Law Schools, Law Professors, Scholarship [and/versus?] Teaching

One of my colleagues recently circulated for discussion an abstract of a forthcoming law review article that accuses—in no uncertain terms—the majority of legal academics of being out of touch with the reality of legal practice and inappropriately preoccupied with producing what the author terms “impractical” scholarship.  See Brent E. Newton, Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy, 62 S.C. L. Rev. ___ (Nov. 2010).

Professor Langdell vs. the Feminine Mind

“Journey with our Fearless Explorer into the carnivorous depths of the Feminine Mind!” (A still from Nara Denning’s film, “Neurotique.” Image and review found at The Moving Arts Film Journal, themovingarts.com.)

“[T]he law is entirely unfit for the feminine mind—more so than any other subject . . . .”

—Professor Christopher Langdell (as attributed by Charles W. Eliot).

See Bruce A. Kimball and Brian S. Shull, The Ironical Exclusion of Women from Harvard Law School, 1870-1900,  58 J. Legal Educ. 26 (2008).

Proust’s Nightmare (Mertz’s Proposition 3)

“In my most desperate moments, I have never conceived of anything more horrible than a law office.”

Marcel Proust, quoted by Alain de Botton in How Proust Can Change Your Life at 12.

Forests, Trees, and Thoughts on the Case Method (Mertz’s Proposition 2)

Previously, we learned about the overarching premise of Mertz’s 7 Propositions: that premise being that law school teaches students a way of knowing (an epistemology) by teaching students a common language that structures their view of the world, the people in it, and human conflict. On another level, legal language (what we read and how we learn to speak) structures the pursuit of the “right” answer, that is, the truth.