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

Legal Scholarship and the Roles of the Jurist
together constitute a body of literature available in the public domain with a
pertinence beyond the particular moment at which it was prepared." (ibid. p.
65). Of course, some such works, e.g. written briefs for important cases before
the American appellate courts, often have strong claims to be scholarly.
Becher, op cit, p. 48, citing J. Law (1976).
Law and Learning, op. cit. In contrast to nearly all such official reports the Arthurs
Report focused on legal scholarship and its relationship to the needs of the profession
and the public rather than mainly or exclusively on legal education. The
Report does, however, contain an excellent discussion of the relationship
between teaching and research. Four linked empirical studies were undertaken:
John S. McKennirey, Canadian Law Professors (1982); Canadian Law Faculties
(1982); Sources of Support for Legal Research (1982); Alice Janisch, Profile of
Published Legal Research (1982). The account in the text, which is a summary
of a summary, does not do justice to the relative sophistication of the original
research, which analyses activities and publications in terms of subject-matter,
perspectives and methods. While the report and some of its recommendations
were controversial, the underlying research was widely praised as an advance:
see for example, J. Schlegel (review) in (1984) 36 Stanford L.Rev 1517 (comparing
the Canadian study favourably to American studies).
Arthurs, at pp. 65-66.
ibid, at p. 65
At p. 66. Some might cavil at this rather broad definition, which includes more
intellectually ambitious expository works; the report recognised the difficulty and,
indeed, combined the doctrinal and theoretical categories in its figures for
monographs.
ibid,
ibid.
See the chart at p. 126. This picture was constructed by relating these four categories
to two main kinds of influences on legal research: first, methodology or
intellectual perspective, ranging from "traditional doctrinal, research "in" law
which treats law as its subject"; and interdisciplinary research "on" law which
treats law as its object.". Secondly, the constituency or desired area of impact,
ranging "from the academic or scientific constituency, the world of ideas, and
the professional or practical constituency, the world of action", ibid.
The term has been used by Judge Harry Edwards in his recent criticism of American
law schools for failing to perform adequately their traditional function of
systematic exposition, analysis and development of legal doctrine for the benefit
of practitioners and courts, discussed below at pp. 140-141.
At p. 157. One of the main conclusions of the Report was that the short-term
demands of the practising profession and involvement in "law reform research"
dominated Canadian legal scholarship at the time. Clearly the academic community
was meeting real needs, but the emphasis on these two kinds of activity
had negative consequences for Canadian legal scholarship as a whole: first, "fundamental
research into the values, operation and effects of law, has been largely
neglected" (at p. 154); secondly, some of this activity was of a kind that could
as well be done by academically less well-qualified people. Canadian law
schools are essentially professional schools on the American model; the Arthurs
Report repeatedly emphasised that fundamental research was an essential
foundation for ensuring that law schools enhanced "the reflective, critical and
analytical abilities of their students".
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