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R ESISTING A NTI -I NTELLECTUALISM AND
PROMOTING LEGAL LITERACY
Leonard J. Long*

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." Mark Twain
More than a century ago, on November 7, 1907, philosopher and
psychologist William James gave an address entitled ‘The Social Value of the
College-Bred’1 at Radcliffe College. James posed one simple question. “Of
what use is a collegetraining?”2 That is, why go to college? And, in the
context of early twentieth-century America, where a college education was,
indeed, a very rare exception, James noted that “[w]e who have had [college
training] seldom hear the question raised)we might be a little nonplussed to
answer it offhand.”3 Anyone involved with legal education (e.g., teachers,
students, lawyers, judges) should askabout law school education what James
asked about a college education. Of what use is a law school education?

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Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University School of Law; leonard.long@quinnipiac.edu;
http://thecosmopolitanlawyer.blogspot.com/ Copyright © 2009 Leonard Josef Long. Many debts of
gratitude are owed to Neal R. Feigenson, Stephen G. Gilles, Alexander M. Meiklejohn andGail Sara
Stern, as well as Articles Editor Cyndi Bollman, for providing helpful critical comments. Any
wrongheadedness contained herein is the author’s alone.
WILLIAM JAMES, “The Social Value of the College-Bred, An Address Made at a Meeting of the
Association of American Alumna at Radcliffee College, November 7, 1907,” reprinted in WRITINGS
1902–1910 at 1242 (1988).
Id. at 1242.
Id. at1242. Is James caught up in, or reinforcing, a myth about college education? Or, did he simply
not take into account ‘class’?
The assumption that “a college degree” means something without the college name
being specified is woven so deeply into the American myth that it dies very hard,
even when confronted with the facts of the class system and its complicity with the
hierarchies of the higherlearning. For example: Vance Packard, in the Status
Seekers, was persuaded as late as 1959 that the idea of “a college diploma” carried
sufficient meaning to justify the class designation “the Diploma Elite.” Quite wrong.
To represent affairs accurately, you would have to designate an “Elite Diploma
Elite,” because having a degree from Amherst or Williams or Harvard or Yale should
never beconfused with having one from Eastern Kentucky University or Hawaii
Pacific College or Arkansas State or Bob Jones. Packard obfuscates the facts when
he says, “[a] college girl is six times as likely to marry a college man as a noncollege
girl,” which fatally ignores the flagrant unlikelihood of a man from Dartmouth
marrying a girl from Nova College, Fort Lauderdale.
PAUL FUSSELL, CLASS: AGUIDE THROUGH THE AMERICAN STATUS SYSTEM 132–33 (1983). As with
college degrees, does the same notion stand with respect to law school degrees?

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Southern Illinois University Law Journal

[Vol. 34

I. THE UNINTENDED NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF TRAINING
STUDENTS JUST TO BE LAWYERS
Certainly law schools must educate their students in ways, in subjects,
and in skills which will enablelaw school graduates to perform quality legal
work, that is, assuming their students intend to practice law after graduation.
Yet, some law students attend law school with little intention of practicing law
or they begin law school with the idea of actually practicing law for a
relatively short period of time. For example, law training may be beneficial
to a budding legal historian or a legalphilosopher. It may also be helpful to
individuals who are planning on pursuing academic careers in subjects where
general knowledge of law is helpful, but where the position doesn’t require the
ability to practice law. Some who pursue careers in journalism, politics,
business, social services, or community organizing have found a legal
education to be beneficial while others, though they...