PrawfsBlawg: A Recipe for Trashing Legal Scholarship

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Sunday, November 20, 2011

A Recipe for Trashing Legal Scholarship

Just in time for Thanksgiving!

Ingredients:

• A premise based on a?hazy cliche, such as: "Of course, much of academia produces cryptic, narrowly cast and unread scholarship.";
• A few particularly esoteric article titles --?law & philosophy if possible;
• A complete misunderstanding of Ed Rubin's program for reform of the legal academy, which in fact seeks to increase?the role of legal research in law school pedagogy;
• A couple of hostile throw-away quotes from Supreme Court justices;
• A truly bizarre calculation of the "cost" of legal scholarship, based on back-of-the-envelope calculations and unsupported assumptions;
• An unwitting job candidate, whose scholarly work can provide a few more esoteric-sounding titles and food for ridicule; and
• An overall theme for the story (the nature of legal education) that is, in fact, something worth debating -- and in fact is being debated quite vigorously within the academy.

Directions: Mix together in the preeminent newspaper of our country.? Half-bake and serve.

Seriously, I hope other folks jump on this -- it's really demoralizing and infuriating to read this in the New York Times.??It's a head-scratcher.? I was just writing over at the Glom about the respect and appreciation the Delaware Chancery has for legal scholarship.? And then we get this.

Segal says at one point, in attempting to show the impracticality of legal scholarship:

Some articles are intra-academy tiffs that could interest only the combatants (like ?What Is Wrong With Kamm?s and Scanlon?s Arguments Against Taurek? from The Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy).

The article is (a) a philosophy article written in (b) a philosophy journal (a self-described "online peer-reviewed journal of moral, political, and legal philosophy")?(c) by a philosophy professor.? I mean, really.? Is that the best you can do?

Posted by Matt Bodie on November 20, 2011 at 03:40 AM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink

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