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Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Training and by Robert J. Spitzer

By Robert J. Spitzer

This e-book is a sweeping indictment of the criminal occupation within the realm of constitutional interpretation. The adverse, advocacy-based American felony method is easily suited for American justice, during which one-sided arguments collide to supply a simply end result. but if utilized to constitutional theorizing, the result's selective research, overheated rhetoric, distorted proof, and overstated conclusions. Such wayward theorizing unearths its approach into print within the nation's over six hundred legislation journals - expert courses run via legislations scholars, now not school or different pros - and peer assessment is nearly by no means used to judge worthiness. the results of the program are tested via 3 well timed instances: the presidential veto, the "unitary theory" of the president's commander-in-chief energy, and the second one Amendment's "right to undergo arms." In every one case, legislation stories have been the breeding floor for faulty theories that gained fake legitimacy and political foreign money. This booklet concludes with thoughts for reform.

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619. Stevens, Law School, 24. ,” 620, note 15. Michael Ariens, “Modern Legal Times: Making a Professional Legal Culture,” Journal of American Culture, 15(March 1992): 25–35; Stevens, Law School, 38. STUDENTS IN CHARGE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 the legal profession at this time was viewed as more of a “mechanical trade” than a “liberal science,”25 an attitude that likely fortified faculty members’ disinclination to involve themselves directly in law reviews and to justify student control based on its educational value for students.

From the outset, the Harvard Law Review served as an outlet for faculty publications, providing a welcome means to spread the faculty’s scholarship and the institution’s reputation. Yet, it was also designed to serve as a mode of student training and development because students would not only contribute articles but also organize and edit the publication’s content. The publication proved to be a great success and, in the years to come, most law schools mimicked Harvard and established their own law reviews.

Org, accessed on June 15, 2006. Lawrence M. Friedman, American Law in the 20th Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 497. 33 34 . . . . . . . . . . . . THE LAW JOURNAL BREEDING GROUND or “refereeing” of manuscripts by experts in the field normally occurs. Publishing decisions almost always rest with students alone. The consequences of these pivotal traits for law review content, and the profession, have been extensively discussed and debated within the law school community but are little known outside of it.

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