Why Mostly PhDs and Not JDs in University Political Science Faculties?

[SOG25]

I think a consensus has been reached. JD's are probably qualified for imagined PS faculty positions that do not exist (teaching undergrads, no grads, no research), teaching a small handful of peripheral courses that are hardly a staple of most political science programs.

Good job SOG25, you win.

The last time I checked, the following courses which JDs are definitely qualified to teach aren't imaginary, and some are indeed staple courses of PS in most departments:

American Government

State and Local Government

Constitutional Law

International Law

International Organizations (sometimes designated as UN).

If the positions are imaginary, it's probably because some think it's not important to do the job which your job title indicates.

Edited January 22, 2011 by SOG25

[SOG25]

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.

Provide the whole quote, pay close attention to it, and see for yourself why I'm saying it is wrong.

[coqui21]

If the positions are imaginary, it's probably because some think it's not important to do the job which your job title indicates.

This is not the reason these positions are imaginary. They are imaginary because professors are not only expected to profess pre-existing knowledge, but also to create and profess new knowledge in their areas of expertise through extensive research. JD's, to my knowledge, are not trained to do this...and therefore are only qualified for these mostly imaginary positions that you've made up (although they probably exist in a few small colleges somewhere).

Edited January 22, 2011 by coqui21

[LACProf]

Provide the whole quote, pay close attention to it, and see for yourself why I'm saying it is wrong.

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?

Edited January 22, 2011 by LACProf

[inniskillin]

I think a consensus has been reached. JD's are probably qualified for imagined PS faculty positions that do not exist (teaching undergrads, no grads, no research), teaching a small handful of peripheral courses that are hardly a staple of most political science programs.

Good job SOG25, you win.

Exactly. SOG25, political science departments DO hire JDs....as ADJUNCTS, as befits their qualifications to teach a very limited subset of courses to undergraduates and not do research.

[SOG25]

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?

There are also many JDs who write books on these subjects (not so sure what is all that special about a dissertation). I'm sure there are many PhDs who today, in reflecting back on their dissertations, are quite embarassed by it, in comparison to what they've learned or written since. I say that to say that the dissertation argument is not really convincing.

Simply put, you could very well, right now, write a dissertation in public law, but it wouldn't mean you understand the law nearly as well as one who has studied it in law school. I don't know any other PhD specializations whose coursework would overlap with a JD, save for IR with the one course in international law or organizations (probably taught by a law school JD).

A college would do well to devote a tenure-track line in political science to a JD simply because none of their pure PhDs can handle this area of political science as well as a JD (it's not their specialization). Also because there are other courses which the JD will teach in other areas, including American institutons and international relations, again because of having the substantive preparation.

[RWBG]

...answers of every type short of a formal model...

...well since you asked...

Let's say the utility of any professor i to a department can be broken down into several components, as represented by the following utility function.

Ui = Ri + Ti + NCi

where Ri is a professor's research ability, Ti is the quality of teaching, and NCi is the number of courses a prof can teach in a department. Now let's say the department chooses faculty members such that they maximize

ΣUi - nc

Where c is the cost of reviewing an application, and n is the total number of applications reviewed. Given this, a hiring committee (heretofore referred to as a HIRCOM) will review an application if the expected utility is higher than the marginal cost.

Now let's say that the only information the HIRCOM knows about a candidate before reviewing an application is what degree they hold. Given this information, we can construct a set of prior beliefs P = {pi,..., pn} such that each belief represents the initial expected Ui of a candidate, with that belief being conditioned on the degree that they hold.

Given that JDs have less research experience, less teaching training, can teach a smaller subset of courses, only have three years of training, and lack the self-selection signal that a Ph.D or LL.M represents in terms of showing that a candidate wants to teach, we can say that they are less likely on average to be good professors. This may not be true universally though, so we can make this claim without making the stronger claim that Ph.Ds are always better candidates; some JDs may, in actuality, be better candidates, although we can't know this with certainty. Thus prior beliefs are likely to be lower pi's for JD-only holders.

Now let's say that if the HIRCOM chooses to review an application, they receive a signal ϕ that represents the total information they get from reviewing the application. This can include publications, existing research, teaching evaluations, etc. The adcom then performs a Bayesian update on the expected Ui using ϕ, and chooses the candidate(s) for which expected UI is now the highest.

