Scalia's Remarks on Law School Renew Legal Education Debate

Justice Scalia offers reason and insight to an ailing and fragmented system of legal education which ultimately derogates both its participants and the judicial branch of government. The issues are neither new nor original, just buried deep in a culture and tradition of legal education compromised by vested interests, see
American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (JANUARY, 1918), pp. 37-53 ,45
“ The Litchfield Law School was made the subject of a laudatory article. " We do not hesitate," say the editors to say that the system of instruction which has been adopted in this school is the most perfect of its kind of any that has ever yet been established; and that it enables the law student to acquire more in one year than is gained in three years, if not in five, in the ordinary method of securing an acquaintance with legal principles. We recommend it to the American Union; and we do this with a full conviction, that if our approbation can give it additional claims to patronage, we are contributing to the respectability of the American Bar." The system was then set forth as described in a letter from the head of the school, Judge Gould, to the editors, dated November 17, 1822. Our common law treatises, he wrote, " are conversant too exclusively about doctrines, to the neglect of principles. They deal much in rules, and little in reasons. In other words, they teach us what the rule is; but seldom why it is."
And;
Law should be recognized as one of the great social sciences, and should be studied in close association with the other social sciences. Second, law teachers, judges, and leading members of the bar should be united in an effective organization for critical study and constructive endeavor in the fundamental problems of law and its administration. American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 7, No. 5 (May, 1921), pp. 227-230

The more things change the more they stay the same. I just got the circular of information for 1896-97 for Northwestern University Law School. On the back in bold red warning type:

“The leading law schools of the United State now require a three years’ course for the degree of Bachelor of Laws and this requirement has been adopted by this school.
Students will take notice, however that as the Supreme Court of Illinois and the Supreme Court of other states, still admit to the bar on certificates granted by law schools to students completing a two years’ course this school will continue to grant such certificates at the end of the second year.”

Are law schools teaching a skill, or a system?

Usually, I disagree with Antonin Scalia, whose attitude toward Equal Protection for women irks me a great deal, restricting the governance of that right only as protection for African Americans.

Nevertheless, I concur with him on this issue.

I have considerably more legal knowledge than a large portion of licensed attorneys in this nation right now. That incompetence evinces itself in thousands of lost cases which costs this nation in billions of tax dollars because of frivolity or extremely poor character judgment.

Further, after investigating several attorneys who are male - I have disclosed that many were poor law students that were practically handed their law degree and many that did not factually pass the bar, but scores were fixed to reflect a passing determination.

Time for law school reform!