Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
Protecting The Guild Or Protecting The Public? Bar Exams And The Diploma Privilege, Milan Markovic
Protecting The Guild Or Protecting The Public? Bar Exams And The Diploma Privilege, Milan Markovic
Faculty Scholarship
The bar examination has long loomed over legal education. Although many states formerly admitted law school graduates into legal practice via the diploma privilege, Wisconsin is the only state that recognizes the privilege today. The bar examination is so central to the attorney admissions process that all but a handful of jurisdictions required it amidst a pandemic that turned bar exam administration into a life-or-death matter.
This Article analyzes the diploma privilege from a historical and empirical perspective. Whereas courts and regulators maintain that bar examinations screen out incompetent practitioners, the legal profession formerly placed little emphasis on bar examinations …
Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master's Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Burge
Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master's Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Burge
Faculty Scholarship
The general decline in juris doctor (“J.D.”) law school applicants and enrollment over the last decade has coincided with the rise of a new breed of law degree. Whether known as a master of jurisprudence, juris master, master of legal studies, or other names, these graduate degrees all have a target audience in common: adult professionals who neither are nor seek to become practicing attorneys. Inside legal academia and among the practicing bar, these degrees have been accompanied by expressed concerns that they detract from the traditional core public mission of law schools—educating lawyers. This Article argues that non-lawyer master’s …
The Hastie Fellowship Program At Forty: Still Creating Minority Law Professors, Thomas W. Mitchell
The Hastie Fellowship Program At Forty: Still Creating Minority Law Professors, Thomas W. Mitchell
Faculty Scholarship
This article provides a history of and information about the structure of the William H. Hastie Fellowship Program at the University of Wisconsin Law School. This article is part of a series of articles published by the Wisconsin Law Review commemorating Professor James E. Jones Jr., emeritus professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and the founder of the Hastie Fellowship Program. Forty years after this pioneering program was established, the Hastie Fellowship Program continues to represent the preeminent pipeline program that has enabled more than 30 minority lawyers to become tenure-track law professors at law schools …
Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell
Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the "American Dream." In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a …
Late Night Thoughts On Blogging While Reading Duncan Kennedy's Legal Education And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy In An Arkansas Motel Room, Franklin G. Snyder
Late Night Thoughts On Blogging While Reading Duncan Kennedy's Legal Education And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy In An Arkansas Motel Room, Franklin G. Snyder
Faculty Scholarship
It has been more than twenty years since Duncan Kennedy published his seminal 'Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy'. In it he called for a radical assault on the hierarchies embedded in American law schools. But that assault failed. Over the past two decades, the hierarchies of legal education have, if anything, become even more fixed, insular, and status-driven, even while the elites of the practicing bar have changed dramatically and become more open to outsiders. It is vastly easier for the graduate of a fourth-tier law school to become a partner at an elite law firm than it …