What do PhDs Bring to the Teaching of Law?

Changes in the hiring approaches of prestigious law schools have opened the door to two apparently quite different sorts of teaching candidates. One is in the direction of more JD/PhD candidates who come to the appointments process with a substantial research project already accomplished. The other is toward lawyers with substantial practice experience, especially in rapidly changing and innovative practice fields.

I would argue that both trends actually point in the same direction, i.e., toward preparing JD students for a rapidly changing legal field that is constantly infused with a remarkably heterogeneous panoply of authoritative knowledges. In the following post on PrawfsBlawg I take up the case of Phds.

The PHD and the Path to Law School Teaching

For reasons I will elaborate in future posts, I think a PhD in a social science, or humanities, or interdisciplinary program is an excellent pathway for law school teaching with benefits for the both the scholarship and the teaching they will produce. But in today's post I want to defend the current state of uncertainty over what credentials law professors should have against any tendency to follow the arts and sciences departments into requiring a PhD. Indeed, I offer the provocative (to many) suggestion that even arts & sciences departments might be better if they ceased making the PhD an absolute requirement for an academic appointment.

For more of this post, and the comments it has elicited, please follow this link to my post on PrawfsBlawg