Plus Ça Change, Plus C’Est La Même Chose (The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same)

Abstract

This essay takes the original plans from NYU Law School and draws analogies between those plans and the issues facing legal education today.

Benjamin Butler's 1835 Plan for the Organization of a Law Faculty and for a System of Instruction in Legal Science in the University for the City of New-York1 will make any law school dean feel like Yogi Berra: it’s “deja-vu all over again.” The issue of how best to organize a curriculum to train legal professionals was a hot topic then, and it’s a hot topic now.

Keywords: legal education, faculty, higher education

JEL Classification: I20, K10