At
the New York Times discussion of "The Case Against Law School", former
dean and former provost, Professor Geoffrey R. Stone of the University
of Chicago in
Learning to Think Like a Lawyer lists five "
experiences [that] legal education can offer that are invaluable for future lawyers".
In our opinion, the first of these is by far the most important. As
Stone writes:
"First,
and most important, it can teach students to “think like a lawyer.” As
any lawyer will tell you, this is critical. The practice of law demands a
rigorous, self-critical (and critical), creative and empathic (how will
my opponent and the judge see this issue?) mind-set. In general, legal
education does this brilliantly. This is at the very core of a legal
education."
There is a very good reason that people
trained in the law have historically dominated and still do dominate leadership positions in
society. "Thinking like a lawyer" is one of the principal causes.
Indeed,
one problem with modern multinational corporations is that lawyers are
being named CEOs less and less, and are being replaced by business
"tradesmen", who know their trade but do not know how to ask the right
questions. The current world economy shows it -- as it is suffering
badly.
People who study the law are not like those who
study the humanities or other professions, where the essence of learning
is the learning of a trade. You can teach a seal to balance a ball, but
not how to successfully resolve human conflict.
The
only real way to measure the effectiveness of legal education is by the
SUBSEQUENT societal effectiveness of those who were subjected to that
education. Law-trained effectiveness puts many other professions in the
shadows in terms of measurable performance. There is a reason why so
many lawyers earn millions of dollars a year and many other professions
earn far less. It is not chance.
Indeed, outside of the
law schools and outside of business courses using "the case method",
your average university graduate earns his degree in other academic
disciplines sort of like a an apprentice in a handicraft. He or she is
taught "what the truth is" in that profession. Critical thinking is rare
on the average classroom agenda. University exams test knowledge of
facts, not the ability to think on one's feet.
Outside
of law school education, students learn to regurgitate the accepted
state of knowledge in a given field. The better they do it, the higher
they rise on the career ladder. They learn to quote the leading
authorities of their day according to whatever school of thought happens
to prevail at the time in their field, and, after graduation, they don
their professional caps and pass on the system they have learned to the
next generation. Errors in knowledge are thus subject to the domino
effect. I face this ignorance continuously in my studies on the history
of civilization, where the historical disciplines involved (Archaeology,
Linguistics, Egyptology, Biblical Studies, Assyriology) are dreadfully
marked by stong deficits in the capacity for critical thinking. People
there tend to be interested in TELLING YOU what the history was, rather
than trying to find out what really happened.
In my
view, all this discussion about the sense of law school education is
therefore superfluous. The real problems are elsewhere.
Law school education and especially
the Socratic method of dialogue
-- whatever their defects -- are for the most part breathtakingly
effective in producing agile minds prepared for the stressful
intellectual demands of the modern world. Perhaps law school education
can be improved - everything can - but it is far ahead of the game when
compared to other academic disciplines.
Where legal
education in my opinion should INSTEAD start to become active is by
offering special Socratic dialogue-type courses at law schools for ALL
the OTHER professions, thus giving college graduates other than lawyers a
chance to come out of their universities with some capacity for
independent critical thought rather than being robots that repeat like
parrots whatever their professors, parents, role models, celebrity
idols, or other supposed "authorities" have taught them.
Twenty
bishops swearing on a Bible do not make a fact true, if it is false.
Children of Republicans become Republicans, usually. Children of
Democrats become Democrats, usually. This has nothing to do with the
viability of their political dogmas. Rather, political views are largely
"inherited". "Critical thinking" about politics has nothing to do with
it.
The same is true for religious beliefs, where it is
a rare man or woman who has a religious belief system that diverges
significantly from what mama and papa taught them. Children for the most
part are not taught critical thinking by their parents -- quite the
contrary -- they are taught obedience. Families are seldom democracies.
Christians become Christians. Jews become Jews. Muslims become Muslims. I
have, by the way, great respect for some modern Buddhists I know in the
West because they at least CHOSE their religion during their lifetime,
and focus thereby on doing GOOD WORKS, rather than on proselytizing and
burdening their fellows with THEIR BELIEF system. A belief is the
absence of proof. If we had evidence for religious dogmas, belief would
be unnecessary. And yet, all sorts of economic "beliefs" guide most of
the discussions one hears or reads about political and economic
problems. People are merely just repeating what they have heard and what
they agree with. That does not make it "true".
For
example, many people have "opinions" about taxes and the economy,
especially methods of government financing -- even though most people
almost always know far less about those subjects than they do about
their favorite college or professional athletic teams or players. This
does not however keep from them mixing into the discussion and even
basing their political voting decisions on insufficient knowledge.
Unfortunately,
there are also a good many people in Congress who know not much more
than what has been ladled into them by people not knowing much more than
the Congressmen/women do about the subjects in question. One could have
a great time asking Congressional representatives to explain modern
institutions to us, e.g. the Federal Reserve System or the International
Monetary Fund. Just ask your Senator:
explain that to me please. The classic example here is the late Arizona Senator
Ted Stevens who hilariously but seriously -- and totally erroneously -- described the Internet as "
a series of tubes".
It was too funny for words, except that Stevens, the longest-serving
Republican Senator in history, held Congressional seniority positions
putting him in charge of Internet regulation. When a country like the
USA is in the economic difficulty in which it currently finds itself, it
is not without reason. You can not have the blind leading the blind.
Indeed,
many people spend some of their leisure time -- we erroneously call
this "entertainment" -- listening to and applauding people who have no
other real talent other than that they think and/or utter opinions like
their audience. NOT TOO CRITICAL, that kind of thinking, or living. A
man of intellectual power, by contrast, constantly himself challenges
what he knows, "knowing" full well that such a critical path is the only
path of true human progress. "Yes men" are a dime a dozen, but that is
the way most of the world operates. Nodding is approved.
Try
this experiment the next time YOU listen to someone in Congress. Take
what they say sentence by sentence and ask: how does he or she know that
what they are saying is true? where did they get it? what is the
evidence? where is the proof? how has it been checked? who did the
checking? what empirical data supports it? who says????? do that with
ALL the political parties, not just YOUR favorite. Blind tests with
sports fans show that fans as referees call close plays in favor of
"their favorite team" 2 to 1 on both sides of the same play. Where e.g. a
Husker Big Red fan will see an Oklahoma Sooner personal foul, the
Sooner fan will see a Husker foul -- on the same play! It is the same in
Congressional partisanship, also in lawmaking, you better believe it.
That is why we have a U.S. Supreme Court -- to keep everybody honest.
Someone
who has properly assimilated a legal education asks the tough and
self-critical questions -- but that may not even be a majority of law
school graduates, judging by what we see among JDs in politics. Much of
the rest of world BELIEVES what it wants to believe, regardless.
Unfortunately, that is no solution for concrete problems.
That
is why critical thinkers ultimately always run the show. They are the
only ones RATIONALLY examining contemporary issues as problems to be
solved, not as battles of political dogma. To obtain that skill status, a
legal education via the Socratic Method is a great help.
