Why the Interdisciplinary Movement in Legal Academia Might be a Bad Idea (For Most Law Schools)

Balkanization — Why the Interdisciplinary Movement in Legal Academia Might be a Bad Idea (For Most Law Schools):

Interdisciplinary stud­ies are cur­rently the rage in legal acad­e­mia. An increas­ing num­ber of law schools are tout­ing their inter­dis­ci­pli­nary pro­grams, which include offer­ing courses from other aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­plines (eco­nom­ics, sta­tis­tics, anthro­pol­ogy, etc.) in the law school cur­ricu­lum, cre­at­ing law and social sci­ence insti­tutes of var­i­ous sorts within the law school, offer­ing joint JD/​PhD pro­grams, and hir­ing JD/​ PhD faculty.

It seems like an irre­sistible move­ment with the poten­tial to trans­form legal acad­e­mia. But based upon the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence and the nature of legal prac­tice, I’m skeptical.

Personally, I find inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approaches obvi­ous and inevitable, and hardly rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Transformative? Perhaps. But then again, the law has always been (and con­tin­ues to be) inter­dis­ci­pli­nary (the facts of every case involve other dis­ci­plines, after all), so what is so dras­tic about allow­ing law stu­dents to explore that as stu­dents?