Now because ϕ does not provide complete information about a candidate, in order for the Bayesian update to result in a higher expected Ui for a JD holder than a Ph.D/LL.M/SJD holder, the signal ϕ has to be much stronger in relative terms, due to the prior beliefs that JD-only holders are less likely to be good candidates for TT positions.

Now let's assume we have a position for which we have a lot of applications, and even assume similar ϕ distributions for Ph.D/LL.M/SJD holders and JD holders. It is likely that you will have a number of extremely qualified applicants at the top, in that everyone will have strong teaching references, etc. Especially for this mythical "teaching only" position, it would be difficult for JDs to show ex ante that they would be such better teachers that they should be hired as TT faculty despite lack of research preparation, even if they would be. So the probability that the ϕ for a JD is so much stronger than a Ph.D/LL.M/SJD's ϕ that they actually get the position ends up being extremely small.

A HIRCOM knows this, so before they choose to review an application, they do backwards induction and conclude that the expected UI of reviewing the application is less that the expected cost. JD applications are not reviewed, and JDs do not end up taking positions as TT faculty in political science departments.

Edited January 22, 2011 by RWBG

[balderdash]

x

+1 for effort expended, haha.

[GopherGrad]

I'm tempted to register a few extra handles to "like" that more times.

[foosh]

You realize he's trolling all of you right? He misses the main point of every response people post and focuses on the definition of "professor" being to "profess" not to "research." Of course this is absurd, anybody knows that a professor's job is to primarily do academic research, followed by a duty to teach.

I call troll.

[wtncffts]

Bravo RWBG, quite well expressed for, I'm guessing, being dashed off quickly. It's pretty much reiterating more formally what everyone has been saying, however, and I think SOG25 has shown that he rejects out of hand several premises of your model, e.g., the weight of Ri in the utility function.

And trolls IMO are more the 'post and run' type. SOG25 may be inordinately obstinate, but he is replying, often at length, and giving reasons, even if none of us are very persuaded.

Maybe a highly-functioning troll, if that's a thing.

[SOG25]

You realize he's trolling all of you right? He misses the main point of every response people post and focuses on the definition of "professor" being to "profess" not to "research." Of course this is absurd, anybody knows that a professor's job is to primarily do academic research, followed by a duty to teach.

I call troll.

'Yo mama'

[SOG25]

Bravo RWBG, quite well expressed for, I'm guessing, being dashed off quickly. It's pretty much reiterating more formally what everyone has been saying, however, and I think SOG25 has shown that he rejects out of hand several premises of your model, e.g., the weight of Ri in the utility function.

And trolls IMO are more the 'post and run' type. SOG25 may be inordinately obstinate, but he is replying, often at length, and giving reasons, even if none of us are very persuaded.

Maybe a highly-functioning troll, if that's a thing.

...And from my standpoint, you too and others holding the same positiion, despite all the evidence presented, "may be inordinately obstinate."

[Tufnel]

Not to intrude on what seems like an utterly fascinating debate...

What is the intent here? Why is this conversation still going? Nothing new has been said since page one. Let's sum it up... Differing definitions of the role of the professor. Great. Why does it matter what anyone here thinks? SOG, none of us are going to hire you. We don't have PhDs. It seems like you'd have a greater incentive to try to convince some hiring committee somewhere. We can't do a thing for you, one way or another.

Edited January 23, 2011 by Tufnel

[kaykaykay]

Maybe SOG25 wants to see how much does it take to collect -100 points. getting close to it!

Edited January 23, 2011 by kalapocska

[RWBG]

...well since you asked...

Let's say the utility of any professor i to a department can be broken down into several components, as represented by the following utility function.

Ui = Ri + Ti + NCi

where Ri is a professor's research ability, Ti is the quality of teaching, and NCi is the number of courses a prof can teach in a department. Now let's say the department chooses faculty members such that they maximize

ΣUi - nc

Where c is the cost of reviewing an application, and n is the total number of applications reviewed. Given this, a hiring committee (heretofore referred to as a HIRCOM) will review an application if the expected utility is higher than the marginal cost.

Now let's say that the only information the HIRCOM knows about a candidate before reviewing an application is what degree they hold. Given this information, we can construct a set of prior beliefs P = {pi,..., pn} such that each belief represents the initial expected Ui of a candidate, with that belief being conditioned on the degree that they hold.

