Last week I participated in a symposium and roundtable discussion on “Finding Your Voice as an Emerging Legal Scholar” at Yale Law School. Together with a few other recent YLS graduates – now colleagues at American law schools – we debated the (many) virtues and (few) vices of life as a junior law school professor.
One of the questions raised was how to limit one’s intellectual hunger and set aside possible research projects that do not fit within a single, integrated research agenda. The discussion led me to think about my own scholarly examples and mentors. I identify two types of scholar. On the one side there is the eclectic/renaissance scholar who is likely to publish new ideas in very different fields of law or to apply various interdisciplinary approaches to legal issues. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those extremely focused, highly specialized scholars that stick to a narrowly defined issue and become true experts on a topic or in a specific area of law.
To some extent, this presents any young scholar with a strategic decision. How much should one limit her or his research to one topic or area of law? Traditional wisdom, at least from what I garnered, states that it is better to specialize and work to become an expert in one field. I’ve been told that, unless you exude the type of smarts that cannot be contained, you are better off sticking to a restricted amount of topics in one (perhaps two) fields of law. Allegedly, if none of your individual publications attracts wide attention, your “scholarly profile” (tenure-speak) will be neither here nor there. On the other hand, if you have many articles on one topic/one area of law (even of none was a “big hit”), you are more likely to be recognized as a “nationally recognized” scholar (tenure-speak again).
My own intuition is that one should research and write on whatever happens to inspire his or her academic mind. Genuine interest fosters the highest amount of productivity. For aren’t we all inherently limited; can we really be so eclectic that no common thread can be discover in our scholarship at the conclusion of the tenure review process? Aside from these considerations, what is the most successful avenue for a young scholar? How many truly successful scholars can be placed in the renaissance/eclectic category? How many successful scholars are there that routinely cover different areas of the law or tread within different even law-and disciplines during one career?I can think of contemporary scholars that I regard as personal examples of such scholarship.
Robert Cooter and Ian Ayres immediately come to mind. But my intuition is that such scholarship is becoming more rare. Because the various areas of the law are expanding, the costs of eclecticism have increased. At the same time, the increased complexity of the law (more statutes, cases) increases the benefits of specialization. Is the blogosphere last or the ultimate resort for the renaissance scholar?
Posted by Ben Depoorter on April 23, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Comments
Paul Gowder,
I think the idea behind specialization is that it takes an incredibly long period of time to master any one field. If you’re writing in lots of different fields, then, it suggests an unusually high likelihood that you really don’t know what you’re talking about. In contrast, someone who has written 5 articles in one general area has likely mastered that area and found 5 interesting things about it. Of course, these are just odds: some people don’t sleep or learn new fields unusually quickly. And young scholars are usually new by definition, and often are just learning the fields in the first place. But that’s the concern.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Apr 25, 2007 1:54:05 PM
First of all, it’s great to be back to PrawfsBlawg after a long period of self-imposed exile due to overcommitment on other fronts.
As for the issue of specialization, I guess I am as ecletic as one gets. One of the reasons I got into, and have stayed in, the legal academy is the freedom to research and write on whatever happens to interest me. I agree totally with Suzanna: what keeps my mind alive is having fun with what I’m doing; even when I do consulting, I pick and choose projects to avoid getting involved in anything that will become a a mere “chore”: this is luxury of being a law teacher in America, you have a job that need never degenerate into a “chore”, and how many professions are there like that? By the way I was eclectic right from the start; even in law school I was publishing in different fields-international economic and financial law, Canadian constitutional law, regulatory theory. I don’t see a such a trade off between specialized expertise and eclecticism. Over time, it is certainly possible to master more than one very small sub-speciality. Co-authoring also expands one’s range. Also, I think that the degree of specialization that necessarily accompanies the expansion and increase in complexity of many areas of law puts an even greater premium on the ability to connect the different specialized fields. The work I’ve written that I like the best often leverages my knowledge of one field to bring fresh insights or angles to debates in another. In international trade, where I do a lot of my work that is very much the case: the action today is in drawing the links to human rights, and other areas of international law.
