Legal Knowledge, the Responsibility of Lawyers, and the Task of Law Schools

Abstract

A former colleague of mine recently asked me whether being Dean left me time for any serious legal research and writing. Putting aside any question of intellectual impairment caused by decanal duties, and assuming also that one is on the right side of that well-known equation in which accumulated experience keeps one just ahead of one’s biological decline, I mentioned that I had gravitated to shorter, more reflective pieces. In particular, I had just written a piece of extreme brevity - only a page and a half of printed text - with which I was nevertheless very pleased. It explored the phenomenon of deep antinomies in the law, particularly the tension between the concept of law as an autonomous body of knowledge and the notion of law as comprehensible only by reference to its context, especially its political, social, economic, and historical context. He said to me, ‘Why am I not surprised? The theme of all of your writing seems to be the irreconcilable tension between competing ideas!’