ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 2008; A REVISED VERSION WAS POSTED SEPTEMBER 2011; NOW REPOSTED WITH SUBSTANTIAL REVISIONS IN LIGHT OF CHANGES IN THE INTERIM
I've had some inquiries lately about the section on the study of philosophy in law schools in the PGR like this one:
I am considering enrolling in a joint JD/PhD in philosophy next year, and I was reading through your rankings in philosophy, law, and joint JD/PhD programs. First, let me say thank you so much for the time and energy you've put in to make this information and these rankings available; it has been very helpful for me. My question, however, is if there is any reason why Harvard and Stanford are virtually not mentioned on the "The Study of Philosophy in Law Schools" page on philosophicalgourmet.com. Do their programs for law and philosophy not match up with the other schools mentioned? I ask because they both have very strong respective law and philosophy programs. I know you're extremely busy, so if you don't have time to respond about this, I completely understand. However, if you do get a chance, any comments would be greatly appreciated. Again, thanks so much for the rankings and information you've compiled about law schools and philosophy programs.
Legal academia is more pedigree-sensitive than academic philosophy (and I'm sure many of you think academic philosophy is way too pedigree-sensitive!), so this student's question is quite understandable. Four law schools dominate the market for new law teachers: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford. On a per capita basis, Yale is way ahead of the other three (primarily a selection effect, together with alumni networks), and these four are ahead of everyone else. Yet two of these three "feeder" schools for legal academia go unmentioned in the current PGR section. (For the 2009 PGR section, see here.)
The reason is fairly simple. Neither Harvard Law School nor Stanford Law School have been particularly serious about philosophy. Stanford has no one who is a major contributor to work at the core of law and philosophy, though they have some quite able faculty with jurisprudential interests but no philosophical training (e.g., Barbara Fried). HLS has more faculty than before with jurisprudential interests (e.g., John Goldberg is a significant contributor to tort theory, Henry Smith to property theory, Richard Fallon and Cass Sunstein to philosophically-minded constitutional theory), so in that regard is a better bet than Stanford. But both Stanford and Harvard fully fund the JD/PhD, for those admitted, which makes them worth a serious look notwithstanding the problems. We have hired excellent Stanford and Harvard JD/PhDs as Fellows in the past, and I have strongly supported those candidates going forward.
But several other law schools do very well in law teaching placement: NYU, Columbia, Berkeley, Michigan, Virginia, Penn (Penn has done especially well by JD/PhD graduates in various disciplines, placing graduates at Stanford, Berkeley, and Duke, among other places in recent years). Duke, Northwestern (which also fully funds JD/PhDs), Georgetown, Texas, Cornell, and UCLA round out the schools that send a fairly steady number of graduates into law teaching positions. Of these law schools, the ones a student serious about philosophy should look at are in alphabetical order:
Cornell University
Georgetown University
New York University
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania
University of Virginia
Yale University
One can do a JD/PhD at all these schools (I'm a bit unsure about how it works at Berkeley, though one can do a PhD in their "Jurisprudence & Social Policy" program in the law school with a legal philosophy focus, and one can do that concurrently with a JD), and at some the joint degree is very well-funded (e.g., Penn, but NYU, UCLA, Michigan, Berkeley and Yale all offers various kinds of funding packages). (Funding at Chicago for a JD/PhD is ad hoc, and can include full funding of both degrees, but there is no formal program, though we do have JD/PhD students. E-mail me for more information.) Just in terms of strength in law & philosophy, I think the law school at Penn is best, but NYU, UCLA, and Yale are also very strong, depending on one's tastes and interests. (I think Chicago is better than these schools in some respects, weaker in others--again e-mail me.) But all ten of these law schools should be on the radar for law & philosophy students.
Columbia is a tricky case now, since the most eminent law & philosophy faculty (e.g., Fletcher, Greenawalt, Raz) are in their late 70s or 80s. Students should keep an eye on developments at Columbia, which, of course, also has an excellent philosophy department.
Students can consult other parts of the PGR to assess the strength of the associated philosophy programs at each of these schools.
In Canada, the best choice for the JD/PhD is Toronto, though the jurisprudential group in the law school at Toronto is a bit idiosyncratic (due to the influence of Ernest Weinrib, whose reputation among legal philosophers is decidedly mixed, with utter devotees and utter skeptics, though students interested in Kantian legal philosophy would do well to seek out Arthur Ripstein.) Osgoode Hall Law School, at York University in Toronto, is the second best law school in Canada with a strong jurisprudence group; Osgoode has close connections with McMaster University, whose philosophy department has long been nationally and internationally prominent in legal philosophy. Oxford has dominated Anglophone legal philosophy since the 1950s, and still has a very strong group of faculty to this day, though the recent move of John Gardner to All Souls, and the likely (though not yet official) appointment of a scholar who doesn't work in legal philosophy to the Chair of Jurisprudence does raise serious questions about the future. Outside Oxford, King's College, London and the University of Surrey are notable strongholds of legal philosophers, and Cambridge and University College London are also worth a serious look from prospective students. In Australasia, the University of Sydney dominates the legal philosophy scene these days (with the largest and most internationally prominent cluster of scholars), though there are serious scholars working at many places throughout the region.
The National University of Singapore has built up one of the strongest jurisprudential cohorts in the Anglophone world over the last decade, so is also worth a serious look for law students interested in philosophy.
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