Especially the ones with tenure. I mean, why bother? A variety of answers from “Paul Horwitz”:http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2005/05/why_i_write_no_.html, “Eric Muller”:http://www.isthatlegal.org/archive/2005/05/why_i_write.html, “Orin Kerr”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_22-2005_05_28.shtml#1116957530, “Michael Froomkin”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/why_i_write_legal_scholarship.html and “Michael Madison”:http://madisonian.net/archives/2005/05/18/why-write/. I feel the question is missing a few words at the end. It should of course read “Why do Law Professors write 50,000 word articles?”
{ 15 comments }
John Quiggin 05.30.05 at 6:22 am
Apparently the 50 000 word thing is some sort of product of the odd nature of law journals that Micah has discussed.
As regards the original question, isn’t it definitional? If you’re not writing you’re not really a professor [obligatory exception for superb and dedicated teachers, but they’re a rare breed].
abb1 05.30.05 at 6:55 am
I can’t be bothered to read the variety of answers, but is vanity mentioned there?
Eric 05.30.05 at 7:19 am
abb1,
If you had bothered, you would have seen that the answer to your question is “yes.”
Agitprop 05.30.05 at 10:08 am
They can write all they want about the legal justifications for torture but I ain’t gonna read it.
Rob Rickner 05.30.05 at 12:34 pm
The length is practically mandated by the Law Journals themselves, which are entirely staffed by by students. For some reason, the conventional wisdom is that anything short doesn’t adequately address the topic – and shouldn’t be published. (There is some truth to this statement, but I still think the articles are too verbose.)
Why do they publish? First, you should ask why they become teachers. Your average law professor at even a low-ranked school is going to have graduated at the top of their class with one or more federal clerkships under their belt. These people are in demand in the job market. By become teachers they are literally giving up the opportunity to make millions every year as a partner at a big firm. (Or nearly as much in any number of other jobs). I know how wierd this must seem to liberal arts Phd students who have few options that break the living wage, but some highly educated people actually get paid what they’re worth.
Of course, the hours a professor works are much better, so many move to academia to raise their kids. Some people just like to teach and mold the lawyers of tommorow. However, in my view, one of the main reasons people become law professors is because they LIKE to publish. So, they keep publishing because they want to keep publishing. If they just wanted a paycheck, they could work as lawyers (or a variety of other jobs in business and government).
Jonathan Edelstein 05.30.05 at 4:02 pm
Just out of curiosity, why is the phenomenon of law professors writing seen as something requiring special explanation? If anything, the question should be why some law professors don’t write, given that the law and letters have been intertwined since at least Rome.
GoTF 05.31.05 at 2:44 am
“These people are in demand in the job market. By become teachers they are literally giving up the opportunity to make millions every year as a partner at a big firm.” Hahahaha! Rob Rickner, what a funny idea. Take a look around the average law school in Australia and you see the tired and used detritus of the legal industry mixing with the inept embarrassments of the legal establishment shoved into storage out of harms way. The only talented ones are those that are experts in some area of law that has no commercial application eg human rights.
Fool! Law Profs have not given up an income in the private sector. They are pensioned off to the academe and left to write tedious tomes for obscure third-tier journals in an attempt to justify their pitiful existences.
garry culhane 05.31.05 at 3:00 am
Some of them write to advance or perhaps defend the practice of torture–a new Federal Cabinet member; and of course the self promoting Dershowitz; the authors of all those law memos detailed with exquisite distaste in the recent Amnesty report. And quite a few write letters to the editor (its sort of like a campaign) to raise the much dreaded spectacle of the “ticking bomb problem” as they like to style it.
I remember reading in the 1950s about all the famous German intellectuals of the late twenties who readily embraced the “ten centuries of undigested vomit” that constituted Nazi philosophy. Prominent among them were law professors. How could that happen, I wondered.
Well, here we are folks. The same people who denounce as trailer trash the lowest soldier practictioners of American softening up techniques, are the ones who later show up explaining (that is, leading the way) for the rest of us on how it is necessary.
Only a poet could truly seize the awful reality: the worst are full of a passionate intensity.
Up here in the North we emerge from the snow and watch the USA. It is really, really, depressing.
