Judging

I've written a lot of posts about judges' inability to grasp basic legal principles, and how frustrating and costly this can be. (For a couple of recent posts, in which you'll find several additional links, see here, here, and here.) I've also speculated, here, that much of this can be traced to the American law schools that produce the graduates who eventually become judges. One of the problems with many of our schools is that they really don't teach a whole lot about legal theory, and even less about lawyering. (They do, however, love to teach social science theory and the law.) One of the reasons law schools don't teach much law is that an increasing number of new law professors -- especially those at elite schools -- have a Ph.D. but no law degree. And, many of the law professors who do have law degrees have never practiced law in the fields they teach; further, many have never practiced law at all, or only in rather sheltered settings for a year or two. The blog Outside the Law School Scam gives an excellent example of this incredibly common law school hiring practice: a law prof teaching criminal procedure who has never practiced criminal law. (The blog post further points out that the prof has "near-zero experience" in legal practice of any kind.) The problem, obviously, is that these law professors can't add anything of value to what a reasonably intelligent law student can do on his or her own: read and think about statutes and case law. And the bigger problem is that these law professors are training -- or, rather, not training -- our future judges. In short, I don't see any improvement on the horizon for the state of our judiciary.