Drawing (Gad) Flies: Thoughts on the Uses (or Uselessness) of Legal Scholarship

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2015

Abstract

The apparent uselessness of much legal scholarship is a recurring theme in the profession. As with the broader pressures law schools are facing, we should embrace and learn from this scrutiny. In that spirit, this brief essay makes two related points. First, at least some scholarship should question, rather than merely accept as given, the aims and priorities of the profession. We should be willing to rethink, rather than merely reflect, current assumptions about what matters — about what is or is not truly useful. Thus some of our work will, by definition, initially strike the profession as useless — at least if we are doing our job. Second, support for a certain amount of wide-ranging scholarship attracts and helps retain law teachers who are willing and able to do this sort of work — and who are thus able to help future members of the profession develop that same capacity. How we evaluate this latter consideration will depend on our views about who should be teaching law and what we should be teaching. In this way, responding thoughtfully to difficult questions from the profession about the value of our scholarship should prompt reflection not just about the uses of legal research but about the aims of legal education more broadly.

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