C.J.Colucci 05.31.05 at 10:31 am
My own observations as a practising lawyer who often represents academics (and would make a great part-time addition to any NYC-area law faculty) is that, among already-tenured faculty, a grossly disproportionate amount of the publishing is done by a very small, hyper-productive portion of legal academia. These outliers aside, the amount of scholarly output per capita is shockingly low compared to other disciplines. In my more cynical moods, I attribute this to a widespread recognition among the less productive faculty that: (1) there isn’t much of a truly scholarly nature (as opposed to practical commentary on the daily work of courts) worth doing in the law and (2) they aren’t the ones to do what little there is worth doing.
This ties into why pieces are so long. It is quite common for legal academics to write a “tenure piece” and then shut up. The price of a life of intellectual leisure (and, in the right fields, lucrative consulting work) is one big and significant-seeming piece.
Rob Rickner 05.31.05 at 2:13 pm
“among already-tenured faculty, a grossly disproportionate amount of the publishing is done by a very small, hyper-productive portion of legal academia.”
I must say, I’m suprised to hear this. In my own experience, my law professors almost always had a piece they had recently published and a few more in the works. This went across the board, tenured and non-tenured alike. Now, this may simply be evidence that my school, Hofstra Law, is really a far better academic institution than USNews and World Reports would have you believe. Regardless, I found far less “burn-outs” (teachers who get tenure, get bored, and then do the bare minimum to keep from being fired) in law school than I ever did in undergrad.
Of course, there are a few “burn-outs” in every academic institution, law school is no exception. I would argue that there tend to be fewer in law schools because they have other options besides teaching that are more interesting and could have a greater impact on society (if that’s what you’re into.) It is also possible to simply go out, make money, and retire as soon as possible, if laziness is your cup of tea. (Although, most wouldn’t have become professors in the first place, if this was what they wanted.)
Any thoughts?
And BTW – I would also agree that law journals are usually packed with crap. The signal to noise ratio created by these hyper-productive teachers makes it very difficult to sort the brilliant ones from the repetative muck — Less Quantity, More Quality, Please….
Paul Watson 06.01.05 at 2:58 am
Rob Rickner thinks that “law journals are usually packed with crapâ€. A bit harsh, but it is certainly fair to say that law journals (like all academic journals, I would think) are never read outside a specialist audience (here legal academic and students, and NOT practising lawyers, save for a blue-moon appeal/test case), and the extent to which they are read even inside this specialist audience is moot.
A couple of Rob’s other points merit scrutiny, however. Law journals “are entirely staffed by students� Don’t know about the US, but in Australia, refereeing submitted articles is, when done, definitely not left to students. If the US does indeed have this practice, then the reason for excess verbiage, but lightweight content in US law journals is blindingly obvious.
Rob also says:
“Your average law professor at even a low-ranked school is going to have graduated at the top of their class . . . These people are in demand in the job market. By become teachers they are literally giving up the opportunity to make millions every year as a partner at a big firmâ€.
Again, I’m speaking from the Australian perspective (where I’ve been both a legal academic and a lawyer at a big firm), but the reality of a lawyer’s career is far more tenuous. About one in twenty new lawyers taken on by big firms will make partner, with the other 19 peremptorily shoved aside, en route. In my experience, a person’s having obtained high marks while at university does not correlate with his/her being the “one†out of twenty – indeed, the reverse is probably true.
Which brings me on to GoTF’s:
“Take a look around the average law school in Australia and you see the tired and used detritus of the legal industry mixing with the inept embarrassments of the legal establishment shoved into storage out of harms way . . . They are pensioned off to the academe and left to write tedious tomes for obscure third-tier journals in an attempt to justify their pitiful existences.â€
Maybe. But where exactly else does GoTF think that the “other 19†– highly-intelligent late 20s or 30-something trained lawyers who never got partnership – should be working? Hassling him (I’m guessing) in a downtown street for loose change?
Finally, in 2005, and given the low-cost/volunteer ethos of most law journals (unlike most scientific journals, whose thinness seems inversely proportional to their sky-high subscription price, thereby keeping contributor verbiage necessarily in check), why are they still even being published on paper?
