60 minutes of discussion on establishing if there were two prongs to intentional torts. I would’ve rather had that time used to get through difficult material like causation or other areas of negligence. Organization of content. I found myself teaching myself at times because I was confused on what the professor was saying. More lecturing at the beginning of each unit before cases and/or a casebook that also has more explanations. Maybe Professor Robertson could have heard us better there was a lot of back and forth and confusion because of potential hearing loss, and this resulted in more confusion and a loss of class time. The TA was also a little unapproachable. Robertson could have a more clear syllabus and schedule of what will be covered for each class, so that student can better prepare for the classes and participate in a more meaningful way. Also, Robertson could be more direct when answering questions from students who are confused about material in the class.

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