Another arcane J.S.D. observation

Well!

Tulane University Law School no longer offers the J.S.D.

They have refurbished their dissertation program and now offer the Ph.D. in law!

I wonder if they are getting serious about this; the J.S.D. never received any real emphasis in American legal education.

 

As far as I could tell the JSD was never worth much for anyone with a decent JD-- The requirements are basically identical to what a candidate would have in the first yeaar or two on faculty anyway (i.e. 2 papers in law reviews).

The PhD was always more valued because it showed some additional breadth (although a PhD in law is of questionable use).

Still I think Tulane will have a competitive advantage over similar programs--I recall a friend choosing doctoral programs for clinical Psych chose a program because she prefered the PhD to the PsyD that another school was granting.


-Me

-----------------------------
PhD
JD Candidate

 

The S.J.D. programs I've looked at require considerably more than that. They require an earned LL.M., additional coursework, and a doctoral dissertation. Here is an example.

 

It seems to be the collective wisdom that a potential law professor should get the best JD he can and a PhD in a related subject such as sociology or political science rather than doing a dissertation degree in law per se.

UC Berkeley has a PhD program in Justice and Society Policy (JSP) that that is closely allied with their law school. What I find interesting is that Berkeley actively recruits for the PhD JSP program but treats their JSD as a kind of afterthought. They mention that it exists, say it's almost impossible to get into, and ignore it thereafter. It seems to be targeted, like nearly every other American JSD, primarily at foreign lawyers (to the extent it is targeted at all).

 

Yes, but the LLM is just taking another year of the same coursework that a JD student does with the JD students (i.e. a waste with a good JD). The dissertation is the material from 1 or 2 law review articles in good law reviews. Every junior faculty member with a few year has the material already done to get the JSD. Since good schools increasingly require a candidate to have some publications already, many or most successfull candidates have also done the work. This is one reason why JSDs are rare at US schools. At my law school (a top school) most [or maybe all--I haven't checked] of the JSD candidates are foreign students who want professorships back home.

-me

 

Isn't there also a problem with the quality of research presented in the law reviews? These publications are student edited, in many (most?) cases. I understand that one desired outcome of the small but growing influx of PhDs into law teaching will be to add rigor to academic research.

The observation that the LL.M. is essentially "just another year of law school" seems correct to me as far as it goes. London requires me to complete four examination papers for the degree which is the same number of papers, albeit not the same standard of work, that an English LL.B. requires each year.

I would point out though that the LL.M. is often more interdisciplinary than a J.D. program can be. In my case, for example, at least half of my efforts are focused on "criminal justice" as a social science in addition to the legal structures and processes. The same might perhaps be said of other "taught" programs, both inside and outside the U.S. in taxation, environmental law, and the like.

 

As for the quality of the law reviews--it varies wildly. An article in harvard Law Review is better for law promotion than an article in any faculty run journal.

As for the standard, it may be different in London, but in most US schools you take all of your classes with the JDs and your grades are curved with them

As for the concentration--while there are a number of specialized LLMs (NYU's Taxation one comes to mind), most are not. Also there is nothing stopping a JD student from taking the same [concentrated] classes during one of the latter 2 years of the JD program.

-me

 

"Most are not."

Really? Do you mean that most LL.M. programs are thesis degrees or do you mean that most LL.M. programs allow a wide choice of classes and concentrations, such as we see in the various LL.M. programs for foreign lawyers?

I don't yet personally KNOW what London's LL.M. exam standards are; it may come as a nasty shock! However, there is some objective evidence. They allow only two attempts for any subject at the LL.M. level but a half dozen tries at the LL.B. level. Also, the amount of material to be mastered in an LL.M. subject seems to be an order of magnitude greater than for an LL.B. subject. Finally, no LL.B. subject may be studied for LL.M. credit.

 

I mean that most (actually almost all--even good ones like U Chicago) are not particularly specialized and therefore require no more concentration than a 2nd or 3rd year JD.

 

Ah.