In Praise of Legal Scholarship (original) (raw)

2017, William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal

INTRODUCTIONIt is commonplace to hear legal scholarship derided as out of touch, too theoretical, low quality, unread, and of little practical impact.1 Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly asserted that he seldom reads or relies on law review articles.2Pick up a copy of any law review that you see and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th-century Bulgaria, or something, which I'm sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, but isn't of much help to the bar.3Judge Harry Edwards is likewise famously critical of legal scholarship. He has written a number of law review articles criticizing legal scholarship.4 In these articles, Judge Edwards claims that legal scholarship does not address the concerns of the profession because it has "little relevance to concrete issues, or addresses concrete issues in a wholly theoretical manner."5 Perhaps most curiously, this critique is one that ac...

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