LACProf

I obviously can't speak for every institution that's ever hired, but at my institution (a good, but not tippity-top LAC) we simply don't care about what region of the country your Ph.D. institution happens to be in--we just want to see that you've been well-trained!

Yes, but people with PhDs in political science can also "study law" and produce original scholarly research that advances our understanding of how law works in society. Why does the knowledge acquired by a JD better qualify one to teach undergraduates than the knowledge acquired by someone with a Ph.D. in Political Science who writes his/her dissertation in public law? Or American government (when there are loads of people who have written dissertations on aspects of American government)? Or international organizations (when there are loads of people who have written dissertations...)? As another contributor to the thread said, why on earth should a college that may have only have 3-5 tenure-track lines in political science devote one of those lines to a JD?

Well, I have spent some of my afternoon looking at the websites of good liberal arts colleges and other types of schools so that I can examine the degrees held by their tenure-track faculty. In the vast, vast number of cases (I'm pretty sure the finding is easily statistically significant, though I don't have SPSS on this computer) those faculty hold a Ph.D. In some cases they also hold a JD, but as far as I can tell, these individuals weren't hired until they earned their Ph.D. There's also the fact that virtually all advertisements for jobs in political science express a preference for the Ph.D. I think that if the collective wisdom of the academy was that JDs were as adequate as Ph.Ds, then the ads would be more inviting and we might see more JDs in tenure-track positions (though there's always that possibility that JDs would turn down such positions because of salary disparities). Ah, this represents an advance in the discussion. On what specific grounds is it wrong? In answering this question you will need to explain what you feel the total scope of the discipline of political science should, in your opinion, contain.

The fact remains that the academy, in its collective wisdom, believes (in most cases) that candidates who wish to attain full time, tenure-track employment in political science departments at research universities and good liberal arts colleges as professors who teach American politics (institutions, APD, behavior, whatever) or public law (including, but not limited to, the study of the political-sociological effects of law in American politics and culture; how law affects the interaction among different institutions; how law protects liberty and provides for justice; how appointments to judicial offices are made; the effects of criminal laws and punishment on political access and participation; etc., etc.) need to have a Ph.D., not a JD. Leave me as an individual aside--are you saying the collective wisdom of the academy is incorrect?

I said I was not comfortable speaking for all American politics scholars as a professional courtesy and in deference to any of my colleagues in American politics who might read this discussion. However, like many political theorists, I also took qualifying exams in American politics and have taught American politics courses. As for the theories, fine, I named them and briefly suggested how some might work together and be useful, but I did not discuss them in extended detail. So your contention is that political scientists--who consistently hire PhDs over JDs and do not regularly offer the type of courses that you feel are indeed political science courses--do not understand their own discipline?

In my posts from my earlier appearance in this rather Sisyphean affair, I discussed some of the major theories of American institutions, so I'm pretty sure that I understand them, thanks much. I don't know the intricacies of law school education, but never claimed I did. However, you have presented absolutely no specific evidence in this thread that proves that a law school education makes one as qualified as a Ph.D. in these areas. Others who have experience with law school have added evidence that meshes with the testimonial evidence I have obtained from friends who practice law and students in law school and suggests that the law school curriculum does not adequately prepare 99.9999...% of those who complete it to be a TT professor. By the way, I have been searching liberal arts college websites looking for the types of courses (esp. in administrative law and international law) you have cited as being a 'regular' part of the political science curriculum and I haven't found a single institution that offers said courses regularly (I suppose some places might offer them as a topics course, but the catalogs have limited information on those courses). This isn't to say that there aren't college that do offer such courses, but I don't think you can claim that such courses are taught in "most" political science departments, particularly political science departments at institutions that serve undergraduates.

OK, I grant that I'm not familiar with the curriculum of EVERY college or university in the land (and I really don't feel like looking it up), but none of the ones I am familiar with even have classes like "intro to american law," "administrative law" or "international law" (I'm assuming these courses are based largely on the study of cases). I should forward this to my lawyer friends who pick up adjuncting gigs every now and again--I'm sure they'd get a total kick out of it.

