New wrinkle in the "Is the JD a doctorate?" debate

At Cornell University's commencement in May, my major had the pleasure of sitting behind the JD graduates. What's interesting, however, is that the JD grads were treated the same as PhD grads at the ceremony. Like the PhDs, the JDs wore doctoral robes. When the degrees were conferred at the ceremony, the JD was referred to as "Doctor of Laws" as opposed to "Juris Doctor" or any of the other common variants. LLM grads had their degree correctly referred to as "Master of Laws," however LLM grads were treated as if their degree was below the JD (they wore masters regalia just like the MAs/MBAs/etc., and their degree was listed below the JD in the program just like the MAs were listed below the PhDs). There were no JSD (referred to as "Doctor of Science of Law") grads, so I don't know how the JSD would have been listed on the program or if JSD regalia would have differed in any way from JD/PhD regalia.

Additionally, two professors in the department of Collective Bargaining, Labor History, and Labor Law who have the JD as their highest degree have been referred to as "Dr." on faculty lists.

Having been following this debate for the past few months, I thought that this bit of information might be interesting to some people.

 

Perception vs. Reality

IMO, the prestige and financial benefits that are associated with being a JD or an MD have caused those degrees to be on par with the PhD (they may even exceed it). While this may not be educationally accurate, we are talking about "perception vs. reality."

A hundred years ago, the PhD was the top dog, but in todays money hungry world, the JD and the MD have surpassed the PhD in the eyes of many laypeople.

 

A very good post with a very good response. This demonstrates the need for a specific title significance for law and other applicable degrees. I am among those in quandary as to who is really a doctor. Is it a JD (juris doctor) or an SJD/DSJ (doctor of science in jurisprudence)? ....I really do not know.

Granted, my understanding is that in order to seek and obtain an LLM or an SJD advance degrees, you need a JD as a qualification requirement.

For medicine, same is the case. This is because most MD needing to accomplish research authority or significance normally seek and receive a PH.D. Hence, you see some medical doctors listed or identified with MD, PH.D on their dossiers.

The debate on the doctor-doctor saga continues.....Thank you.

 

I'd like to see pictures of the commencement. In most cases, the JD grads wear "traditional" or Simplified" doctoral regalia whilst the PhD's are dressed much fancier. That sometimes extends to the color of the tassels; when I took my JD, my tassel was purple and black for law, the MDs got olive and black for medicine, and the PhD and EdDs got gold tassels. Now, I understand, JDs get gold tassels but it's "old" gold instead of shiny "new" gold...

Sheesh! Who CARES!

 

I'm sure someone on the Group knows the early history of the "Doctor" designation and current use.
I have recently been 'told' that the title "doctor" applies only to those in the health field and all others that use the title are hoping to be mistaken for physicians.
Just looking for comments and opinions

 

Learned people have been called "doctor" for centuries. The idea that physicians should have exclusive use of that title is a rather recent phenomenon.

Tony Pina
Faculty, CSU San Bernardino

 

I hear this a lot, but only from people who don't hold doctorates. I don't hear it from physicians, psychologists, or doctorate-holding educators. (This isn't meant to be a reflection on David; he's just reporting what he's heard.)

The term "doctor" refers to a wizened scholar, not a physician. How physicians co-opted the term, I don't know. I would suspect, however, that it stems from a time when (a) physicians were struggling to establish their professional images and (b) physicians and the clergy were about the only learned people the hoi polloi commonly came across. But I could be way off base here.

Bottom line: the term "doctor" belongs to the educator as much as the people holding first-professional doctorates. Maybe more.

 

Umm...but in American law schools, those wizened scholars are likely to be JDs, not PhDs...

Interesting note, a brief, non scientific survey of the law faculties of English universitys seems to reflect that the most common degree for law teachers is the LL.M. Where do the LL.D.s go?

 

I have long heard that the title "doctor" made reference to one who had achieved the highest level of education in one's chosen field of study, be it medicine, education, science, arts, etc. Therefore, any person that completes said terminal degree, in any field, is referred to as "doctor".

Having said that, I have always been perplexed as to why lawyers are not referred to as "doctor". Instead they are assigned a wide range of terms, "counselor", "esquire", "attorney". After all, the degree is called the Juris Doctorate. I did read in one article that this distinction was made to separate attorney's from physicians in the eyes of the public, and that is was the only reason for doing so, academically they are both doctorates.

Your thoughts.....

 

Actually until the 50's and 60's the law degree was not a juris doctorate. It was a second bachelors degree, an LL.B. and physicians in Great Britain are actually still second bachelors degrees. Image is everything in the market place, and the market is what drove the LL.B. to the J.D..

 

The stuff is varying, at the present, the JD is a Professional Doctoral degree.

Nowadays ABA says that a J.D is = DOCTOR of Jurisprudence.

In addition, ABA says that the Doctor of Jurisprudence and Doctor of Philosophy shall be considered as equivalent for educational employment.

