Exploring Conflict over the Professor's Role in U.S. Legal Education: Theory v. Practice

Details about Exploring Conflict over the Professor's Role in U.S. Legal Education: Theory v. Practice:

In the United States, the professionalization of the role of the law professor, along with the professionalization of the legal field in general, began in the late nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century. Although the current role of the law professor is well-established as mainly academic, it has also been the subject of much controversy throughout the decades, and the longstanding critique of legal education as impractical preparation for the practice of law acquired new intensity and significance after the economic meltdown of 2008. This monograph opens with an overview of post-2008 critiques of U.S. legal education and their implications for the the role of the law professor. The project then offers historical background on legal education in mainland Europe, England, and the U.S. before the late nineteenth century. The book proceeds by examining the development of the law professor role in the U.S. from the late nineteenth century to the present and discusses, in detail, the ongoing conflict between supporters of the scholar model and the practitioner model of the law professor. Several hybrid models also receive attention. Both traditional and contemporary rhetorical theory, including Aristotelian rhetoric, invitational rhetoric, and cooperative rhetoric, inform the discussion. The project, as a treatment of a communication problem in the legal field, concludes with an explanation of how alternative discourse on the subject would be more productive to all stakeholders in legal education.