If we're talking about 99.99999...% of JDs versus PhDs, without question (assuming that we're defining public law as the theoretical and empirical study of the interaction of law, courts, etc. with other political institutions).

The fact that all the scholars I've listed have published some sort of original research (with leading presses or in leading journals) on various aspects of the law?

The best liberal arts college in this country--institutions that are devoted to providing a quality education to exceptional undergraduates--seem to believe (if we can take their hiring practices as an expression of their preferences) that professors who hold a Ph.D. are well suited to teach all aspects of political science, including public law.

I'm procrastinating because I don't feel like grading. You say you care about undergraduate education? Let's look at some of the best liberal arts colleges... Amherst College: https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/adsarat Yes, he has a JD (from YALE), but he received that degree years after he earned his Ph.D. (Dr. Sarat has been at Amherst since finishing his Ph.D. in the 1970s). Williams College: http://polisci.williams.edu/faculty/jec3 He holds his Ph.D. from Princeton and does not have a JD Wellesley College: http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/Scherer/index.html She earned her Ph.D. after her JD and did not become a tenure-track professor UNTIL she had received her Ph.D. Grinnell College: http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/polisci/faculty/hamlin She holds a Ph.D. and does not have a JD. These are just some examples. There are many, many more.

At institutions like mine, they sure do, which is why we are damn sure to hire TT professors who hold a degree that provides rigorous grounding in an entire discipline and requires the production (and evaluation) of original scholarly research. To do otherwise would be to cheat our students out of their tuition dollars.

I'd just like to jump back in here to reiterate that many of us who "only" teach undergraduates are also expected to produce research so that we may both contribute to the scholarly conversation AND also be better teachers.

Well, a course in political theory is a political science course--there should be a focus on the way that the central texts help address political questions. This is a primary goal of such a course, but not the only goal. You have to help students see that those ideas and perspectives influence contemporary ethical and/or political positions, and you have to help students decide what ideals they want to privilege in their own ethical and/or political positions. You also have to get students to see that going with the set of normative assumptions that you find in one particular group of theorists tends to lead to a set of political institutions with specific qualities (i.e., if you buy classical liberal assumptions you'll want one set of institutions, but if you buy social assumptions you'll want a set of institutions that looks different). It's this second part--the part about institutions--that tends to fall out when people equate political theory to the history of ideas. However, the study of institutions is so critical to the discipline of political science as a whole that I think it is really important for political theory classes to emphasize the link between normative concepts and the form of institutions. I don't know anyone who uses secondary texts [by this I mean textbooks or other readings designed to "simplify" classic texts] in anything but the most minor way in their intro to political theory courses. The primary texts are always at the center and there are too many primary texts to go through [whether those texts are in a reader or otherwise] during the course of a semester. Contextualization comes from the professor. This type of resource isn't that common. I'm not even aware of anything like a "textbook" for political theory that isn't just a reader (and since I haven't had some goddamned textbook rep incessantly calling me, showing up unbidden at my office door, or wasting precious natural resources by mailing me copies of a book I will never use, it wouldn't surprise me if there isn't one). There are two major secondary sources for helping students understand the entire Western canon as a whole--the books by Sabine and Strauss. However, both of those books are sophisticated works in their own right, and since both Sabine and Strauss were writing from very particular interpretive perspectives the guidance of a Ph.D. with knowledge of the history of the subfield is necessary, even if you use these secondary sources. ETA: I actually found two "Introduction to Political Theory..." books that are like standard textbooks. Both are fairly recent, and, as far as I can tell, not commonly used. Sometimes they are on a "recommended" list or suggested for students who are struggling (an Ohio State Intro to Theory syllabus uses one of the texts this way). A number of political theorists have written "Introduction to..." or "History of..." books, but I am of the opinion that people who read those books and are not acquainted with the subfield of political theory would still benefit from the contextualization that a Ph.D. in the classroom can provide. I'm still not willing to concede this. Well, you should tell that to the folks at Harvard where they cover Kingdon's theory of public policy and various theories of public opinion and political behavior (in the Classics... reader) and the folks at Berkeley (the Principles and Practice of American Politics reader is full of works that contribute to our understanding of the theories I listed in my previous post). I'm pretty sure if I asked my colleagues in American politics if the theories I listed were "useless" for the understanding of American government, etc. that they would literally laugh in my face and tell me that they were, in fact, central to that understanding.

