Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

Legal Scholarship and the Roles of the Jurist
descriptive" than the writing of history. In its higher forms expository
scholarship is quite creative, more like landscape painting or
divination than the collection of specimens. However, Becher is
quite correct in suggesting that the discipline of law is beset by
self-doubt and controversy 6 ; the criticisms that he reports persist;
and much of that criticism comes from within. There are important
questions that are worth asking about the nature and possible future
directions of legal scholarship.
Becher and others depict academic law as monochrome,
descriptive and rather jaded. In contrast, I have already painted a
rather more positive picture: an interesting and important subjectmatter;
high student demand; a lively, if confusing pluralism; and
at least some evidence that it has been almost fully integrated into
the university during the last twenty years. From this account it
would be quite easy to construct an alternative to the old stampcollecting
image: energetic, introspective, and rebellious against
authority; willing to experiment; susceptible to noisy fashions;
unsure of its identity or what it wants to be or do; and caught
between the temptations of respectable security and dilettanteism.
In short, a relatively young discipline exhibiting all the symptoms
of a lively late twentieth century adolescent.
Both images contain a core of truth, but they are essentially caricatures.
A judicious overview requires a more mundane approach.
Let me begin, then, by considering what academic lawyers in fact
do in addition to teaching and administration.
WHAT ACADEMIC LAWYERS DO IN FACT
EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
One of the functions of law schools and academic lawyers is to
provide certain kinds of extra-curricular services. These include the
production of educational materials; the provision of information
services; law reform activities; voluntary work; journalism; commentary;
criticism; and various forms of consultancy, including
advice in individual cases. Academic lawyers in nearly all countries
perform such functions, but the extent of their involvement, how
these activities are organised and what prestige or priority they are
accorded varies considerably. For example, in some jurisdictions
academic lawyers play a major role in law reporting and providing
regular legal information services—during the first three years of my
124