Case against Legal-Scholarship Or, If the Professor Must Publish, Must the Profession Perish, The
![handle is hein.journals/jled39 and id is 355 raw text is: The Case Against Legal- Scholarship
or, If the Professor Must Publish,
Must the Profession Perish?
John S. Elson
Most law faculty would not willingly slacken their scholarly efforts to
satisfy demands for more emphasis on education for professional
competence.' Indeed, the advocates of practical training through clinical
methods have been characterized by some law faculty as both un- and-
anti-intellectual and, at the very least, insensitive to the role of legal
scholarship in promoting social welfare and law student development.2
Nevertheless, most advocates of the primacy of scholarship are careful not
to denigrate explicitly the importance of professional training. Rather, they
maintain that such training is not only compatible with scholarship, but that
it is best performed in an environment in which the ideals of scholarship are
paramount.3
John S. Elson is Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law. The author wishes
to thank his many Northwestern School of Law colleagues, especially Professors Hunt Francis
and Michael Perry for their helpful critiques of an earlier draft.
1. See, e.g., Paul D. Carrington, The University Law School and Legal Services, 53 N.Y.U.
L. Rev. 402 (1978). Of the law schools' obligation to the professional future of law
students, Carrington submits that we are obliged to do anything we can that does not
seriously obstruct the academic pursuit. Id. at 410. See also Terrance Sandalow, The
Moral Responsibility of Law Schools, 34 J. Legal Educ. 163 (1984), quoted infra text
accompanying notes 44-45.
Various proposals for improving the preparation of law students for practice are
recounted in Richard W. Nahstoll, Current Dilemmas in Law-School Accreditation, 32
J. Legal Educ. 236, 241-43 (1982). Nahstoll's article supplements a long litany of
articles, commission reports, opinion surveys, and judicial pronouncements criticizing
law schools for their failure to educate students adequately for practice. See 1979 A.B.A.
Sec. Leg. Educ. & Admiss. Bar, Report and Recommendations of the Task Force on
Lawyer Competency: The Role of the Law Schools [hereinafter ABA Task Force] 1-2;
E. Gordon Gee & Donald W. Jackson, Bridging the Gap: Legal Education and Lawyer
Competency, 1977 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 695, 936-39 (1977); Karl N. Llewellyn, The Current
Crisis in Legal Education, 1 J. Legal Educ. 211 (1948).
2. See, e.g., Francis A. Allen, The New Anti-Intellectualism in American Legal Education,
28 Mercer L. Rev. 447, 450, 453 (1977); Robert Stevens, The Nature of a Learned
Profession, 34 J. Legal Educ. 577, 581 (1984); Robert J. Condlin, Tastes Great, Less
Filling: The Law School Clinic and Political Critique, 36 J. Legal Educ. 45, 62, 76
(1986).
3. Carrington, supra note 1, at 410; Anthony T..Kronman, Foreward: Legal Scholarship
and Moral Education, 90 Yale L.J. 955 (1981) (discussed infra sec. IV.B.); Roger C.
Cramton, Demystifying Legal Scholarship, 75 Geo. LJ. 1, 16-17 (1986). Even former
dean John 0. Mudd, who has articulated one of the most cogent arguments for greater
faculty attention to law students' needs for more effective professional education, finds
the scholarly and professional missions mutually reinforcing. John 0. Mudd, Beyond
Rationalism: Performance Referenced Legal Education, 36 J. Legal Educ. 189, 191
(1986).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jled39&div=45&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Case against Legal-Scholarship Or, If the Professor Must Publish, Must the Profession Perish, The
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