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More Reflections on Legal Education

Book

Brian Tamanaha has just posted another interesting post in the discussion about legal education. He writes: Most law schools now follow the elite model, striving to hire faculty and produce scholarship like research universities, when it might better serve the interests of many non-elite law schools and their students to concentrate on training good lawyers. […]

Interdisciplinary Scholarship and the Cost of Legal Education

Books

The other day, I responded to a post by Brian Tamanaha regarding interdisciplinary legal study at non-elite law schools. Brian suggested that non-elite schools reconsider whether they ought to pursue interdisciplinary legal scholarship, and I argued that they should. In a follow-up post, Brian has clarified his argument:

Is Interdisciplinary Legal Study a Luxury?

Interdisciplinary Legal Studies

Over at Balkinization, Professor Brian Tamanaha (St. John’s School of Law) argues that most law schools should abandon their vigorous pursuit of interdisciplinary studies in law: [P]erhaps detailed knowledge of the social sciences—anything beyond rudimentary information every educated person should possess—is irrelevant to the practice of law. It seems evident that one can be an […]

We Hate Rankings, But We Love Them Too

US News Rankings Law Schools

In an earlier post here [link no longer available], Dave Hoffman adds another quibble about Brian Leiter’s citation rankings of law professors. Several others have voiced criticisms about the rankings, including Mary Dudziak and Brian Tamanaha. In the comments to Dave’s post, Marty Lederman and Brian Leiter get into a debate about the rankings, with […]

Brian Tamanaha on Problems with Instrumental Views of the Law

Legal Instrumentalism

Brian Tamanaha (law, St. John’s), has written a provocative article called The Perils of Pervasive Legal Instrumenalism.  He observes that “[a]n instrumental view of law–the idea that law is an instrument to achieve ends–is taken for granted in the United States, almost a part of the air we breathe.”  Such a view, however, creates a serious problem: […]