Against Personal Meaning

At the AALS New Law Teachers thing, there was some talk about how to set a scholarly agenda.  Some people thought that the best way to set such an agenda was to write about something personally meaningful.

But I’m not so sure.  Personal meaning might be a good way to get motivated to write about, say, international criminal law or religious freedom.  Or the heartfelt nature of the inquiry might prove to be distracting for rigorous work.

But is personal meaning the right yardstick to apply for the underserved legal subjects?  Pension law?  Tax?  Or, say, international trade and economic regulation?  I could tell a personal meaning story about trade: it is, as a mentor once told me, potentially world-historical in a globalizing, um, globe.  People will win big and lose big.  I could write to figure out a way to maximize the number of winners, or the prospects of the players I care about most.  And I could gild this tale with interesting references: trade is about the Silk Road and Venice, clipper ships and colonialism.

But I could also approach trade as a puzzle worth puzzling over, a legal regime that needs to be understood, perhaps improved even, even if it is centered in dull Geneva.  And take the psychic rewards from the interest of the inquiry, rather than from identification with the affecteds.  I’m not sure that corporate law scholars extract a lot of personal meaning from their advocacy for shareholders, directors and officers, or what have you.  But that doesn’t mean they can’t find the work engaging.

Still, I'd love to hear from our readers about what motivates them to set their research agendas, should they be in the research agenda setting game.