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October 30, 2017|AALS, Association of American Law Schools, Law School, law school clinics, Legal Education

What Should We Do with Legal Education? A Response to John McGinnis

by Stephen Presser|

I wanted to add my voice to that of my colleague, John McGinnis, who has posted on Law and Liberty about legal education, and, in particular, the one-size-fits-all approach to training lawyers on the part of the Association of American Law Schools. As John noted:

Lawyers working on the latest mergers at Wachtell, Lipton are performing substantially different functions from those writing typical wills or handling landlord-tenant disputes. Legal education should reflect the heterogeneity of the profession which it serves.

John criticized, in particular the AALS’s opposition to “replacing over time some tenured professors with practitioners.” He observed that the practical training many lawyers need can just as easily be provided by practitioners as by professors at law schools “try[ing] to resemble junior varsity Yales in devoting very substantial resources to the production of scholarship.”

It is now notorious that much, if not most, legal scholarship is only read by law professors, and as Chief Justice John Roberts and retiring Court of Appeals judge Richard Posner have both recently observed, is of no use to judges, let alone practitioners. I think, though, that while we’re at it, we might do well to consider more radically reforming legal education.

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January 6, 2016|ideological diversity, Ivory Tower, law school clinics, Social Justice

Should Law Schools Pursue “Social Justice”?

by John O. McGinnis|

Many, if not most, law schools proclaim that they will advance “social justice.” My own law school recently pledged to use part of the generous 100 million dollar gift from the Pritzkers to do just that. Generally the pursuit of such justice is done through clinics, which represent clients, but have larger objectives in their choice of representation, such as ending the death penalty, protecting rent control, or increasing environmental regulation.

A commitment to social justice creates some tensions with the ideal of a university as a place of open inquiry. First, clinics are enterprises of political action. But the essence of a university is the production of ideas, and political aims are not easily made compatible with purely intellectual ones. Politics, including the politics of litigation, requires one to take positions with a view to success. The university, in contrast, prizes ideas that are novel, coherent and logically consistent, regardless of the immediate real world impact.

Beyond this abstract tension, the pursuit of a particular vision of justice can make it harder for research faculty to pursue opposing viewpoints.

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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