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90 Yale L.J. 1205 (1980-1981)
Legal Scholarship: Its Causes and Cure

handle is hein.journals/ylr90 and id is 1223 raw text is: Legal Scholarship: Its Causes and Cure Mark Tushnett I suspect that symposia like this one are convened when it seems that something has gone wrong.' I sense that the community of legal scholars is afflicted with a vague malaise, sometimes girded about by a pretentious complacency.2 Perhaps more important, that community has been operating for some years outside the main currents of sig- nificant intellectual activity. I cannot imagine, for example, an in- tellectual history of contemporary America in which legal thought would play an important part. There may of course be an erroneous premise implicit in the view that legal scholarship should be a cen- tral element of the serious intellectual discourse in this country. After all, law, like engineering, is an applied rather than pure endeavor, and no one expects engineers to participate in the intellectual life of the community.3 Yet, in the past, legal thought has been a com- ponent of important intellectual movements. Holmes and the Legal Realists played an important part in the story of American intellec- tual life in the earlier part of the twentieth century.4 In contrast, few of the various strands of contemporary thought are informed by le- gal scholarship.5 Even as prominent a contemporary legal scholar as Alexander Bickel, for example, warrants but two passing mentions in Peter Steinfels's examination of neoconservatism.6 The intellectual marginality of legal scholarship is all the more striking in light of the immense role that law plays in American society.7 My topic is that marginality. I contend that legal scholarship lies at the edges of serious intellectual activity because of the nature of t Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin. 1. Cf. Persons, The Wingspread Papers, 7 REv. AM. HIsT. 447 (1979) (similar observa- tion about papers from conference on intellectual history). 2. This impression is supported by such evidence as Professor Gilmore's elegant dys- pepsia. G. GILMORE, THE AGES OF AMERICAN LAW (1977). 3. But see D. HOFSTADTER, GODEL, ESCHER, BACH: AN ETERNAL GOLDEN BRAID (1979); T. VEBLEN, THE ENGINEERS AND THE PRICE SYSTEM (1921). 4. See E. PURCELL, THE Cisis Or DEMOCRATIC THEoRY 74-76, 208 (1973); M. WHITE, SOCIA THOUGHT IN AMERICA: THE REVOLT AGAINST FORMALISM 59-75 (1949). 5. The exception might be Ronald Dworkin's role in mainline liberal thought. My comments below, see note 53 infra, suggest that he may be playing that role in his capacity as a philosopher rather than as a legal scholar. 6. P. STEINFELs, THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES 5, 6 (1979). 7. In the manner of Julia, I refrain from the obligatory citation to de Tocqueville. 1205

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