Law Professor Rocks the Classroom with Rock ‘n’ Roll
Mark Pettit spices up Contracts with Top-40 spoofs
When Mark Pettit, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, needs to make a point to the students in his Contracts class, he doesn’t invoke arguments by past Supreme Court justices or cite famous legal battles. Instead, he turns to the work of pop stars like Michael Jackson, putting a legal spin on the lyrics of such songs as “Beat It,” which becomes “Breach It.”
For 20 years, Pettit has been known to students as the law professor who rocks, setting alternative lyrics to Top-40 hits. On November 14, Pettit was interviewed on Morning Edition, National Public Radio’s weekday news program. He sang several of his most popular renditions, including takeoffs of Meat Loaf and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
“We’ll see how wise this turns out to be,” Pettit said. “I’m not sure this is the image that BU Law wants to project.”
Click here to listen to the original audio segment from WBUR, Boston University’s NPR station, which ran on NPR’s Morning Edition on November 14, 2007.