Jurisprudence Commons^™

How To Fix Legal Scholarmush, Adam Kolber

Indiana Law Journal

Legal scholars often fail to distinguish descriptive claims about what the law is from normative claims about what it ought to be. The distinction couldn’t be more important, yet scholars frequently mix it up, leading them to mistake legal authority for moral authority, treat current law as a justification for itself, and generally use rhetorical strategies more appropriate for legal practice than scholarship. As a result, scholars sometimes talk past each other, generating not scholarship but “scholarmush.”

In recent years, legal scholarship has been criticized as too theoretical. When it comes to normative scholarship, however, the criticism is off the …

Scholarship And Teaching After 175 Years, Gordon A. Christenson

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

A quarter century ago, I presided at the 150th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Cincinnati Law School. Newly appointed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor came to dedicate the radically refurbished Taft Hall in the spring of 1983 and to say good things about our long history. This year we begin to celebrate the College's 175th anniversary. For its dedicatory issue, the editor-in-chief of the Law Review, Matthew Singer, invited me to write an introduction as well as to reflect on those twenty-five years and the challenges and opportunities I see ahead for us. Especially as an emeritus dean and …

Introduction: "Plus Ca Change...?", Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.