Institutional Conditions of Contemporary Legal Thought

Abstract

This Chapter contribution to C. Tomlins & J. Desautels-Stein (Eds.), Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought (CUP, 2017), begins with the general thesis that traditions of thought are fragile collective efforts, permanently under risk of collapse along with the lives of those of the latest generation engaged in them. Unless, the Chapter argues, those traditions are properly supported by institutions. In the case of the high traditions of legal thought, the Chapter asks how well the institutions of the contemporary legal academy provide support for them, and what is at stake in their failing to do so. The Chapter demonstrates how law schools fail to provide adequate institutional homes for the continuation and creative expansion of high legal thought, in the process failing themselves, those who come to them, and the long-term conditions of possibility of self-governance and justice in complex societies. The immediate cause of the failure to host legal thought is the prevailing structural bias of institutions of the legal academy in favor three interconnected attitudes: practicism, minimalism, and parochialism. The Chapter explains the intellectual origins, nature and effects of these attitudes before outlining proposals for the future of the legal academy.

Keywords: Institutional Conditions of Legal Thought, Intellectual and Attitudinal Aspects of Legal Academy, Practicism, Minimalism, Parochialism, Future of Legal Academy

JEL Classification: K10, K30, K40, K49