ABSTRACT
In my self-appointed role of hysteric, my task is to critique law, not make policy recommendations. Although the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. In this chapter I can’t resist and proffer one policy recommendation: “Stop recommending policy!” Or, to put this more plausibly, policy scholarship should not dominate legal academia as it does now. Jurisprudential, theoretical, and doctrinal scholarship should have equal prestige and presence if for no other reason than these forms of scholarship more closely relate to the practice of law that engages most of our students. Indeed, despite a prevailing, self-serving perception that policy-oriented scholarship is pragmatic and hardheaded, other forms have greater practical application. Policy scholarship speaks in the university’s discourse whereas truly critical theory and legal practice speaks in the hysteric’s and the analyst’s discourses.
