Yesterday, Bloomberg Law published the reporters Lydia Wheeler and Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson’s story, Justices’ History Focus Tests Lawyers, Judges, and Law Schools. Among other things, they report that the history and tradition approach of the U.S. Supreme Court is putting a premium on law students who can do legal history–beyond the skills taught in originalism “boot camps.” They quote a lawyer with a Supreme Court practice: “History and tradition I do think is tough because you’re expanding the playing field to include everything that happened, potentially at both the state and federal level at a given point in time, which could have been hundreds of years ago.” They observe, “Historical research isn’t a skill that law students traditionally learn” and quote Saul Cornell for the proposition that law schools aren’t teaching students how to do historical research. “Right when this is most important, law schools don’t have the infrastructure,” Professor Cornell said.
--Dan Ernst
