Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1990
Abstract
It is not the purpose of this Article to evaluate the accuracy of the claim that teaching and research can be mutually supportive functions. Instead, the following analysis focuses on an aspect of the current situation which has been given much less attention, the costs to both legal scholarship and to law school teaching that result from the predominant dualist model. Identifying and examining some of these costs is important because even if it were established conclusively that legal research and teaching are mutually supportive pursuits, the desirability of the dualist model ultimately depends upon a balancing of the benefits with the corresponding costs of the model. In order to facilitate an understanding of these effects, Part I of this Article examines the costs that the dualist model imposes on law school professors' teaching function.
Part II focuses on the costs imposed by the dualist model on legal scholarship. Part III notes the existence of signs of increasing stress in this system. The analysis then turns, in Part IV, to a consideration of some of the reasons why the dualist model has remained so resilient in the face of these recognized costs and increasing signs of dysfunction. The assessment set forth in Part IV suggests that the strength and longevity of the dualist model is due largely to the fact that the model satisfies important bureaucratic needs of law schools that are not satisfied easily in any other way. Part V proposes an alternative, the dedicated- track model, whereby law school faculty members may choose to teach full-time, research and write full-time, or teach and research, and examines the potential costs and benefits of such a model. This Article concludes that once problems involved in the qualitative evaluation of law school teaching are resolved, law schools can consider alternatives to the dualist model in order to remove the limitations currently imposed on teaching and legal scholarship.
Recommended Citation
Marin R. Scordato, The Dualist Model of Legal Teaching and Scholarship, 40 AM. U. L. REV. 367 (1990).
