Yale Law and the wisdom of broadening perspectives
I grew up in the small Litchfield
County town of Roxbury, and attended high school in Hartford at the Watkinson School. We then moved to the coast of Connecticut, in Madison. While I was there, I finished my undergraduate degree major at Yale College in 1983. It was a rewarding experience, and certainly to all the younger undergraduates, the Yale Law School was regarded as something of an icon. It still is. Later, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Yale’s general academic influence in the Midwest was still pronounced among faculty, and in all the professional schools in business, medicine, public policy and law. Yale Law School has an unusual level of representation among professors who graduated from there, and who then take teaching and research positions in other universities and colleges.
When Yale Law decided late last year to voluntarily withdraw from the equally iconic US News & World Report rankings program, it drew a mix of reactions. Some believe that it is a positive step toward lessening the school’s reputation as excessively “elitist.” Some saw it as perhaps more of a necessary gesture toward expanding its law program to less economically advantaged students, including many minorities.
Others, see Yale’s ranking protest
( joined by Harvard, Berkeley and others) as signaling the beginning of an upending concerning the fundamental concept of “rank.” I’m among them.
The U.S. has about 200 law schools across the country that are licensed by the American Bar Association (the ABA). This industry regulatory group sets a number of requirements that all law schools must follow, and what happens as a result is that all the law schools wind up teaching the same basic law courses (in contracts, property, and several other subjects including our federal and state court systems). This makes the teaching of law somewhat of a “commodity” and therefore the concept of ranking them is somewhat misplaced: they all can do a good job of teaching the fundamentals, and depending on where they are geographically, they also can bring unique insights into the particular problems of their regions. That may include urban crime, or real estate, or natural resource management.
Given those important regional diversities, one would think that all the so-called “elite” law schools would welcome a much more even or “egalitarian” approach to how we see law school strengths and reputation. Yale, for example, should be delighted that one of its counterparts in Illinois, Montana, South Carolina or Texas is considered just as “prestigious.” Indeed, as Yale Law recently expressed, the No. 1 ranked law school is what is No. 1 for you.
This certainly sounds fair-minded and practical. But yet, the desire for elitism can still linger among Yale’s faculty and administration, and among all the applicants, their parents, and the many faculty who graduated from there. Moreover,
Yale Law School and Harvard Law School together represent eight out of the nine current Supreme Court justices. This monopoly in the judiciary is a somewhat uncomfortable fact that Yale appears in no hurry to change. And for very good reasons: Such influence has many benefits including appointments in government positions and committees, in corporate hiring, and in alumni donations.
Yale Law School is indeed an American icon, as it is one of our oldest institutions of higher education, dating back to colonial New England. It is rightly a source of regional pride. Part of that heritage, however, might include Yale Law recognizing that America is a very big place, with many traditions, and many new ones. If it is to be a continuing part of our national culture and dialogue, then it might be wise for it to broaden its perspectives to that larger realm, including how it sees itself socially and economically, and how law students come to see the law itself: as less of an elite system, and more an accessible and understandable part of our everyday lives.
That means law schools must drop many of their pretenses to ranking, including making fundamental changes to its teaching methods, tuition costs, and how long it takes young adults to get through law school and on to work and life.