Thomas Bulfinch was right. Relaxation from study can be, under the right circumstances, a form of study. But how can one provide the right circumstances in a law school curriculum? Law and Literature comes immediately to mind.
Ideas are inherently fascinating things, yet law students often resist their fascination. In so-called practical courses, like the ones I usually teach, a discussion of ideas is generally greeted as an unwelcome distraction from the perceived substance of the course. And even in avowedly theoretical courses like Jurisprudence, ideas often lose their savor if they are presented merely as abstract propositions or experienced merely as exercises in taxonomy (deontological) or name-dropping (Kantian). Moreover, in either kind of law school course, any discussion of ideas is hampered by the students’ suspicion that some ideas are necessarily sounder than others and that the professor, despite her protestations to the contrary, knows perfectly well which are which. An untrammeled discussion of ideas is more likely to bloom in an atmosphere where the participants presume that one person’s ideas are as good as anyone else’s: an atmosphere where each student can approach each idea with the freedom of an amateuran atmosphere, indeed, where the professor is something of an amateur, too. . . .