Given that JDs have less research experience, less teaching training, can teach a smaller subset of courses, only have three years of training, and lack the self-selection signal that a Ph.D or LL.M represents in terms of showing that a candidate wants to teach, we can say that they are less likely on average to be good professors. This may not be true universally though, so we can make this claim without making the stronger claim that Ph.Ds are always better candidates; some JDs may, in actuality, be better candidates, although we can't know this with certainty. Thus prior beliefs are likely to be lower pi's for JD-only holders.

Now let's say that if the HIRCOM chooses to review an application, they receive a signal ϕ that represents the total information they get from reviewing the application. This can include publications, existing research, teaching evaluations, etc. The adcom then performs a Bayesian update on the expected Ui using ϕ, and chooses the candidate(s) for which expected UI is now the highest.

Now because ϕ does not provide complete information about a candidate, in order for the Bayesian update to result in a higher expected Ui for a JD holder than a Ph.D/LL.M/SJD holder, the signal ϕ has to be much stronger in relative terms, due to the prior beliefs that JD-only holders are less likely to be good candidates for TT positions.

Now let's assume we have a position for which we have a lot of applications, and even assume similar ϕ distributions for Ph.D/LL.M/SJD holders and JD holders. It is likely that you will have a number of extremely qualified applicants at the top, in that everyone will have strong teaching references, etc. Especially for this mythical "teaching only" position, it would be difficult for JDs to show ex ante that they would be such better teachers that they should be hired as TT faculty despite lack of research preparation, even if they would be. So the probability that the ϕ for a JD is so much stronger than a Ph.D/LL.M/SJD's ϕ that they actually get the position ends up being extremely small.

A HIRCOM knows this, so before they choose to review an application, they do backwards induction and conclude that the expected UI of reviewing the application is less that the expected cost. JD applications are not reviewed, and JDs do not end up taking positions as TT faculty in political science departments.

Bravo RWBG, quite well expressed for, I'm guessing, being dashed off quickly. It's pretty much reiterating more formally what everyone has been saying, however, and I think SOG25 has shown that he rejects out of hand several premises of your model, e.g., the weight of Ri in the utility function.

Yeah, this was how I initially thought of the issue, so writing it down didn't take too much time. I've quoted my original post so it can be used as a reference when reading this post.

The conclusions are robust to a fixation on teaching over anything else. The root of the conclusion is in the determination of expected utility from pi and ϕ. So let's examine this a little further.

SOG's argument is that admissions committees SHOULD focus on teaching over everything else, or at the very least, some of the people they hire should be hired for only that purpose. Without questioning why someone would be hired for only teaching when they could be hired for both research and teaching, we can take this as an assumption and look at the implications of the model.

It is likely that the established prior belief pi would still favor a Ph.D or LL.M/SJD over a JD-only holder. I realize that SOG's argument is based a lot on his saying that shouldn't be the case, but without getting mired in the discussion of political science Ph.Ds v. JDs, let's look specifically at JDs versus LL.M/SJDs.

Even if you accept that LL.Ms are just another year or two of JD work (a contentious claim backed by no-one except SOG), that extra education provides that person with specialized knowledge about a subject (possibly public law?) which they could use in teaching, and works as a signal that such a person wants to teach in the first place. So even if the prior belief is not as strongly against JDs as it would be if research is included, it's still a fairly significant difference.

Now consider that it is particularly hard to make distinctions between ϕs if only teaching is taken into account. Teaching reviews are often unreliable, and a lot of the top people will have strong teaching reviews anyways. Given this, if everyone at the top of an applicant pool is indistinguishable in terms of teaching qualifications, LLMs and SJDs will be selected over JDs every time. Apply backwards induction, and JD applicants aren't reviewed.

Now you might ask, if this is the case, why are some JDs employed as Professors at law schools? This usually occurs because the candidate is particularly distinguished in either research within the field, or has had a particularly distinguished legal practice career. However, both of these justifications are discounted by SOG's argument. He suggests that research should not be a significant factor in determining whether someone should be hired, and if someone has a distinguished career in legal practice, then such a person would be qualified only to teach other lawyers how to become lawyers. Thus, there is essentially no way that a JD could show that they should be hired over other applicants, even if they are in fact superior candidates.

Edited January 23, 2011 by RWBG

[GopherGrad]

What is the intent here? Why is this conversation still going? Nothing new has been said since page one. Let's sum it up... Differing definitions of the role of the professor. Great. Why does it matter what anyone here thinks? SOG, none of us are going to hire you. We don't have PhDs. It seems like you'd have a greater incentive to try to convince some hiring committee somewhere. We can't do a thing for you, one way or another.

