Only In Law School

From an email circulated to the student body:

"MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT
The Moot Court Program at Liberal College Law

In 1905 a group of Liberal College law students, fed up with the abstract theory being taught in their law classes, formed a Law Club for the purpose of holding moot courts. The students hoped that these extracurricular gatherings would give them the experience they needed to become better lawyers. Today, Liberal College Law sends its students to over twenty-one regional, national and international moot court competitions.

To read more about an exhibition on the history of Moot Court at Liberal College Law, and to see the very unusual Object of the Month for November, go to the Law School Archives web site."

I wonder what that "very unusual Object of the Month" is.

And you have to love an academic discipline that straddles the line between the esoteric and the practical so imperfectly as to have its students revolt by creating an academic club against theory. This would never happen in other departments at the cognate disciplines, because without theory, what would the grad students learn or get into useless debates over?

I always used to joke that going to law school is like going to beauty school to get your cosmetology license--it's just another paper-granting institution. But that's not entirely true, as we all know. Especially at the top-ranked schools, there is very little focus on clinical programs. Indeed, law school is not where you go to "learn the law." The professionalization of law school--which is, indeed a "professional school" in which you learn to be a "professional" rather than an "academic"--is one that seems at odds with the current interdisciplinary, research-oriented focus. Why the demand for J.D./Ph.Ds if we're supposed to be training lawyers to do law?

I imagine that in a few years, there will be more student uprisings by students fed up with the statistics, sociology, political science and economics being taught in their law classes.