School suggestions for East Asian legal history

[Redyip]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been following this forum for a few months and have found the discussions very informative.  If any of you have a moment, I'd like to seek some advice on choosing target schools for the next application season (i.e., next Fall).

 

I'm currently a law student who, being somewhat disinterested in practicing law per se, am looking to enter academia as a legal historian--there are a couple of reasons behind this that I won't bore you with, but raw interest in the subject is by far the most important one.  I have reasonably strong academic credentials from college and law school, including some fairly extensive academic research and writing experience, but have gotten very conflicting advice on where to apply, largely because my conceived field of research may be a bit, well, odd.  Any wisdom you might care to share would be deeply appreciated.

 

I'm hoping to work on comparative "early modern" East Asian legal history--16th to 19th Century China, Japan and (to a lesser extent) Korea, with a particular focus on contract, torts, and related criminal law issues.  From what I gather, this is a very unusual topic, and therefore finding the right school "fit" seems rather difficult.  My knowledge on this is not very detailed, but people have suggested that I look at Columbia (Zelin and Gluck), Yale (Perdue and Botsman), and Harvard (Alford and Gordon).  Needless to say, these are all extremely selective schools, and hence I was hoping to garner some additional suggestions and/or information from this forum.

 

Many thanks!

Edited December 24, 2012 by Redyip

[Redyip]

An additional note: the "conflicting advice" I've been getting concerns whether to apply outside of some "top-10" or so range of history departments, based on their overall reputation, and not merely their strength in my specific interests.  I'm somewhat interested in teaching in law schools some day (teaching legal history in law schools would nonetheless require a history PhD), and would at least like to keep that option open for the moment.  A few of my advisors have told me that getting a law teaching job requires a degree from a recognizable "top" history department, and that I shouldn't bother with less prestigious schools even if the "fit" is excellent.  Others have disagreed.  Of course, considering that I don't even know which schools have faculty who may be able to advise me--beyond the three I mentioned above--thinking about this may be premature.

[New England Nat]

I can't give you thoughts on your second post, but on the first... I know of both a south asianist and a Chinese specialist legal historian who are working with Dirk Hartog at Princeton.  Essentially they have asianist specialist advisers and Hartog did a generals field and is on their diss. committees.  Can't get much more high value in legal history than him.  He has a 100% hire rate for getting his students into law school teaching jobs if that's what they want.

 

I took legal history from him with one of them last year and she has nothing but good to say about working with him.  The department takes 1 or 2 legal historains a year and the problem is mostly getting into the departmental pool.  But I can speak from experiance that the adcom is very friendly to applications that would mix fields logically.

[Mandarin]

I'd second the Princeton recommendation.  While Ben Elman may not have written on obviously law-related topics the way that some people you mentioned have, he is one of the major pioneers in "East Asian" history, in that he is heading a large project designed specifically to promote China-Japan-Korea comparisons.

[doxie-chan]

Okay, so I was in the same (more or less) position a couple of years ago.  I finished law school without a huge desire to practice law.  I do Japanese literature and law, but I had the same fundamental questions about the process, good fits, etc.  I ultimately decided to go to Princeton, and I only have good things to say about it.  That said, it was a difficult choice between programs like Harvard and Columbia, both with outstanding law schools.  You are certainly going to find people who work on law-related issues at Princeton, but the approaches are going to be fairly different from the scholarship that goes on in law schools.  You might not want to miss out on connections to this sort of research, or, you might not care.

 

If you genuinely want to teach at a law school after graduating, my suspicion tells me that advice about "prestigious" programs is dead on.  Law professors are all about credentials.

 

Anyway, some things to think about...  I have heard from some admissions people that it might have been difficult for me to get in to programs without an MA (I did a joint degree in law school).  Does your school have any sort of joint degreem programs?  Language--law schools aren't so concerned with language skills, but the grad programs you are looking at will definitely be interested (particularly if you are committed to doing such an extensive comparative project).  Princeton for one is pretty invested in recruiting students who are far along in language study--I took a year at IUC to work on my Japanese before I started, and it definitely helped.  If you need some language brush-up, I would highly recommend doing IUC or IUP (Beijing) before applying.  Student debt--law students' debt is usually pretty terrifying, and going into a grad program will likely make you ineligible for any student loan forgiveness programs your school might have.  And in terms of "fit," it will get easier if you can clarify a little more specifically what you want to work on.  16-19th century contract, tort, and criminal law in 3 countries is pretty...massive.  In my experience, professors were a little hesitant about a law student's ability to establish a clear, tight research proposal, so the more specific you can make your plans, the better.

 

And that is just what comes to mind right now.  If you have more specific questions, feel free to pm me!  Good luck!

[pudewen]

Back in the day, the clear choice here would have been UCLA, but with Huang retired that's no longer true. I would add Stanford to the places you're considering: Matthew Sommer's work is absolutely terrific. Otherwise, looks like you're on the right track; I agree with the consensus that law school hiring is based even more on prestige of degree than is hiring by history departments.

[czesc]

Not sure how helpful this is, but I can tell you from personal experience that Alford is an absolutely wonderful and knowledgeable person. Harvard is also known for having better integration between its history dept. and law school than Columbia (and Princeton obviously doesn't even have a law school, or uses Columbia's as a resource). I can't comment on the strength of the East Asian history faculty at Harvard though.

[Redyip]

Thanks, everyone, for the great advice. The point about finding a school that has a good rapport between its law and history faculty is especially important, I think. Largely for that reason, and based on some recent placement information I've gathered, I suspect that Yale and Harvard may be the overall best options for legal history people who hope to enter the law teaching market, but Princeton, Columbia, Stanford are certainly terrific schools as well. How to get into any of those places, however, is a different story altogether...