As for the tenure issue, the cases that have gone wrong that I’ve heard about (because of confidentiality concerns I say NOTHING here about those where I have personally been involved) have been ones where, usually, the prof in question got wrapped up in one big, sprawling, obsessive “project” that just didn’t turn out to produce compelling results that could be communicated to a wide range of colleagues. Even if moving between fields and sub-fields is not your thing, it is prudent to diversify at least somewhat within your sub-field, trying different angles and a few different scholarly approaches (some more conceptual stuff, some more empirically oriented stuff; some that is policy-oriented; some that is more synthetic of the existing scholarship in the field or sub-field.)
Posted by: Rob Howse | Apr 25, 2007 9:06:00 AM
A conceptual question for the pro-specializers in the crowd:
What is the value of “deepness” in a scholarly agenda? What does it mean to be “deep?” Is the idea that one can’t make as much of a contribution (hypothetically, as if it could be quantified) to a field unless one focuses super-sustained attention on it, and it alone (as opposed to, say, the interactions between it and another field)? Or is the idea that there’s something special about focused contributions, such that the same sum of contribution (hypothetically, if it could be quantified) is qualitatively more meaningful if it’s focused?
We might think of idea 1 as a claim that total contribution is a function of effort and specialization, and idea 2 as a claim that scholarly worth is a function of total contribution and specialization. They’re very different ideas. Either, neither, or both could be true. It seems like idea 1 is fundamentally a positive claim (objective scholars would rate each publication less worthwhile standing alone if they’re in different fields) and idea 2 is more about values and what the stakeholders in the academy have a right to demand of their junior scholars. So idea 1 would call for evidence, while idea 2 would call for justification.
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Apr 24, 2007 11:38:18 PM
What is your comparative advantage as a scholar? If you have methdological training (empirical, philosophical, etc.), you may be able to contribute to multiple substantive fields in ways that are more than transitory. A few do so, especially in areas such as legal philosophy, law and psychology, and empirical legal studies, but for any given generation only a handful of legal scholars have more than a temporary impact in this manner. The risk of jumping from topic to topic (especially if you lack methdological skills) is that your scholarly agenda will be spread too thin and will not be very deep.
Most legal scholars are quite happy, and make the biggest contributions, focusing on one or two substantive fields. Some keep a foot in three, but focusing on one or two fields is by far the more common, safest, and I would argue most reponsible strategy.
I also think that the starry-eyed idolization of the eccentric/rennaisance scholar by many junior faculty is misplaced, or at least overstated, especially as a career strategy. It may be useful to study the resumes of those we consider to be “generalists” today. Richard Posner began as an antitrust/regulation scholar and did not publish the economic analysis of law until he received tenure at Chicago. Guido Calabresi began as a torts sholar. Ian Ayres also began as an antitrust scholar Cass Sunstein began as an administrative law scholar, with some focus on constitutional law questions. I would argue that, in each case, any serious eccentric/rennaisance flair in their scholarship came along at least 5 years after they had accumulated a trail of substantive contributions to a single field, or after tenure. In each case, the tenure reviewer would have had multiple works in a single substantive field to evaluate.
Posted by: anon | Apr 24, 2007 5:10:48 PM
If one writes on various topics within a larger speciality (e.g., constitutional law), is that generally considered specializing, even if the topics are all over the place within a particular sub-genre?
Posted by: aspiring law prof | Apr 24, 2007 2:59:16 PM
One of the main joys of being a law professor is the intellectual freedom to work on what interests you. If you’re really interested in a single area, then go deep. But if you have more disparate interests, forcing yourself to focus on one area will turn scholarship from a pleasure to a chore. You may also find that what originally seemed like rather disparate projects share an underlying theme that becomes apparent only as you accumulate (diverse) publications.
Posted by: Suzanna Sherry | Apr 24, 2007 2:35:21 PM
Interesting questions. In my view, the answer really depends on your goals. If your goal is tenure, or just personal enjoyment, then write on whatever you like: A lot of writing normally will get you over the tenure hurdle, and it’s much more fun and fulfilling to write on whatever inspires you. On the other hand, if your goal is a lateral offer from a higher-ranked school — and as soon as possible — then focus on a single area so you can get a reputation for working in that area.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Apr 23, 2007 6:16:24 PM
Ben:
Here is a similar post I did for PrawfsBlawg a while back, along with some comments:
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2006/08/to_have_a_resea.html And here is Larry Solum’s take on Legal Theory Blog on my take:
http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2006/08/research_agenda.html
Paul
Posted by: Paul M. Secunda | Apr 23, 2007 3:05:28 PM