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63 U. Colo. L. Rev. 641 (1992)
Scholarship about Scholarship

handle is hein.journals/ucollr63 and id is 657 raw text is: SCHOLARSHIP ABOUT SCHOLARSHIP DAVID P. BRYDEN* I. WHAT IS THE QUESTION?, A. No one is truly competent to evaluate the overall state of legal scholarship: there are too many specialized works to assess, and the choice of a standard is obviously subjective. Still, one forms impres- sions, and some of mine are favorable. I believe, for example, that the finest modem works about the Constitution are better than the best from earlier eras such as the 1920s. Of course, this is largely because we have learned from our predecessors, and from history. Then too, the top schools are now recruiting their faculties from a much larger and more talented pool of potential scholars than they were in Wig- more's day. Be that as it may, most of us will agree that legal scholarship has certain characteristic faults, some of which can also be found else- where in the academy.' My present purpose is not so much to identify those faults, as to propose a theory about the enterprise of doing so. Even the most telling criticisms of legal scholarship are, I think, re- sponsive to the wrong question. Most critics simply ask, What are we doing badly? What new kinds of scholarship should we write? They talk as if what is needed, above all, is awareness of the flaws of our work. The critics' tacit premise is that our errors are cognitive, and therefore hard to identify but presumably easy to cure: once our col- leagues realize that we need more interdisciplinary research or whatever the nostrum may be, they will change their ways, and we will no longer need scholarship about scholarship. The critics' sole task, on this assumption, is to persuade the profession that their accu- sations are just. Although this assumption sounds like a truism, it is quite differ- ent from the way that we analyze the rest of the world. We usually recognize that the main shortcomings of other occupations reflect real- ities that cannot be changed by mere discussion. If advertisers are dishonest, no one imagines that they will become appreciably less so * Professor of Law, University of Minnesota. I want to thank my secretary, Tam Murphy, for her unfailingly diligent and accurate assistance. I am also grateful to my colleague Michael Tonry, who criticized an earlier draft of this essay. I. For a good indictment of legal scholarship, see Kenneth M. Lasson, Scholarship Amok Ex- cesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure, 103 HARV. L. REV. 926 (1990).

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