Get real, folks: web-published articles can still be refereed/QA’d. And as a spin-off from going entirely onto a not-for-profit web-platform, prospective journal authors may well be more mindful of their – much wider – likely audience. Which means that they may even *write* for such an audience, succinctly and all that. Shock horror!
Rob Rickner 06.01.05 at 1:21 pm
“By become teachers they are literally giving up the opportunity to make millions every year as a partner at a big firm”
My mistake, replace opportunity with chance. My only real point here is that there is plenty of ways to make lots of money as a lawyer that don’t involve teaching. Contrast with a person with a PhD in comparative religion (my undergrad major). Outside of teaching, and possibly working at a museum, the job prospects are pretty limited, and jobs as teachers are still very difficult to get. All in all, people from other disciplines may become professors more out of neccessity than law professors do.
As for law journals being staffed by students. It is true in the United States. I should have mentioned that I’m speaking from a US prospective in my original post. Australia does LOTS of thinks differently. And yes, letting students run things might be a big part of the problem.
Making them a prerequisite for many jobs here is also a problem. Journal experience is required for many “good” jobs. Schools tend to have many journals – to give their students this valuable resume booster and to generally increase the school’s reputation. Well, 4 times a year those journals have to get filled. 150+ US law schools, around 2-6 journals a piece, 5-10 articles per journal = lots and lots of law review articles. So yes, this might be part of the problem.
Jonathan Edelstein 06.01.05 at 2:10 pm
it is certainly fair to say that law journals (like all academic journals, I would think) are never read outside a specialist audience (here legal academic and students, and NOT practising lawyers, save for a blue-moon appeal/test case)
I’d add judges to that audience, at least in the United States. Law review articles are influential in areas where the law is unsettled; at least one appellate court (the Second Circuit) has specifically included them among the sources of law that lower courts must consult.
Don’t know about the US, but in Australia, refereeing submitted articles is, when done, definitely not left to students.
Having published in both the United States (where I was student-reviewed) and Australia (where I was faculty-reviewed), I have to say I got more thorough editing from the students. On the other hand, more thorough editing doesn’t necessarily mean better editing; the American editors were better at catching technical mistakes, but the Australians had more substantive suggestions.
GoTF 06.01.05 at 6:47 pm
Posting 10 by Rob Rickner says, “Of course, there are a few “burn-outs†in every academic institution, law school is no exception. I would argue that there tend to be fewer in law schools because they have other options besides teaching that are more interesting and could have a greater impact on society (if that’s what you’re into.)”
This argument is contradictory. That there are more alternative options means that your average law graduate or lawyer has more options before falling back onto an academic career. The consequence is that only the really miserable failures end up teaching law. In comparison something like comparative religion leaves far fewer career options and therefore there is more competition for academic posts.
Posting 11 by Paul Watson asks where else the 19 ‘failures’ go. Of the 19 who don’t make it to partner level, I’d say a couple stick around the industry at slightly lower levels, several move across to judicial positions, plenty move into the public sector, some end up on company boards… In short, the 19 who don’t make it to partner level most definitely do not all compete for academic posts. The majority of them head into other areas where their legal experience and knowledge are useful.
To finish, I’ll back down a bit… There are talented individuals in law schools here in Australia (and I assume elsewhere). There is the occasional individual with a passion for a subject who is eager to dedicate their time to researching and writing about it. There are those who love to teach. But, I maintain that there are plenty of law professors who are simply being kept out of sight so that they don’t embarrass the legal profession.
Rob Rickner 06.01.05 at 7:19 pm
“The consequence is that only the really miserable failures end up teaching law.”
Possibly. However, being a professor and being a practicing attorney are very different skills. A great professor might be able to figure out complex hypotheticals, but doesn’t have the where-with-all to handle running a firm or attracting clients.
Here in the states, if you are a miserable failure in practice, you don’t get to be a professor. A certain level of competance is required. While a professor may not make partner (or even want to), they are usually able to make a decent living at some part of the law. Most of my professors had, or have, very successful careers before teaching.
Much of the scepticism is coming from the Australians. I wonder, is there something really different about how law gets taught there?
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