From Pragertopia: “Prager H1: Dennis talks to Glenn Reynolds, professor of law at U. of Tennessee and founder of Instapundit, one of the most read conservative blogs on the Internet. His new short books for Encounter Broadsides are: The Higher Education Bubble and K-12 Implosion.”
Glenn: “Both of them are propped up by a lot of cheap government credit. In the case of the housing bubble, it was mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and various other federal programs like the Community Reinvestment Act and that led to the price being driven up until we reached the point where people couldn’t service the debt anymore and the bubble burst.”
“Tuitions rose to capture all that federal government money.”
“When you get out of college and you’ve got all that debt, it is debt you can’t get out of (even if you declare bankruptcy).”
“The three year requirement for law school was introduced a hundred years ago as a way to keep out the Jews.”
Dennis: “Why would that keep out the Jews? Because it was too expensive?”
Glenn: “Yeah. At the time, you had a lot of these smart Eastern European immigrants who were used to rabbinical argument and analyzing text but they didn’t have a lot of money so you had rules saying you had to go to law school for two years, and then three, and you couldn’t work…”
“Once people are lawyers, they find these barriers to entry much more conducive…”
REPORT: Brian Tamanaha, a professor of law at Washington University School of Law shines a light on the disaster that has become of law schools. His book titled Failing Law Schools, details the looming crisis that has become the legal profession. I have to give Professor Tamanaha credit. It has to take a lot of courage and integrity to call out his profession on their malpractice.
Starting with the structural aspects of legal education, the author states that at the turn of the 20th century legal education changed focus from an apprenticeship approach to learning the profession to the requirement of a bachelor’s degree and 3 years of law school. This was due to plain old xenophobia/racism. To keep Eastern Europeans, Jews, and other recent immigrant groups out of the legal field, a medieval style guild was created.
