GopherGrad

Because my life is an empty shell of what it was before I got my JD.

At least 80% of JDs couldn't properly define Federalism the day they leave law school. You might have a point about "Intro to American Law", depending on what the course teaches. I'm not sure why a polisci Ph.D. would want to know the elements of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, though.

Look, sport, you asked an interesting question about the academic intersection between law and political science. You've had weigh in now from dozens of people including current and prospective political science Ph.D. candidates, faculty in political science, and lawyers. Absolutely everyone agrees with each other totally except you. Maybe you're the one having a hard time admitting you're wrong? Even if you really are a unique snowflake with an amazing new idea, you have failed utterly to communicate it to the most natural and receptive audience you could imagine. Under any circumstances, it's time to get back to the drawing board on this one.

Who said the professors don't teach? Are you even reading the things you're trying to rebut? I asked a while back if you'd studied law. Now I'm not sure you've even been to university. I didn't say they don't have them. I didn't say a J.D. could not. For something that gets so uppity about others getting your argument wrong, you sure don't pay much attention to anyone else's. People who are trained are more likely to have skills. I know you disagree, so there is no need to repeat yourself. Further, it is a lot about demonstrating those skills. I know some home cooks that would blast the average culinary school graduate out of the water, but if I'm opening a restaurant I'm going to hire the trained chef. You mis-state my argument again. Why would the quality be less? Why do you get to assume that J.D.s would do a better job than grad students when the whole premise of your argument is not to assume who has skills. Universities need people to teach graduates and advise them. It's part of being a professor. Colleges may not, but you specifically asked about universities (I know you're a stickler for people only responding to your specific arguments). Yes. Both. Because they can draw from both. Really. http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/faculty.htm That is the link to Yale's law school faculty. Every single professor with tenure has an advanced degree besides the JD. Look for yourself. The only people lacking them are clinical and visiting faculty. Tenure at a top tier law school requires more education than a JD. Period. I said no such thing. You are putting words in my mouth again. I know exactly what an LLM is. I have one. It is both more specialized and more advanced. LLM students almost always sit in on lectures with JD students. They are graded on a different curve and produce different work product. Regardless of whether it it more advanced, I point to the LLM requirement to establish that a JD offers insufficient opportunity to specialize even to teach law. This is untrue. I took undergrad courses and a JD, graduate courses as an undergrad and had graduate students in my undergrad and JD courses. If you understand that an LLM or PhD "sets you apart from the competition", how on earth do you not understand why a JD/PhD is a more attractive candidate than a straight JD? It's mid boggling.

Dude. People who teach PoliSci 1001 or Methods 201 at university are not usually tenured faculty. They weren't at my uni. Ever. The aggregate job description we're working with now (a tenured professor who only teaches intro courses to undergrads and is not expected to research) doesn't even exist. This is really not a difficult point. -J.D.s are not preferred for "professor" or "tenured faculty" jobs because those jobs largely require research, participation in conferences and/or teaching grad students or advanced undergraduate courses. Law programs do not focus on many of the things that make Ph.D.s better candidates, like extremely deep historical knowledge, teacher training, research methods, and academic writing styles. Hiring committees see these skills as valuable, even if you don't, and will prefer candidates whose record might establish that they have them. -J.D.s are not preferred for jobs whose ONLY duty is to teach undergrads because: a ) you can have grad students do that for free, or b ) you can easily add those classes to the portfolio of tenured professors who can also provide you with other services (like research or teaching grads). -J.D.s are not preferred to teach courses even in legal topics because there are J.D.s who also have Ph.D.s and thus cover all the bases. You're basically asking why universities don't hire extremely specialized faculty to take on a job any utility player in the department can do. Hell, most top tier law schools don't even hire straight-up J.D.s to teach. Teaching requires a Ph.D., LL.M. or an extremely distinguished practice career (and in those cases, you are generally an adjunct who teaches only in your specialty). At this point it's like gawking at a train wreck. If I wasn't procrastinating there's no way I'd be here.

