Reflections on legal education and philosophy : the critical role of theory in practice

• Published in: Legal education review Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 103 - 117
• Main Author: Zerilli, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bond University 01.01.2007
• Subjects: Academic education; Higher education; History; Interdisciplinary approach; Law; Law students; Lawyers; Legal curriculum; Legal education; Legal practice; Legal problems; Philosophy; Professional education; Theory practice relationship; Vocational education
• ISSN: 1033-2839; 1839-3713
• DOI: 10.53300/001c.6199

An application-focused, commercial-utility-driven approach to legal education can seriously undermine the law's potential and produce students insensitive to the significance of questions they are called upon to ask in legal practice. A mature curriculum will not eschew a survey of the great debates of philosophy in the history of ideas nor insulate students from considering the influence of other subjects bearing an impact upon the law. The law's necessarily interdisciplinary nature requires its practitioners to possess at least an appreciation of extra- legal learning from areas such as philosophy, logic, history and economics. It may be that the circumstances in which a lawyer is called upon to create the law arise infrequently. Yet the most formalistic practitioner is often forced to think about the best way to solve a legal problem absent judicial assistance from decided cases. For at least a century now, law across the common law world has been pursued as an academic discipline as much as a professional one and academic instruction has become the gateway to practice. Despite this, an emphasis on the applied over the pure stifles overt acceptance of the importance of theory to practice. We have not moved on from Francis Bacon, who said of theory and practice in his Novum Organum, 'One without the other is useless and perilous; knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind'. May we not run an equally perilous risk by attempting to achieve without knowledge, without wisdom? In Holmes' words, 'We have too little theory in the law rather than too much'. [Author abstract, ed]