Going against my better judgment/previous promise to be silent... I think that if you asked most political theorists, you would find that many of them believe that teaching a good intro course is the biggest pedagogical challenge that a political theorist faces. OP, you don't seem to understand that political theory =/= history of ideas/study of great ideas. You just can't call reading Plato and discussing whatever comes to mind "political theory." The texts in an intro to theory course need to be specifically organized and presented to students in such a way that the students understand (among other important things) the content/context of the texts; how the competing definitions of concepts like justice and equality were generated; and how political theory connects to other subfields in political science. In order to accomplish these goals (and more), you need to have a knowledge of political theory and the questions that are important to political science as a discipline as well as a strong command over the content/context of the Western canon. One learns these things by earning a Ph.D. in political science and taking political theory as the major subfield. As for American government and its theories--while my primary subfield is not American politics so I cannot speak with the highest expertise, it seems that my colleagues in American draw upon a number of theories when they lecture in their intro courses, such as the median voter theorem, Mayhew's theory of Congressional re-election behavior, Kingdon's theory of public policy formation, Mancur Olson's theory of collective action, various theories about how public opinion works, and maybe some political psychology theories about political behavior.

Legal decisions are but one aspect of political institutions; one needs to keep up with more than legal decisions in a certain area to be able to teach undergraduates about the way institutions work, and a class in administrative law might, depending on how and where it is taught, provide a foundation for further study that would allow an individual to one day effectively teach. Your statements about teaching political theory are so ignorant that I have no choice but to simply not respond to them. I must concur with Pamphilia's earlier sentiment: you don't understand the nature of academic training and what it takes to teach undergraduate courses. Many folks have explained it to you--clearly--and until you acknowledge what they are saying, I don't see this thread leading to productive conversation. Best of luck to you in your endeavors.

OK, I've looked at some outlines and syllabi for courses in Administrative Law. While these concepts and ideas are introduced and there does seem to be some attempt to spur discussion about the normative and systematic implications of administrative law (and I granted that in my first response), these courses tend to rely on a text and not on the original scholarship. While the specific legal content covered in these classes is surely advanced, I would be willing to bet that the discussion about normative issues and the systematic implications of the law is not much more than what you would see in a class of very good undergraduates. While it is true that Ph.D.s will teach material that they only took one course on in graduate school, they also build on that coursework through research and constant engagement with the scholarly literature. While JDs have a related type of following-up in that they keep up with relevant legal precedents, etc., that sort of keeping up is more oriented to the practice of law and I think it would not necessarily be relevant in the classroom. It is the exposure to that original scholarship and the conversation around scholarly questions that helps Ph.D. students develop the critical faculties necessary to understand (and thus teach) a field of study at both the macro-level and the micro-level. Ph.D. students also write papers, and almost all of these classes base the grade on a final exam. I don't think these classes do the best job of developing the skills necessary to be a professor. Now I would be willing to grant that someone who took an administrative law class, remained engaged with administrative law issues, and practiced in the area would probably be able to at least co-teach a course or add valuable insight to someone else's course and might even be able to teach their own course. Yes, I am. All college courses should be taught by professors who understand those four things (the primary texts/data, the scholarly literature, the context of the ideas, and the relationship of sub-disciplines to the larger field as a whole). My students in all my classes, intro and otherwise, benefit from this knowledge every single day. Ideas don't exist in a vacuum, and if a professor teaching a political theory course doesn't understand the history of Athenian democracy, the specifics of some of the main Athenian democratic institutions, or what the Romans meant when they called themselves a "republic," then s/he is not going to be prepared to answer questions that students WILL ask, at both the intro and advanced levels, when they read texts from Aristotle and Cicero. No, s/he will not. Do you honestly think that all it takes is some partial exposure to some of the ideas of Western theorists to teach an intro course (please tell me WHERE major canonical theorists like Machiavelli and Marx--thinkers who CANNOT be left out of a standard intro course--are thoroughly covered in the law school curriculum anyway)?

