ABSTRACT
Law has always borne, perhaps vaingloriously, the high prestige of a learned, esteemed profession operating at the center of policy-making, indeed legitimating it. The legal academy also boasts antiquity, having been established in English and Italian universities in medieval times. Yet, despite law’s distinguished pedigree, American institutions of higher learning long resisted including it among their academic departments. For this reason, American law schools developed first as independent institutions outside the traditional college or university setting. When the universities did deign to include law schools during the nineteenth century, their welcome was usually a cool oneat least until they realized that legal education could be delivered with large classes, no laboratories, and, often, part-time teachers. Better still, it produced prosperous alumni. Thus it could be a “profit center,” cross-subsidizing other, less worldly fields of study (Stevens 1983).
