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63 U. Colo. L. Rev. 731 (1992)
What Does Prescriptive Legal Scholarship Say and Who is Listening to It: A Response to Professor Dan-Cohen

handle is hein.journals/ucollr63 and id is 747 raw text is: ARTICLE WHAT DOES PRESCRIPTIVE LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP SAY AND WHO IS LISTENING TO IT: A RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR DAN-COHEN EDWARD L. RUBIN* No observer of academic discourse will be surprised to discover that I rate the success of my analysis of legal scholarship somewhat more highly than Professor Dan-Cohen does.I Nonetheless, I find his observations to be extremely astute. In responding, I want to make three points that take issue with his criticisms, but also build upon them. I agree that public decisionmakers possess social roles and motivations that differ radically from those of legal scholars.2 I also agree that scholars can be properly viewed as speaking to each other, rather than to these decisionmakers' But I would argue, first, that neither of these phenomena are exclusive ones; they do not preclude the possibility that scholars are also speaking to public deci- sionmakers. Second, I believe that these decisionmakers have the ca- pacity to listen. While I also agree with Dan-Cohen that the significance of legal scholarship does not reside in its ability to control external events, the third point I would make in response is that schol- arship does have influence, once we properly understand the meaning of that concept and appreciate the complexity of the process by which ideas are translated into social action. Underlying all three points is a vexing question which keeps crop- ping up throughout this entire symposium: is legal scholarship of any value at all, and of any interest to anyone besides other legal scholars?4 We all experience moments, if not extended periods, of existential dread, moments when we recognize that our greatest success consists * Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley. I want to thank Meir Dan-Cohen and Robert Post for helpful comments. 1. Meir Dan-Cohen, Listeners and Eavesdroppers: Substantive Legal Theory and Its Audience, 63 U. COLO. L. REV. 569 (1992). 2. Id. at 586. 3. Id. at 590. 4. See, e.g., David Bryden, Scholarship about Scholarship, 63 U. COLO. L. REV. 641 (1992).

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