This article might lead one to think so. Although I'm no fan of the "Professor of Torture" Alan Dershowitz, my impression was that the "plagiarism" allegation against him last year lacked merit; Larry Tribe and Charles Ogletree present clearer cases, and both acknowledged improper use of the work of others.
But what does it all mean? What does it tell us about Harvard, or any other elite, law school?
One thing it does not mean is that faculty at Harvard Law School are more ethically challenged than faculty at other elite law schools (all my colleagues excepted, of course!). What this signifies is something rather different (or so it seems to me): namely, that it is very hard to manage a full-time career as a celebrity lawyer, public pontificator, and political activist, with the actual duties of one's day job: namely, teaching classes and doing scholarly research and writing. The result is extreme carelessness in the performance of some of one's duties.
The other significant story here is the extent to which faculty at elite law schools rely on their smart students to do their work. Those of us who write in jurisprudence don't make much use of research assistants, but faculty in most other areas of legal scholarship do. The Olgetree incident, in particular, sheds an unflattering light on the extent to which professors simply incorporate, sometimes wholesale, the work of their RAs. If the Association of American Law Schools were a useful professional organization, one thing it might do is try to formulate and promulgate some professional standards for the professor/RA relationship, and how work should be credited. (Perhaps the AALS or some other organization has done so--anyone know?) As things stand, my strong suspicion is that the phenomenon brough to light in the Ogletree case is very widespread and the amount of scholarship that is really co-authored is much, much higher than one would guess from viewing the by-lines of articles.
(Sidenote: some anonymous Harvard students have started an entire blog devoted to these incidents! I've not read enough of it to offer any opinion as to its accuracy or fairness, so approach with caution.)
UPDATE: Comments on the use of research assistants by faculty from Mark Tushnet (Law, Georgetown) are here.
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