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Full-Text Articles in Law

Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner Jan 2013

Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

This foreword to the Michigan Law Review’s 2013 Survey of Books Related to the Law considers the history of the American legal treatise in light of the well-known criticisms of legal scholarship published by Judge Harry Edwards in 1992. As part of his critique, Edwards characterized the legal treatise as “[t]he paradigm of ‘practical’ legal scholarship.” In his words, treatises “create an interpretive framework; categorize the mass of legal authorities in terms of this framework; interpret closely the various authoritative texts within each category; and thereby demonstrate for judges or practitioners what ‘the law’ requires.” Part I examines the origins …


Becoming A Legal Scholar, Samuel W. Buell Jan 2012

Becoming A Legal Scholar, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

There is now a literature on how to become a law professor. The first book-length treatment of the subject, Becoming A Law Professor, displays a common fault of this literature in directing candidates’ focus on process at the expense of substance. The present body of material on the market for new legal academics does not persuade candidates of the necessity of locating their agendas and voices as scholars, much less does it show them how to go about that vital search. It also risks contributing to a tendency of credentialing processes to standardize resumes without improving outcomes. A second-generation literature …