Why Not a Ph.D. in Law?

Michael's mention of Jack Balkin's post brings up another matter I've been thinking about lately.  Jack notes that

(A)ll of your (the law professor's) students, or the vast majority, are planning to be lawyers; which is to say, they are *not* planning to be just like you. And they expect you to teach them law, and the rhetorics and discourses of law. They are training to be advocates, deal makers, fixers. And it's your job to show them how to do this with the materials of the law.

In an old post on Prawfsblawg (briefly noted here by Micheal), Orly Lobel echoes this, asking "wouldn't be great to have doctoral students around that can imagine themselves following in your paths, that are interested in ideas, and that challenge you on your grounds?" 

Of course, if this is your concern, the solution is obvious: Start a Ph.D. program in law, with the goal of creating a "professorial class" in the legal academy.  For those of us in the social sciences (and employed at institutions that offer graduate training), teaching and working with graduate (read: Ph.D.) students is often one of the great benefits of our job, and something many of us would be loathe to give up were we to move full-time to a law school.

Sure, there's the JSP, the ILS, the CLS, the CSLS, the JSI, and surely a few more I'm forgetting; and Vanderbilt Law's Ph.D. in Law and Economics is a more recent (and specialized) version.  But I'm talking about a straightforward Ph.D. in law, one that is no more self-consciously interdisciplinary than one in English, criminology, or whatever.

The breadth of scholarship conducted in law schools need not deter anyone; training for a Ph.D. in anthropology can run the gamut from humanist-style interpretive analysis through statistics to osteology and molecular biology, and sociology, political science, and other similar fields can be almost as diverse.  Students inevitably specialize, on the recognition that no one can really be an "expert" in every area of such a discipline, and the same is undoubtedly true for law.  Nor should the novelty of the idea stop anyone: Ph.D.s in business have been offered only since the 1920s, and those in many other fields (e.g., criminal justice) are of even more recent vintage.

Of course, creating a Ph.D. program in law raises many, many issues.  How is the program structured?  How long would it take to finish?  How much involvement do individuals outside the law school have in the degree process?  Are J.D. and Ph.D. students permitted in the same classes?  Yet none of these are insurmountable, or without precedents to work from.  And Orly's post (and the discussion that followed) suggested the "transformative effect" such an innovation could have on the legal academy.

Comments

[Oz JD]

My apologies if it is inappropriate to resurrect old threads, but this is the closest blog thread I could find for my question.

2 questions:

1. I am 45, and currently studying a JD/M.Ec at Australia's top (or top 3) Law School.

My undergrad included a B.Ec (1st Class Honors) and BA (History) (1st Class Honours). I am one year away from a masters in economics (which in Australia is the equivalent of the coursework for a US PhD). My concentration is Econometrics.

My academic interest are ELS, Law and Economics, and Corporate Regulation.

2. Age and hiring:

To cut a long story short, after a 10 year careers in management consulting and investment banking, I had quite an horrific accident. Anyways, once recovered, I decided to go to Law School to become an academic.

I am so far ranked in the top 3 of my year, and will graduate will 1st Class Honors. Every year, students from my Law School get accepted to Harvard's LLM, and many complete the SJD.

Does my age make my ambition completely unobtainable?

[AEChloe]

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Hey, i'm thinking to apply for a PhD in Law

[Maria]

Hey, i'm thinking to apply for a PhD in Law and i need a letter of reference from 2 professors.
One of them asked me to write it first and after he would have checked it.
i was wondering whether it's possible to have an example.

Thanks

[New Focus]

Law schools should offer the Ph.D. as an adjunct to the J.D. Actually, it makes no sense to earn a J.D. degree if one cannot refer to himself as "Dr." - the same as with other professional doctorates. Is the J.D. a doctorate or not? Nevertheless, for marketing purposes and for the expansion of a lawyer's employability [i.e. university assignments], the Ph.D. should be offered (in the nature of a major) to the J.D. candidate who takes an additional semester of specialized course work.