While it is true that the summer associate experience is an important part of the legal education and that some students wonder about the direct relevance of their coursework, it does not follow that this coursework serves as proper preparation to teach undergraduates. I am a political theorist, not a American politics scholar, and I don't feel comfortable speaking for my colleagues in American politics. However, I will say that I am skeptical of the idea that someone with a JD could teach these classes as effectively as someone with a Ph.D. I am not that familiar with the law school curriculum, but given what I do know about classes like contracts, property law and torts it seems that while there is some recognition of the fact that such exchanges take place within a legal-political framework, there is only an effort to understand very specific parts of the framework. There is little focus on how the whole system of political institutions fits together. For example, as I understand it, a property law class does not spend a lot of time focusing on normative questions of property distribution, the definition of property, etc. Now since I don't know the law school curriculum, I am willing to be corrected if I am wrong. As I said in my previous post, there are certainly some JDs who focus on constitutional law or other areas that allow them to focus on these broad questions and system-wide effects, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Let's take institutions. Someone teaching classes on institutions needs to be able to talk about the Constitutional institutions that are formally tied to the process of creating laws (i.e., the legislature, the executive and the judiciary), and should also be able to talk about those parts of the political system that aren't formally tied to the process of creating laws, like interest groups and the media. People who receive Ph.D.s and concentrate in American politics are taught about these institutions AND the theories about how these institutions work together. It's hard to teach a course on the Congress without understanding the other institutions, because part of understanding Congress is understanding how Congress relates to the Presidency, and to understand why the Presidency reacts to Congress in the way that it does, you have to understand the basic theories about the Presidency as an institution. As I understand it (and I'm willing to be corrected), this sort of information is not covered in the law school curriculum. Please show me where in the law school curriculum students are asked to do the following: 1. Read a wide variety of primary texts including (but most certainly not limited to) most of the dialogues of Plato, the Politics and Ethics of Aristotle, the essays of Seneca, the treatises and major speeches of Cicero, and the histories of Thucydides and Herotodus 2. Read secondary literature on those texts 3. Gain a basic historical understanding of the period 4. Demonstrate through discussion and writing that they understand not ONLY the content of the texts and secondary literature, and not ONLY the controversies surrounding each individual author's corpus, but ALSO how the themes of the primary texts and the controversies of the scholarly literature relate back to the significant questions of the larger field of political theory and then we can talk about people who hold a JD being qualified to teach classical political theory.

Being able to teach any subject, including political science, at the college/university level requires a high level of theoretical understanding, and most JD programs are not set up to provide their students with that sort of theoretical understanding. OP, you asserted that a JD might be able to teach political theory classes. The fact of the matter is that many JDs couldn't even teach a class in jurisprudential theory because their law school education did not give them a proper understanding of jurisprudential theory (at least that's what my former students who have finished or are currently in law school tell me). Even fewer JDs would be properly prepared to teach fairly standard undergraduate political theory courses like classical political theory, contemporary democratic theory, critical theory, feminist theory, history of the social contract, etc., and those JDs who would be able to teach such courses would be able to do so in spite of, not because of, the standard legal education. While it's true that a political theorist with a Ph.D. will choose to conduct his or her research primarily in one area of political theory, his or her graduate training properly introduced him/her to the subfield of political theory as a whole by presenting the subfield's major questions and important theoretical frameworks. That's why a political theorist with a Ph.D. can teach (or should be able to teach) across the subfield and not just within his/her research specialty. I have sent many intelligent students off to some very excellent schools in the T14 (though I admit that I do not have a HLS, YLS or SLS student yet...but I've only been at this for five years), and the very best of these students always expressed frustration with their legal education because it constantly eschewed the study and consideration of larger theoretical concepts and questions for a practical, vocational focus on the profession of law. That sort of education does not prepare one to be a full-time faculty member at a college or university. Of course those JD students who attend exceptional institutions, take fullest advantage of the exceptional opportunities afforded by those institutions (I mean more than just law review) and then go on to outstanding achievements like clerking for a Supreme Court justice can make excellent contributions to academia (see Ronald Dworkin, for example). However, individuals like Dworkin are rare.