Political Science and the Legal Academy

Mark Graber has some interesting thoughts on political science and the legal academy at Balkinization.  Given that I sometimes think of myself as a political theorist trapped in a law school (and sometimes a lawyer trapped in thinking of the world through the categories of political theory), I think I might be able to weigh in on the subject.  In brief, here's the part of Graber's claim on which I'd like to focus:

Today, the crisis of scholarship is in political science departments rather than in law schools. As what counts as legal scholarship has expanded, what counts as political science scholarship is narrowing. Fueled in part by a new generation of administrators who increasingly evaluate scholarship by the amount of grant funding for the research and in part by a new generation of political scientists more concerned with getting money than ideas, what constitues good political science is increasingly being determined by market considerations. Statistics are good because you can get grants to collect data. History is bad because you have to read the text yourself. Objectivity is when you have a second year grad student code opinions as legal or conservative. Making the decision for yourself on the basis on intensive textual analysis is subjective and, hence, not really scientific. One consequence of all of this is that rather than think about interesting problems in the world and read texts, too many younger scholars are being told to use those methods that promise "certainty, and require expensive machinery and graduate students, so they can get funding. More than one law professor has complained that the result has been lots of statistics that either have little bearing on an important problem in the world or totally misconceives the problem in the world. Another consequence is that teaching in a law school has become increasingly attractive to a great many of us, precisely because the legal academy is becoming the place where ideas are judged on their merits, rather than on their economics. This situation is unfortunate. As humanistic political scientists either physically or emotionally leave their departments, fewer and fewer persons are left to train the next generation of scholars. The generation of political scientists that ranged from Howard Gillman to Christine Harrington to Jeff Segal has, in my judgment, been particularly creative. I fear, however, for the next generation and hope, that in addition to wooing us with both higher salaries and more supportive intellectual environments, law schools and law professors combat the increasing problems with political science with the same fervor that some of us sought to combat the problems we saw in legal scholarship.

There is something undoubtedly true and important about Graber's diagnosis of political science.  But I think he is underestimating both the market forces that caused some of these problems (and getting the causation a bit wrong) and the current forces within law schools and political science departments that will not help matters. 

First, Graber claims that "teaching in a law school has become increasingly attractive to a great many [political scientists interested in qualitative rather than quantitative research], precisely because the legal academy is becoming the place where ideas are judged on their merits, rather than on their economics."  Really?  Is the legal academy "becoming the place where ideas are judged on their merits"?  Ideas are often judged based on their appeal to second-year law students -- and promotion and prestige is tied to a system so far removed from intrinsic "merit" that this argument is hard to maintain.  A discipline without peer review really should have a difficult time making the claim with a straight face. 

Quite simply, political scientists seek jobs in law schools because the pay is better and tenure is relatively easier to attain.  These basic economic points could not be denied -- and plenty of my political science colleagues would take jobs in law schools over jobs in political science departments for economic reasons, notwithstanding their knowledge that they prefer to study and teach political science rather than law.  Indeed, a handful of my junior professors in graduate school were scheming to figure out how they could get law teaching jobs (without JDs), not because they didn't like political science or feel welcomed by it but because of the basic economics.  Most of them would hate dealing with law students -- who are a very different clientele than grad students.

This has led to another dynamic in entry-level political science hiring.  If your resume shows you to be interested in law (i.e., you also have a JD in addition to your PhD), political science departments don't waste their time with you.  They assume you'll get and take a law teaching job, so don't bother.  My sense is that it has nothing to do with whether you want to undertake qualitative or quantitative research; you just aren't a viable candidate because political science departments assume that no one in their right mind would do mostly the same work for half the pay and half the job security.  The political science departments may be right -- but they may be wrong too.  They are as much contributing to the problem by not trying to keep these candidates within political science.  Take Keith Whittington.  He turned down what must have been a much more lucrative offer from UT-Austin to stay in his political science department.  Others might do the same.  Although I was widely published and cited within political science (indeed, moreso than within legal circles), I had a much easier time on the law market than the political science market.  I didn't have to choose in the end because no political science department would have me.  But I think I was untouchable because political science departments assumed I'd go to a law school, not because I was doing qualitative work.   

To be sure, Graber has a different conception of "economics" in mind that scares humanistic political scientists away from political science departments and into law schools.  This may be somewhat right at the margins.  But you'd have to be blind to ignore that plenty of qualitative work continues in political science departments (indeed, in almost every subfield too!) and that the dominant paradigm in the nation's best law schools is "law and economics" (and the up-and-coming ELS), with all the quantitative techniques those paradigms demand.  Techniques, mind you, that Graber claims have taken over political science.  So I'm not sure law schools will much help.  We humanists have to police our departments from the inside; if you are relying on law schools to carry the mantle, I think you should prepare yourself for disappointment.  At least political science has The Perestroika Movement -- and vigorous debate about methodology with strong defenders of pluralism.  What does the law have?  Conferences to teach us all statistics?  Critical Legal Studies is dead.  Long live CLS.