Great Moments in the History of Ignorance & Division III

I started with Frank Goodnow’s 1904 presidential address at the first annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Today’s Great Moment comes from Charles Grove Haines’ 1940 presidential address at the APSA’s 35th annual meeting. Haines was one of Goodnow’s students, and like Goodnow, one of the great public law scholars. See Glendon Schubert, The Future of Public Law, 34 Geo. Wash.L. Rev. 593, 603 (1965-1966). In this excerpt, Haines describes the growing divide between law and political science:

In the early years, when political science was becoming a separate and independent field among the social sciences, public law, a subject at this time accorded little attention in the curricula of law schools, was for many of the members of the new organization one of the major lines of interest. Gradually the scope of work coming within the ambit of the American Political Science Association has been broadened and enriched by the exploration, analysis, and interpretation of other phases of political ideas and phenomena, with the result that political science may truly be regarded as no longer under the bondage of the lawyers. On the other hand, public law has now become one of the important subjects of instruction in law school curricula, and with this trend has come a decline of the importance of this field of instruction in departments of political science. In fact, the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that there are some who maintain that the only deserving place for public law courses in which the case method of instruction is used is in the law schools. In my opinion, such views are incompatible with the best interests of legal instruction both in the law schools and in departments of political science. Public law always has been and continues to be primarily public in its nature, significance, and implications. It belongs, therefore, as much to the field of the political and social sciences as it does to the field of the law, and political and social scientists as well as lawyers may well cooperate in the consideration and evaluation of the vital problems involved in its development.

Charles Grove Haines, The Adaptation of Administrative Law and Procedure to Constitutional Theories and Principles, 34 Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev. 1, 27 (1940) (emphasis added).

Tomorrow’s Final and Really Great Moment: Glendon Schubert describes legal research as “primitive,” explains why political scientists started ignoring their public law colleagues, and calls the study of public law in law schools “ghastly.”

Comments

[Elizabeth Mertz]

Bill, I'm enjoying this history of interdisciplinary (non-?) communication. It's a wonderful step in getting us to think about disciplinary barriers to translation.
Beth