They are not called professors. Every course I took in basic polisci, econ or methods was taught by someone titled "instructor" and taught by a grad student. You must be aware that grad students teach classes and aren't called professors, right? If you are, why obfuscate the debate with this? Maybe you're right. But: 1) Saying that it's about teaching undergrads doesn't exclude research, especially considering that such a position that you describe isn't really even offered at university. To some extent, the first responses here were giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were talking about a university position that exists. 2) You haven't really responded to the point that your job description is held by a free labor force. In any event, we come round to the same to the same conclusion. Universities don't hire J.D.s to teach undergrads because they would rather hire people qualified to teach a wider range of students and research a wider range of topics. Semantics, really. In the competition for the job of teaching PoliSci 101, the job will go to the grad student who teaches for a scholarship instead of hiring a brand new faculty member. It simply costs less.

You've been at this for seven pages and not convinced anyone. By turn, when one has an idea that one considers "new and challenging" and a fair, fulsome airing of that idea convinces no one, it might be time to move on. Sometimes when the crowd passes over an idea, it's because the wrongness of the idea is self-evident. Not every roundly rejected musing is the work of a misunderstood genius. Balderdash's analogy is perfect, although I'd take it further. A J.D. is like a mechanic and political science is the study of transportation. The vast majority of mechanics just fix cars without thinking about which bus routes are best or how to incentivize manufacturers to make greener vehicles. One can imagine transportation professionals interested in how cars function and being taught by a mechanic. One can imagine a mechanic going beyond the education of the average in his trade and thereby having something to contribute to some aspect of the debate or another. But suggesting that mechanics should be more broadly included in urban development or something ... well, it sounds kind of asinine. To that end, you can continue to represent yourself as siding with "those" who think JDs can teach undergraduate polisci, but (allowing that most people seem to agree that some courses in law, which make up a tiny minority of polisci classes on offer, could be taught by a JD) I'm not sure who "those" are. You're the only one on your side of the net. By the way, you should be aware that in now framing your questions as a matter only of teaching undergrad polisci, most of us think you've moved the goalposts pretty substantially without acknowledging it. In doing so, you're suggesting a job description (a teacher of exclusively undergrads for whom research is not central) that applies to many, many fewer positions. To some extent, we're no longer arguing about replacing Ph.D.s with J.D.s; we're talking about replacing grad students with J.D.s. There is an obvious reason university departments don't hire J.D.s to teach Intro to American Politics: They have grad students doing it for free.

I did not claim that a J.D. is not "substantive". I don't even know what you mean by that. To say that a lawyer didn't learn the substance of law school is so ridiculous it threatens to give the reader a nosebleed. You seem to argue that "substantive" courses in law school relate to some nebulous confluence of law and political science. They do not. Law schools offer very few courses on public law or American legal institutions that would interest a student of political science and the programs severely limit a J.D. candidate's options to take courses which are not focused on passing the bar. Only schools in the top half of the top tier even offer courses to train academics; the vast majority of schools focus solely and explicitly on training future attorneys. As an aside, RWGB could verify my credentials if he or she wanted. When the basis of disagreement is only the content of a J.D. curriculum, it might afford some finality to know that one side includes an attorney while the other side does not. You are at the point where this is totally 'he-said, she-said', and you weren't even in the room for the conversation. The only reason my credentials won't be necessary is that you are the only person participating in the argument who is not convinced of the viewpoints I (and everyone else) has evinced. I agree with the poster above with no vowels in her name. You appear to believe you've stumbled across some wisdom missed by all the Ph.D. applicants, candidates, political science faculty and lawyers on the site (not to mention every political science department in the world). So, as a J.D. might say: take it to the judge.