[New Focus]

Law schools should offer the Ph.D. as an adjunct to the J.D. Actually, it makes no sense to earn a J.D. degree if one cannot refer to himself as "Dr." - the same as with other professional doctorates. Is the J.D. a doctorate or not? Nevertheless, for marketing purposes and for the expansion of a lawyer's employability [i.e. university assignments], the Ph.D. should be offered (in the nature of a major) to the J.D. candidate who takes an additional semester of specialized course work.

[J D]

Non-first-professional doctorates seem to be inherently specialized. Thus, the SJD falls into the same category. Yet, with such further education and additional expense, what professional or economic benefit does the Ph.D. in law [now the S.J.D.] offer most lawyers who can work and teach the profession with the J.D.?

My recommendation is that law schools offer the Ph.D. as an adjunct to the J.D. Just add an additional fifteen semester units of elective courses, directed study, and a dissertation that is critiqued and approved by three practicing attorneys in a specialized field of law and this "research degree" is bestowed at graduation or at a later time when work has been completed successfully.

Ph.D.'s in law alone, however, serve no purpose except to confuse the public and to open the doors wider for those who practice law without a license.

Lawyers with Ph.D.'s in law increase their marketability as educators as well as enhance their images as experts in a given legal discipline.

[J D]

Non-first-professional doctorates seem to be inherently specialized. Thus, the SJD falls into the same category. Yet, with such further education and additional expense, what professional or economic benefit does the Ph.D. in law [now the S.J.D.] offer most lawyers who can work and teach the profession with the J.D.?

My recommendation is that law schools offer the Ph.D. as an adjunct to the J.D. Just add an additional fifteen semester units of elective courses, directed study, and a dissertation that is critiqued and approved by three practicing attorneys in a specialized field of law and this "research degree" is bestowed at graduation or at a later time when work has been completed successfully.

Ph.D.'s in law alone, however, serve no purpose except to confuse the public and to open the doors wider for those who practice law without a license.

Lawyers with Ph.D.'s in law increase their marketability as educators as well as enhance their images as experts in a given legal discipline.

[blog2.zingip.com]

Did your dean put you up to this? At 2 million lawyers in a population of 300 million (one for every 150 of us) don't you think that there is enough of us. Besides, it tough enough for me to find work now and I have four degrees (JD, MS and two BS's).

[Christopher Zorn]

Tim:

In theory, that's (sort of) right. Orly's post has a nice discussion of SJDs and other such creatures. For my part, I don't necessarily put a lot of stock in the letters that get used, so long as we're talking about (a) a doctoral-level degree that is (b) strongly research-focused, and that (c) becomes the de facto standard requirement for a faculty appointment in a law school. At the moment, SJDs are clearly (a), clearly not (c), and vary in their degree of (b).

Jeff:

I wouldn't see any reason not to have the bulk of the courses taught by current (JD-holding) faculty. And don't get me wrong: I'm very much in favor of interdisciplinary programs, and would hope that Ph.D.s in other departments would play a role in such a program in a law school, where appropriate. My bigger point, though, is that a Ph.D. in law need *not* be interdisciplinary, any more than one in sociology, history, etc. is. Just as (say) political scientists know aspects of the history and structure of political systems and incorporate that knowledge into their research, Ph.D.s in law would be expected to know about evidence, trusts, etc. and to incorporate that knowledge into theirs. And just as disciplinary scholars in other fields do (e.g., I know a lot about the federal courts, but very little about corporatism, Thomas Aquinas' political thought, or the politics of exchange rate regimes), they'd necessarily specialize in their research and teaching focus.

[Jeff Harrison]

I am wonder where one would find professors qualified to teach Ph.D. in law candidates. Would they be sociologists,historians, philosophers, economists, etc. A Ph.D. in law would presumable mean learning "about" law from a broad perspective and not, let's say, even more about evidence or procedure or trusts and estates. It seems like it would be an interdisciplinary program taught only partially within a law school.

[Tim Hayes]

Pardon my ignorance, but doesn't the S.J.D. (i.e., Doctor of Juridical Science) program at many institutions fill this role?