Though I have said nothing in this section about the teaching branch of the profession, the message of my article is directed to teachers as well as practicioners [sic] of law. Indeed, in a sense, it is directed particularly to teachers, for one of the most striking characteristics of our leading law schools today is the attitude of contempt that prevails in them toward the old-fashioned virtue of practical wisdom. Why this should be so is a long and complicated story. One thing, however, is clear. The mistrust of practical wisdom and of arguments appealing to it, which is symptomatic of so much of contemporary legal scholarship, has led to a new and disturbing division within the profession as a whole, between the practicing bar and the professorate [sic].
There will, of course, always be a separation of sorts between those who choose an academic career in law and those who practice their craft in some more worldly setting. In this country, such a separation has existed for at least a century, since legal education began to assume an academic character. In recent years, however, the separation has widened considerably. Most practicing lawyers still believe that excellence in the practice of law requires prudence or sound judgment, a view shared by those law teachers whose primary identification continues to be with the practicing bar. Many law teachers, however (including some of the most widely read and well-respected ones) take a different and more disparaging view of these qualities. In their view, an insistence on the importance of practical wisdom is to be regarded either as an ideological ploy or as a sign of scientific naivete. To be sure, practicing lawyers and law teachers inevitably will have different interests and aims. This difference in outlook becomes troubling, however, when it is accompanied by a loss of respect on the one side for the qualities of mind and temperament whose possession is regarded by those on the other as a badge of professional pride.
(Anthony T. Kronman, "Living in the Law," The University of Chicago Law Review 54 [summer 1987]: 835-76, at 873 n. 58)
Note from KBJ: Legal academics (i.e., law professors) disrespect judges for a number of reasons. First, many law professors have never practiced law, and therefore do not know law "from the inside." They literally don't know what they're talking about. Second, and relatedly, many law professors endorse, either explicitly or implicitly, legal realism, which holds that law is heteronomous rather than autonomous. Legal realism is nothing more than cynicism (the questioning of motives) applied to law. Third, many law professors are overly impressed by the methods and results of science and seek to impose those methods and results on law. What they fail to grasp is that law is not a science; it is a rule-governed, normative activity. Fourth, many law professors view themselves as politically and socially radical (though in fact they are hopelessly bourgeois). They see judging as working within the system rather than as fundamentally transforming the system. Fifth, many law professors are lazy. It's much easier to criticize judges than to do the constructive work of developing legal doctrine. The legal academy is a cesspool. Most judges understand this and ignore law professors.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 