But JDs and MDs are known as "professional" degrees in common reference. Law, medicine and some other jobs (but not college professors) are known in the US as "the professions". Even if you want to get into sematics, if a Ph.D. is a "professional" degree, they are trained to be professional professors. The whole point of the majority of Ph.D. degrees is to train academics (and yes, FFS, I understand that plenty of Ph.D.s don't become professors). The whole point of a J.D. is to train a practicing lawyer. I know you disagree that the purpose of the J.D. degree is to train lawyers, but you are wrong. If you had a J.D., you would understand. And before you descend to insulting my substantive preparation again, be aware that I sat for a very academic legal degree, earned an LL.M. and took as many courses outside law school as was allowed by my program. When I say that law school trains lawyers, no matter how hard you look outside the program, I mean that.

In my opinion, your application will not be disadvantaged by missing the grades unless something in particular about the classes you took would fill in some missing piece. I'd write Berkeley to ask what's missing. Their deadline was Dec. 2, if I recall, and they may be closing in on decisions. Check your recommenders, too; aside from my big recommendation problem, I found that one of my letter writers had not quite completed the submission process at a couple schools. I was just a missed "submit" click, but one app registered as incomplete because of it.

It's admittedly confusing labeling. I almost applied to Harvard's program in Government and Political Economy (instead of just Government) because I thought the title meant "the place where both government and political economy is taught" rather than "a place where we teach political economy which has to do with the government we teach about in a totally different program".

Maybe I'm a lazy reader, but isn't this fundamentally similar to (for example) SIPA/GSAS at Columbia? If so, there are a lot of schools that offer professional IR degrees through separate schools, no?

aaaaand my new distraction is to figure out how to make a ninja emoticon.

Yeah, there are no guarantees. It's a little riskier to claim it, too, though. "Hey, I got into Wisconsin, too! Etc."

Excellent! I wonder if I did apply to your school. Have you ever come across the file of a student you were pretty sure you recognized from here?

I will never understand what people get out of trolling internet fora.

Hey, balderdash, It just resolved itself, to the extent it's going to, today. After you guys lit a fire in my belly, I sent out a bunch of emails to former profs and instructors explaining the situation. I went a couple of days without response (and with a couple "sorry"s) and then had two people say they could help out. One was a post-doc that taught the methods course I took this summer as a "signal", as oasis put it. He turned around the project basically in a weekend. Because I took his class on account of my interest in a Ph.D., I talked with him a lot during the class about my qualifications and about what life seeking a doctorate was like. I think his letter will aver that I'm sterling. Another was tenured faculty that supervised a seminar paper I wrote on topics similar to what I'd like to study. She's a law professor, but her focus matches well with the programs I applied to. I'm not sure how enthused she is about my work, but I guess it can't be too bad considering she wrote this letter for me. She submitted today. During this time I was still frantically contacting the original writer, who has maintained radio silence. I will probably have to satisfy myself that I'll never know what happened there. In terms of my applications, I have two worries. First, it's possible that for schools with earlier deadlines, these letter will arrive in the file to late to salvage my chances. Second, to the extent that the source of the letters really matters, I'm concerned that adcomms will wonder about the post-doc (or ignore the fourth letter from the tenured prof.). All in all, I'm pretty elated. My remaining concerns are clearly minor compared to a completely missing letter and I will be able to blame myself when I get rejected everywhere instead of blaming that professor. Also, having a letter writer fall through for me started a minor crisis of self-confidence and the response of these instructors salved that for the most part.