For starters, SOG does not have a JD.

I participated for awhile because I bang my head against the wall for a living and have found that there are some aspects of it I perversely enjoy. This type of head banging is, for a short while, slightly preferable to the type that results in a "private attorney general" complaint for consumer protection violations.

[Tufnel]

For starters, SOG does not have a JD...

Then I really don't understand this thread. I guess I shouldn't have made assumptions.

SOG, if you want to be a professor, get a PhD. It doesn't matter if you think a JD qualifies you because, at least as far as hiring is concerned, it doesn't matter what the job applicant thinks.

[SOG25]

It is likely that the established prior belief pi would still favor a Ph.D or LL.M/SJD over a JD-only holder. I realize that SOG's argument is based a lot on his saying that shouldn't be the case, but without getting mired in the discussion of political science Ph.Ds v. JDs, let's look specifically at JDs versus LL.M/SJDs.

Why would “the established prior belief still favor a PhD or LLM/SJD over a JD holder?

Even if you accept that LL.Ms are just another year or two of JD work (a contentious claim backed by no-one except SOG)

Here, you indicate you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about; this is not a contentious claim “backed by no-one except SOG." If LLMs are not what I (and law schools) have indicated they are, what are they?

Now you might ask, if this is the case, why are some JDs employed as Professors at law schools? This usually occurs because the candidate is particularly distinguished in either research within the field, or has had a particularly distinguished legal practice career.

Wait... isn’t one of your arguments that JDs can’t do research? Interesting! Without even wasting time on the other babble (excuse me, model) you’re making up, the reasons a PhD would be hired to teach over a JD in the areas of public law and American institutions are not based on differences in substantive preparation but simply unsubstantiated preference. It’s that simple.

Apparently Troll’s argument was right on point, as these posters have shown:

Perhaps we lawyers are qualified, but that is not the issue here. For instance an engineer could teach high school calculus. But does anyone think the teachers unions want a bunch of retired engineers entering their job market as math teachers? Similarly, political science departments have a vested interest in excluding lawyers from adjunct positions.

A PhD is not about learning how to teach or research, it isabout joining the college professors' guild and if you want the chance at a cushy academic appointment you need to spend your time learning pointless made up theories just like everyone else.

Edited January 24, 2011 by SOG25

[GopherGrad]

Wait... isn’t one of your arguments that JDs can’t do research?

No. That has never been the argument.

The argument has been that the average JD is not as qualified to do academic research as the average Ph.D. Obviously, some JDs can do amazing, exemplary things that would make them equally qualified to do academic research. But they need to be outside the norm for JDs to get there, which explains why more Ph.D.s get chosen than JDs.

(No, I'm not maligning the JD. In fact, I think that getting into the very top law programs is far harder than getting into the top Ph.D. programs. An attorney's work is often harder than the work of an academic. Those students very clearly have the brains and work ethic to become social sciences profs. But they decided not to develop those skills, and simply being smart enough is not always enough to overcome a deficit of training.)

Anyway, not that I totally disagree with Troll's cynical response, but it feels a little weird to me to level "guild" accusation in favor of lawyers. Lawyers created an obtuse legal system that hinges on specialized vocabulary and as a result the normal person can hardly access the system in a meaningful way.

Lawyers created rules barring anyone from practicing law that hasn't entered the guild. It's totally illegal! If you want to aim your ire at self-serving and protective clan-occupations, your choice of lawyers as the downtrodden class was a really poor one.

[GopherGrad]

Put another way, while it might be tempting to simply accept Troll's cynicism, isn't it also possible that Ph.D. programs have recognized that many students seek social science Ph.D.s in order to teach and therefore crafted a degree program to help them be better teachers?

Isn't it also possible that most people recognize the different strengths of the different degrees, and so people who want to be lawyers are more likely to attend law school, while people who want to teach are more likely to pursue Ph.D.s?

The fact that the Ph.D. to faculty process (and the J.D. to attorney process) create something of a feedback loop doesn't need to be (totally) self-serving and sinister. People get jobs by seeking out the training that leads to those jobs in basically all fields. As your argument has progressed, it doesn't just implicate Ph.D.s and academics, but the entire presumption that training and specialization leads to better and more productive professionals.

