Theoria

As is often the case with those who study law in the context of the humanities and the social sciences and those who study law in the context of a professional law school, disagreements and discussions regularly arise as to the place of non-professionally oriented legal scholarship and research in the academy. There is a further distinction between teaching-centric (i.e., professional law schools) and research-centric (i.e., traditional disciplines). I happen to work in a legal studies department that is expressly not a professional law school (i.e., we don’t make lawyers, but many of our students go on to law school). Consequently, the discussion is of mild interest – especially given that my (our?) students often have difficulty in telling “legal studies” from “doctrinal law” without decomposing “legal studies” into sociology. Anyway, some posts on the most recent version of the debate.

• Initiated by Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization “Why the Interdisciplinary Movement in Legal Academia Might be a Bad Idea (For Most Law Schools)“
• Larry Solum at Legal Theory Blog “Interdisciplinarity, Multidisciplinarity, and the Future of the Legal Academy” [overview of the debate]
• Belle Lettre at MoneyLaw “Tamahana on Interdisciplinary Scholarship“
• Ethan Leib at PrawfsBlawg “Non-Elite Interdisciplinary Scholars“
• Brian Leiter at Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports “Why Non-Elite Law Schools Should Not Invest In Interdisciplinary Scholarship” [comment thread]
• Brian Leiter at Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports “More on Interdisciplinary Legal Scholarship and ‘Non-Elite’ Law Schools“
• Daniel J. Solove at Concurring Opinions “Is Interdisciplinary Legal Study a Luxury?“
• Daniel J. Solove at Concurring Opinions “Interdisciplinary Scholarship and the Cost of Legal Education“
• Matt Graber at Balkinization “Aesop’s Bat and Interdisciplinary Legal Scholarship“
• Response to Critics by Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization “Is There An Impending Crisis in Non-Elite Law Schools?“
• Jeffrey Lipshaw at Concurring Opinions “Encore – I Couldn’t Resist Saying Something About the Interdisciplinary Debate“
• Jim Chen at MoneyLaw “Interdisciplinary Legal Education: The Overt Costs“

An earlier incarnation of the debate:

• Brian Leiter at Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports “Against Interdisciplinary Appointments?” (Reponse to Anthony D’Amato’s essay, “The Interdisciplinary Turn in Legal Education“)
• Josh Wright at Truth on the Market “There Is Little Evidence That Economic Analysis of Law Has Changed [Antitrust] In Any Noticeable Way“
• Dan Markel at PrawfsBlawg “D’Amato and the Interdisciplinary Turn in Legal Education“
• Mary L. Dudziak at Legal History Blog “Down With Interdisciplinarity? Or Up with Legal History?“

And even earlier:

• Brian Leiter at Leiter Reports “Why is it so easy to get tenure in law schools?“

See also Richard Posner’s contribution to a memorial on Bernard Meltzer in The University of Chicago Law Review [pdf].