Glance the ABA page.
http://www.abanet.org/legaled/council/prior.html#1

 

J.D. can stand for either "Juris Doctor" or Doctor of Jurisprudence". Regarding the ABA Council Statements that you reference, this has already been commented on before on Degreeinfo, but I will reiterate. Here is the quote from the ABA:

"J.D. Degree - Ph.D. Degree Equivalency.
WHEREAS, the acquisition of a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree requires from 84 to 90 semester hours of post baccalaureate study and the Doctor of Philosophy degree usually requires 60 semester hours of post baccalaureate study along with the writing of a dissertation, the two degrees shall be considered as equivalent degrees for educational employment purposes;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all appropriate persons be requested to eliminate any policy, or practice, existing within their jurisdiction which disparages legal education or promotes discriminatory employment practices against J.D. degree-holders who hold academic appointment in education institutions."

At most colleges and universities, holders with J.D. degrees are treated as any other doctorate holder with regard to salary and promotion. However, the ABA really did not need to include inaccurate information to justify its practice of promoting its profession's degree. The PhD does not "usually require 60 units of post baccalaureate study". My doctoral program required a minimum of 58 semester units of post-MASTERS study (assuming a 30-36 unit masters), eight of which was for dissertation. So the requirement would actually be a 88-94 units of post baccalaureate study, plus another year or two for dissertation. My program certainly was not unique.

The U.S. Department of Education takes a different view than the ABA regarding the J.D.-Ph.D. equivalency:

"It is also important to recognize that first-professional degrees in these fields [including the J.D.] are first degrees, not graduate research degrees. Several of the degree titles in this group of subjects (see Degrees Awarded below) incorporate the term "Doctor," but they are not research doctorates and not equivalent to the Ph.D. Master's degrees and research doctorates in these fields of study are awarded, but they have different names and students enroll in those programs after having earned a first-professional degree."

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/edlite-professional-studies.html

As I said before, in actual practice colleges and universities typically treat faculty with J.D. degrees as they do faculty with research doctorates in status and pay. I gladly refer to my colleagues with J.D. degrees at "doctor" if they so wish.

Tony Pina
Administrator, Northeastern Illinois University

 

A slight correction to the above, school-leavers may enrol in or matriculate into the degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery directly or the Bachelor of Laws. Even Oxford allows it.

We have the same situation in Australia and New Zealand as the United Kingdom. A few universities are starting to offer "Juris Doctor" postgraduate degrees, although they are not recognised as being doctorates - all doctorates (non-honourary, but including higher doctorates) here require a thesis/substantial contribution to knowledge. They are sometimes listed as a Master of Juris Doctor (although not by the universities that award them).

 

I have watched with considerable interest the Law and Social Policy program at Boalt Hall. This is a Ph.D. program offered by the law school but not requiring a J.D. to get in. You can study for both degrees at the same time.

I wonder if this is akin to the M.D. plus Ph.D. in medical science programs found at many Universities?

 

Sounds like an attempt at medical humor.

I'm abjectly without a doctorate, and I'm certainly not an authority on the history of higher education.

But my understanding is that when education revived in the high medieval period (after 1000 AD), universities formed themselves by crystalization around professional schools. The first of these was the University of Salerno, in Southern Italy. It always remained a medical school (teaching Galen in his Arabic-influenced form, I guess). The leading medieval university in Europe came to be the University of Paris, which started out as a theological school.

I think that originally, "doctor" and "master" were basically synonymous, both of them simply meaning "teacher". The exact terminology that was used varied from place to place and from university to university.

Originally these titles only had meaning in-house. It was essentially synonymous with being recognized by that particular university as a faculty member. But teachers traveled around and they argued that the fact that they had been recognized as a teacher at University A meant that university B should recognize their teaching qualifications too. So these teaching titles gradually became at least semi-portable and evolved into what we recognize today as degrees.

In medieval times the seven liberal arts were conceived of as preparatory subjects that students took before moving on to advanced study of law, medicine or theology. These preparatory 'general education' subjects were taught by "arts masters", the origin of our contemporary M.A. Gradually these liberal arts became the tail that wagged the dog, with subjects like mathematics and literature starting to eclipse the professions. You started seeing people declining to move on to the professions and making their careers in the "lesser" subjects. Universities started looking more like universities of today.

I think that the Ph.D., awarded for original scholarly contributions, is a relatively recent development. It originated in 19'th century Germany.

Here's how UMI/Proquest describes the arrival of the Ph.D. on American shores:

The American dissertation is a relatively new phenomenon, derived from the German model of graduate education encountered by the thousands of young Americans who studied there in the 19th century. These scholars, many of whom took faculty positions on their return, brought back the German emphasis on freedom of thought, intensive research, and the reporting of results.

The first American Ph.D. program was initiated at Yale University in 1860, with requirements that included at least one year of study on campus, an examination, and a dissertation based on original research. The first recipient was James Morris Whiton, whose dissertation in Latin on the proverb "Brevis vita, ars longa" was accepted in 1861. Handwritten, it was six pages long.

http://www.il.proquest.com/umi/dissertations/lore.shtml

 

Do you honestly think that the ABA would say anything else?