[RWBG]

So, as mentioned by GopherGrad earlier, LL.Ms are often marked on a different curve, and sometimes evaluated using different assignments, even when they're in classes jointly with JDs. Also, most LL.M programs have a thesis component, which exposes someone specifically to law as an academic discipline. However, if you had actually bothered to read through my "babble," you'd notice that the model explicitly does not use the fact that LL.Ms are more than a specialized extra year of JD studies as an assumption. In fact, it explicitly takes your assumptions as given.

Anyways, I'm no longer interested in responding to your increasingly hostile and condescending posts, so I'm going to do my utmost not to post any more in this thread. SOG, I sincerely hope that at some point you develop the ability to be critically self-aware, and move away from your approach of assuming that everyone except you is either too myopic or too biased to understand your arguments.

[SOG25]

Put another way, while it might be tempting to simply accept Troll's cynicism, isn't it also possible that Ph.D. programs have recognized that many students seek social science Ph.D.s in order to teach and therefore crafted a degree program to help them be better teachers?

Isn't it also possible that most people recognize the different strengths of the different degrees, and so people who want to be lawyers are more likely to attend law school, while people who want to teach are more likely to pursue Ph.D.s?

The fact that the Ph.D. to faculty process (and the J.D. to attorney process) create something of a feedback loop doesn't need to be (totally) self-serving and sinister. People get jobs by seeking out the training that leads to those jobs in basically all fields. As your argument has progressed, it doesn't just implicate Ph.D.s and academics, but the entire presumption that training and specialization leads to better and more productive professionals.

GopherGrad,

Fair questions you raise. The only issue though is that the status quo in terms of faculty hiring, fairly recently I think, has been that only PhDs teach. However, teaching has not necessarily been the purpose of the PhD. As I established earlier, the real purpose of the PhD is to research; that's what the degree was "crafted" for. Similarly, I agree, the JD was crafted for the practice of law (part of which is also research). Since neither degree was crafted exclusively for teaching why should the JD not also be considered for teaching relevant course work when a JD holder also has the substantive preparation to teach the areas I previously mentioned? The answer, "well, that's just the way it is, if you want to teach go get a PhD, even though you may be qualified already, but go get one anyway," just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think sinister is a fair description of such a system.

I will never dispute that training and specialization leads to better and more productive professionals. I am also not characterizing lawyers as the downtrodden, but acknowledging that law school provides more than enough adequate training for those degree holders who want to teach course in areas of American government, public law and other areas, and such prospective professors should not be denied for reasons that are irrational.

Edited January 25, 2011 by SOG25

[SOG25]

OK, let's try a different approach. Which political science courses would you say a JD cannot teach and why? As I have evaluated it, there are few staple courses in most political science depts that a JD would not have the substantive background to teach. Furthermore, I concede that those who have speciliazed in an LLM, such as international law, may have a greater repetoire of courses they are able to teach (including IR courses).

Here is a list of the staple courses I know a JD can teach:

1. American Government

2. Constitutional Law/ Constitutional History

3. State and Local Government

4. International Law (this would also go under the subfield of IR)

5. International Organizations

6. Administrative Law

7. Federalism

8. Ethics and Policy

9. Intro to Public Poicy or American Public Policy

10. Intro to American Law

11. Political Philosophy

12. Law and Politics

I'm sure there are more, but even just this list, at least to me, is pretty significant argument as to why JDs should be on poli sci faculty at the undergraduat level.

Edited January 25, 2011 by SOG25

[GopherGrad]

I'll play, I guess.

Political Philosophy.

I don't think any part of earning a JD would or could qualify a person to teach political philosophy. There are no courses in most legal programs that deal substantively with political philosophy. Knowledge of political philosophy would have to be gleaned almost entirely outside of the JD curriculum.

Of the T20, Harvard has the largest class, largest faculty and largest selection of courses. Here is a link to Harvard's course catalog:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/courses/2010-11

Using this link or any other catalog, please name courses which are actually taught at law schools which would qualify a JD holder to teach political philosophy to undergrads. Please link to descriptions of those courses. Make an argument based on what is taught in your cited course and describe the content of the course you propose the JD would teach.

If you would like, I would be willing to do the same for Harvard's KSG, highlighting courses in political philosophy that would lead to great enough knowledge to teach at the undergrad level.

Edited January 25, 2011 by GopherGrad