Let's Get Jurisprudential: The Study of Law

• Author: Allan C. Hutchinson
• Pages: 25-52

Now that you know how to get into law school, what will you be doing

when you get there? This is a straightforward question that invites a

straightforward answer. However, apart from the fact that you will be

attending classes, reading law books, and taking exams, there is little

else that can be said with any great confidence or certainty about your

time at law school. What amounts to legal education, let alone a good

legal education, is something that varies from school to school, from

class to class, and from professor to professor. The whole notion of

what it is that law schools should be doing and how they do it is a

matter of continuing debate and, at times, considerable antagonism.

Law schools are not only an intellectual arena within which legal edu-

cation takes place but also the site where the contest over what law

and legal education should be about is at its most fierce. Because of

this dual function, the best approach in introducing you to legal edu-

cation seems to be to incorporate the theoretical disagreements over

what amounts to a good legal education into the practical experience

of legal education itself.

let’s get jurisprudential

the study of law

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Seeing that the laws are excerpted out of the

middle of moral and natural philosophy, how

should these fools have understood it, that

have, by God, studied less in philosophy than

my mule. — rabelais

Accordingly, before acquainting you with some of the phenomena

and personalities you will encounter at law school and some of the

techniques and manoeuvres you will need to succeed, it is important

to get a handle on the larger historical and educational context with-

in which your likely day-to-day experience at law school has taken

shape and significance. In this way, you might better be able to make

sense of the expectations that are placed on you and to live up to these

expectations in a more effective manner. For some, this stuff will be

of interest in and of itself — fascinating challenge that naturally

whets their intellectual appetite; for others, it will seem an unneces-

sary diversion that strays from their central reason for being at law

school. To the latter group, I can only say that you should be prepared

to take this material seriously, even from the position of your own

focused agenda. Let’s face it, an awareness of the theoretical and edu-

cational context of your legal education can hardly hinder your suc-

cess in that legal education — you study better if you know what it is

and why you are being asked to study in the way you are.

So, let’s start at that most trite and challenging of questions: If

you are to study law, what is it you are studying? What is law? After

trying to make some sense of that inquiry, I will explore the tension

that has energized law schools in their efforts to develop an appropri-

ate curriculum and modus operandi: Is law school about training lawyers

or educating people about law? Finally, as a result of the inconclusive-

ness of the debate around these two burning issues, I will canvass

some of the major intellectual perspectives that inform and guide the

teaching of law in law schools today: How do we and how should we

think about law and its study?

a brief tour of jurisprudence

Countless generations of jurists have expended vast intellectual ener-

gies in seeking to answer the question: What is law? The question is

exquisitely deceptive in its brevity and simplicity because the difficulties

it raises and the answers it invites tend to be extremely prolix and com-

plex. The elusive nature of the project can be gauged by the plethora of

solutions that have been proposed. The traditional approach has been

26 / the law school book