Legal Commentary

Brian Tamanaha has started the conversation about whether non-elite schools should hire interdisciplinary scholars.  Here's the summary:

First and foremost, as argued above, there is no evidence that it will make their students better lawyers. Second, it costs a lot of money to go interdisciplinary, and (because non-elite schools are tuition driven) this money will come out of the pockets of the students. Third, their education might suffer if their faculties emulate the elite law school trend toward hiring JD/PhDs with little or no practice experience (assuming a person with some experience in the practice of law has a bit more insight to impart to students about how to be good lawyers).

John Oberdiek and Dan Solove say what needs to be said in response to the claim that this kind of hiring is useless to teaching students at these schools. 

But there are two more points to be made.  First, Brian's argument proves too much.  If he is right about interdisciplinary scholarship, you might run his argument to discourage hiring scholars more generally.  That is, what do students care whether their teachers do research and writing?  And good research can be expensive to support.  Finally, hiring practitioners might be the best way to train our students for practice.  The answer to this extension of Brian's argument is also an answer to help explain why he is wrong on his more modest claim about interdisciplinary scholarship in particular.  In short, the value of students' JDs (whether at elite or non-elite schools) is often tied up with how the faculty at the school is perceived in the academy and the profession.  When faculty are at the forefront of their fields -- thanks to their exciting research and writing (and sometimes their practical and clinical work, too) -- that value for the school translates into enhanced prestige for the students' JDs.  So non-elite schools that give up trying to hire the best and most influential scholars they can are likely doing their students a grave disservice (whether students appreciate this fact or not).  If the future of being respected as a scholar is tied up with having a PhD, non-elite schools ignore this trend at their peril.  Teaching basic courses is not rocket science -- and PhDs are likely to have more teaching experience than pure JDs and practitioners anyway.