Yes, Judges Do Read Law Reviews, After All
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Much of the attack on law schools over the last few years has focused on the alleged irrelevance of legal scholarship. At times the level of rhetoric has been so intense one feels as if the “anti-intellectualism in American life” so eloquently described fifty years ago by Richard Hofstadter has once again raised its ugly head. Things are not helped when prominent jurists like Chief Justice Roberts pile on.
Research is a tough road, good questions are hard to specify and methodology can be challenging to develop. It is hard enough when one is dealing with the physical world so imagine trying to fashion a reliable scientific method for the constantly shifting social world.
In response to this challenge, legal academia has over the last few decades gone down two separate roads, one that can largely be characterized as quantitative and the other as qualitative. Both have their advantages and limitations.
Fortunately, legal academia enjoys one distinct advantage: peer review is largely absent and so the heavy reliance on “prestige” journals has not stifled innovation. Law school publishing is in many ways an analog precursor of the open source world. Much work that is not all that good gets published but the very best can rise to the top. And there are often nuggets of value even in work that is not terribly important – and that’s where databases like Lexis become invaluable.
Read original articleTags: legal academia, Read Law Reviews, Richard Hofstadter
