In Praise of Legal Scholarship

Judge Harry Edwards is likewise famously critical of legal scholarship.He has written a number of law review articles criticizing legal scholarship.4 In these articles, Judge Edwards claims that legal scholarship does not address the concerns of the profession because it has "little relevance to concrete issues, or addresses concrete issues in a wholly theoretical manner." 5 Perhaps most curiously, this critique 4 See generally Harry T. Edwards, Another "Postscript" to "The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession," 69 WASH.L. REV.561 (1994) (addressing responses to his article on the alleged "growing disjunction" between legal education and practice); Harry T. Edwards, The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 91 MICH.L. REV.34 (1992) [hereinafter Edwards, The Growing Disjunction] (claiming a "growing disjunction" between legal education and the practice of law, and growth of "impractical" scholarship); Harry T. Edwards, The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession: A Postscript, 91 MICH.L. REV.2191, 2195 (1992) (summarizing responses to his concern that law professors are not interested "in producing scholarship useful to practicing lawyers, judges, administrators, and legislators"); Harry T. Edwards, Reflections (on Law Review, Legal Education, Law Practice, and My Alma Mater), 100 MICH.L. REV.1999 (2002) (reflecting on his legal career and scholarship).For a more complete listing of Judge Edwards's commentary on legal scholarship and legal education see generally Ronald K.L. Collins, On Legal Scholarship: Questions for Judge Harry T. Edwards, 65 J. LEGAL.EDUC.637 (2016).5 Edwards, The Growing Disjunction, supra note 4, at 35.We might take Judge Edwards's most recent version of this criticism with a grain of salt, however.He was co-chair of the Committee tasked with looking at forensic science, see COMM. ON IDENTIFYING THE NEEDS OF