You can’t accuse Louisville’s Dean Jim Chen of setting standards too low. It’s hard not to respect the quality of his work, his work ethic, and perhaps most importantly, his deep unwavering commitment to scholarly productivity. Consider this quote from Jim’s post yesterday:
Scholarship is a core responsibility held, even cherished, by most members of the academy. Indeed, the best among us do not view it as a duty, but as a privilege. If higher education were to identify its gravest sins, the complete failure to produce scholarship surely would rank among the top seven.
When Jim became dean at Louisville, I knew that this could only be good news for the future of scholarship at that school. But I also suspected there were going to be some folks there who’d find his attitude a bit disconcerting. I suspsected then, but now I’m close to certain.
A couple of days ago, Geoffrey Rapp put up a post at Prawfs suggesting four possible reasons law professors don’t produce scholarship: (1) they have nothing to say that would reinvent the field; (2) nobody reads scholarship anyway; (3) they object to student edited law reviews; and (4) they’d prefer to teach and do service. In yesterday’s post, Jim Chen responded with his own take on those who don’t write:
Never attribute to active sin that which can be adequately explained by inertia. Inertia, of course, bears a striking resemblance to sloth. And sloth — alongside pride, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and wrath — has numbered among Christianity’s seven deadly sins since the Middle Ages….The easiest of the deadly sins to commit, in law and in academia as in the rest of life, is sloth. It often consists solely of doing what comes naturally — which is to say, nothing. Among sins, sloth reigns supreme…
Several years ago, (then) Bulls coach Scott Skiles was asked how the team’s center, Eddy Curry, could improve his rebounding. His answer? "Jump." Strong language from a coach. But language that Jim Chen would no doubt appreciate.
I hope that Dean Chen is better for Louisville Law than Scott Skiles was for the Bulls. The dean rightly suggests that scholarship is a privilege, but is less persuasive when he assumes that failure to publish is tantamount to sloth.
At the risk of bringing yet another thread to an early end, let me once again propose two cautions:
1) Scholarly productivity has not been shown to be positively related to teaching effectiveness, and
2) As Bob Spitzer ably demonstrates, the legal academy's current approach to "scholarship" has produced substantial collateral damage, particularly in the area of constitutional law.
These are hard truths for us law professors, especially for the young productive scholars who are the main contributors to this blog. A scholar's first duty is to follow the truth, despite the blandishments of a law school world that is as competitive in its way as is the NBA.