 

As I've said before, the ABA statement should be seen for what it is; a call to treat law professors on an equal footing with professors of other disciplines who hold Ph.D. degrees. The rather silly analysis contained in the statement itself is best disregarded. Why? Because even the ABA site contains a definitiion of the J.S.D./S.J.D. degree as the graduate dissertation doctorate in law. As an aside, they also define the D.C.L. as a dissertation degree in law that doesn't require the student to have earned a professional law degree.

Oddly, they DON'T define the Ph.D. At the time these statements were posted, there were no Ph.D. programs in American law. Now, of course, there is. Tulane renamed its J.S.D.

The J.D. and Ph.D. are functionally equivalent in American higher education but no one really claims that the J.D. is the same thing as a Ph.D. It isn't.

The J.S.D. is rare in American academia. 80% of these degrees are awarded to foreign law professors and scholars; a significant number of American schools don't even ADMIT American students to their J.S.D. programs. See, for example, Stanford University.

 

I do NOT know why I can't seem to leave this subject alone!

Anthony:

I ran across the instructions for the University of Washington 2004 commencement.

PhD (and I assume EdDs) and professional degree candidates were lumped together and led the procession. PhDs wore their very distinctive PhD regalia while MD, D Pharm, DDS and JD candidates wore some form of "traditional" doctoral gowns and mortorboards. Well, MDs wore a "tam".

PhD candidates and professional degree candidates were the only grads called one-by-one to accept their diplomas.

Now here's what's interesting: By "professional degrees", UW meant professional doctorates ONLY with but with a SINGLE exception: LLM grads wore masters regalia (robe, mortorboard and tassel all black with a purple master's hood) but "processed" and were awarded their degrees with the doctors! No other master's degree received this treatment. The MBAs, MEds, MATs, MSs, MAs, etc. were all lumped together and received their degrees in their seats as a group.

The only thing I can think of that could explain this oddity is that the LLM might be the only "post doctorate" master's degree UW grants. But if that's the case, why make 'em wear the "inferior" master's regalia?

 

Re: I do NOT know why I can't seem to leave this subject alone!

You hit upon some of the results of changing degrees without REALLY changing the degrees.

The idea behind the original Ed.D. (as created at Harvard) was to create a professional degree with an applied practicum as the culminating activity. Education, as a field, was not as confident as Medicine and other professions and "wimped out". Even though most colleges of education adopted the new Ed.D. degree in name, they failed to make the Ed.D. substantially different than the Ph.D. in education. Although there are a few Ed.D. programs that are more "practical" in nature, nearly all Ed.D. programs require the same things as Ph.D. in education programs.

Regarding the LL.M.: You've hit the nail on the head. The law degree was, originally a second bachelors degree in law (LL.B.). the master of laws degree (LL.M.) was taken later for those who wished to specialize (in taxation, for example).

Attorneys were ticked at the thought of spending three years of post grad study, just to receive a second bachelors (which I think is reasonable. A second bachelors can be had at many institutions for just one additional year of full-time study). One solution could have been to create a professional masters at the level of an MBA or MDiv--which are generally considered above a typical M.A., M.S. or M.Ed.

Another solution would have been to create a specialist degree above the masters--akin to an Ed.S. Of course, these were attorneys, so they went right for the doctorate and converted the LL.B. degree into a J.D. Now they were left with a situation that there was a masters degree after the doctorate. They were not about to change the LL.M. into a post-grad certificate (it's much better to have two degrees than a degree and a certificate). No one that I know is seriously entertaining the idea of conventing the LL.M. into some kind of "higher than doctorate" degree (well, maybe the ABA, but they would not be able to get anyone else to buy into it).

So we now have the odd situation that exists with first professional degrees in that for the first degree (J.D.) you wear elaborate doctoral regalia and for the second degree (LL.M) you wear less elaborate master regalia. Law is not alone in this. I know several M.D.s with post-doc M.S. degrees and a few with Ph.D.s. In every case, the professional degree is listed first (e.g. Joan M. Teno, M.D., M.S. or Russell M. Nelson, M.D., Ph.D.).

Tony Pina
Administrator, Northeastern Illinois University

 

And THAT'S weird in itself because the American convention is to list only the HIGHEST degree held.

I've seen where LL.M. holders at my old law school actually DO sometimes list themselves as "Ploni ben Ploni, LL.M., Associate Professor of Law" or whatever, but tax lawyers generally list themselves as "J.D., LL.M."

Chiropractors, on the other hand, frequently call themselves "Dr. So-and-so, B.S., D.C." I don't know of any other professional doctorate group that routinely lists a bachelor's degree.

BTW, apparently I was wrong about professional degree grads being called up one by one. They are seated as a group with the Ph.D./ Ed.D. types but they aren't recognized individually by name. This actually makes sense in context; the J.D., M.D., D.D.S., and D. Pharm. (and LL.M. ) grads all have school convocations where they are individually called up and hooded before the big commencement ceremony. There is no such convocation for the dissertation doctorate types.

But it STILL seems really weird to treat the LL.M.s so differently than and yet so much the same as other Master's candidates.