SOG, I'll just reply to the points I reacted strongly to. Sure, substantive education in how to practice law. Trade school for plumbing requires substantive education. Doesn't mean it prepares you to teach wiring. "Ought"? I thought we were talking about why JD's don't political science very often. If you want to restructure the entire academic system to make lawyers more attractive candidates, have at it. I do. In my admitted limited teaching experience I found the training crucial. It won't guarantee a good teacher, but it sure as hell correlates to better teaching skills. The vast majority of law professors can demonstrate teaching experience, have teacher training and receive more from the law schools that hire them. Do you have a JD? Because this is laughable to me. I can't imagine anyone with a law degree believing that a normal, three-year law school career allows a person enough time to really study a given topic in depth. I was in the library 90 hours a week just to memorize civ pro rules and tort elements. The subjects were so disparate and demanding that I was probably into my third year before I thought about gaining specialized knowledge, and by the end of that I was back to generalist studies to prepare for the bar exam. They are separate, and competitiveness is the one you want to focus on to understand the state of the job market. If you have 50 candidates for one job, you hire the best one, you don't pick competent applicants from a hat. You asked why JDs don't work as professors. To the extent they apply, their portfolios solely as JDs are dwarfed by people with training in research, methodology, teaching and a five to seven year degree that allows for deep subject knowledge and a publication record. Really? None of my application drop-downs listed "public law" as a subfield. What's further, American JDs don't learn any "public law" unless they take specialized courses which, at most schools are not very popular, owing to the fact that most students would prefer to learn legal analytical methods couched in current American law contexts. This is what 99.9% of law students do. Of the remaining minority that look at academic foci, most apply to teach law school.

I feel like I'm going to be repeating a lot of what has already been said, but as a JD applying for Ph.D. programs, here are some reasons why Ph.D.s dominate JDs in political science faculty jobs. 1) Focus. Few J.D.s attend law school in order to teach political science. Law school is a professional program, applicants to which usually want to be lawyers. Also, I think the average age of matriculation to law schools is higher, meaning that few people completely re-consider their career mid-school. 2) Job Prospects. A lawyer qualified to teach by reason of institutional reputation and grades is also sought after for partner track positions at white shoe firms and challenging, competitive government posts. Students who attended law school for pay, to have social or political impact or because they enjoy litigation will not be tempted by faculty jobs. 3) Research. Particularly outside the T20, few attorneys receive any real training or focus on academic research. If it's not on Westlaw, they don't have any better idea how to find it than the average undergrad. More importantly, lawyers rarely if ever receive any sort of methods training. On a whole, J.D.s are simply not competitive with doctorates in terms of producing publishable polisci research. 4) Teaching. Few if any attorneys receive training or have experience teaching, where most Ph.D. candidates get some of each. Again, out of the box, few attorneys are qualified compared to Ph.D.s for actual teaching work. 5) Depth and scope of knowledge. a) Most law schools require attorneys to take at least basic courses in areas of law with little academic relationship to one another. Preparation for the bar, mixed with desire to be as broadly hire-able as possible prevents most law students from studying a cognizable topic deeply enough to think originally about it. Hell, even most LAW professors need an LL.M. or some relevant work experience before they become attractive in the LEGAL education market. (Some even get Ph.D.s!) Legal reasoning and thought is not really very similar to academic processes (although it can be a powerful tool for creating academic work). c) Legal topics are a relatively small subset of all political science. Within the scope of the entire discipline of polisci, most J.D.s will lack the perspective to couch their jurisprudential work firmly in the language and theory of political science.

I applied to 13 for exactly the reason Tufnel suggested.

Polisci had a Dec. 2 deadline and I have not heard from them. I don't know how comparable the applications to staff ratios are between the departments, but I'd be surprised to hear about acceptances any earlier than Feb.

I think most people intrinsically groan when they hear about a recommender dropping the ball. I'm concerned to some extent that it will make me look less worthy; as though the prof just decided he couldn't stomach attaching his name to someone like me. But then, he agreed in the first place, so... I imagine most people will blame him for irresponsibility. It helps that I'm approaching with a solution already in hand, so it doesn't seem like I'm looking for a handout, even if I kind of am. Also, I adopted a 2 month old lab/hound puppy this fall, and I've been attaching photos of him titled "reject me and you'll never pet him".

Thanks, everyone, for the happy thoughts. Now I'm emailing every department with a completely blown deadline to see what I can do about getting the new letter including in my file quickly. So far everyone is being very helpful.

Gotcha. Thankfully, a prof agreed to dash off a letter for me ASAP, so wherever I'm not out, I'm back in. (woot!!)

Ah, so I'd give the substitute recommender copies of the original's emails to enclose? I certainly have them. Because I have been out of school so long, I contact faculty seeking letters almost eight months ago, so he's had lots of time.