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Are We Ready For What Harvard Law School Is Selling?

Thursday, January 22, 2009 4:30 PM - By Elie Mystal

Harvard Law School seal logo.jpgAmerica, welcome to your new national nightmare: a country run on the thinking instilled by Harvard Law School.

Noam Scheiber’s brilliant article in the New Republic takes the first stab at capturing what this turn of events could mean for the direction of the country. After pointing out some obvious differences between the Bush 41-Clinton transition and the Bush 43-Obama transition, Scheiber explains:

But part of the explanation also lies in the elite institutions that socialized them—namely Harvard and Yale, their respective law schools. The two schools stand on opposite sides of a cultural chasm in the academic world. Even more than that, they stand for different theories of governing.

Obviously, Scheiber makes his argument by using broad generalizations about the two schools’ methods of education. Yale is portrayed as intellectually curious if a bit absent minded and unstructured. Harvard is austere and disciplined and a place where happiness goes to die.

Individual experiences will certainly vary. As John Matteson offered in the Sunday Times:

I can’t tell whether Barack Obama suffered into self-knowledge at Harvard Law the way I did. Whereas I never discovered an academic comfort zone in Roscoe Pound Hall, he became president of The Law Review — a feat of intelligence and dedication I can regard only with awe.

The generalizations about the two law schools have particular import though. Remember, Obama is seemingly bringing the entire HLS faculty with him to Washington.

Additional thoughts after the jump.

Scheiber explains how the rigors of becoming the president of the Harvard Law Review might give us an insight into the new President:

The law review attracted students of all ideological stripes. But, by disposition, they were invariably the most square. One testament to this was a law-review institution known as the “outline closet,” which housed detailed notes on almost every class. The outlines were believed to possess mystical grade-boosting powers and were passed down from one generation to the next. It was, of course, forbidden to share them with the law school lumpenproletariat.

And Matteson echos that thought in his own way:

Resigning myself to the second tier, I began to define myself as something other than a law student. I taught myself French cooking; for the first time, I fell seriously in love. Instead of taking all my third-year credits at the law school, I enrolled in a pair of superb graduate literature seminars — and began to understand that I was really meant to be an English professor. The self that I imagined on The Law Review never came to be, but I found other answers to my inner riddles.

But the question I’m forced to ask is whether the country really wants the Harvard mindset lording over us for the next four years? Because as an HLS “survivor” let me tell you that I wouldn’t go back through what Matteson calls “the crucible of character” again for any reason whatsoever. I’d move to Canada before I’d put myself through that again.

If you had to be ruled by one law school philosophy or another, wouldn’t you want it to be Yale’s? I’d gladly risk a little bit of global economic inefficiency for a little less Socratic embarrassment.

But that’s just me. Is there a particular law school educational philosophy that you think would be beneficial for the country?

And, does anybody have a good outline for American Life I can borrow?

Crimson Tide [The New Republic]
Ordinary People [New York Times]

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Posted in: Harvard Law School, Politics, Yale Law School

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