There's an interesting debate here on the necessity/sufficiency of having a doctorate degree in a cognate discipline for JDs who do interdisciplinary work. [HT Mirror of Justice] Dan Solove, it should be clear from reading his post, is responding to Brian Lieter's post, who has a PhD in philosophy and is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas's law school.
I had asked The Maverick Philosopher a similar question.
Before I considered going to law school I considered going to graduate school. Sometimes I believe I should've done just that. Since starting law school, and having professors here who have advanced degrees in disciplines other than law, I believe a doctorate in a cognate discipline can enhance one's scholarship. And while it may enhance one's scholarship, it doesn't have to do so necessarily.
Brian Lieter says, however, that to do cutting edge interdisciplinary work the PhD training is essential. Some searching of the academic, peer-reviewed journals would answer this question, but I wonder how many professors with just JDs are published in peer reviewed journals? I understand the inherent deficiency of journals that aren't peer reviewed, (i.e. law reviews) but to believe the sin qua non of doing cutting edge work is publication in a peer reviewed journal might be overstating the case. One commenter reminded us of using the usefulness of scholarly work as a measure of "cutting edge," which isn't too bad an indicator if you ask me. If the likes of Leiter (JD, PhD) get to define "cutting edge" then we may unfairly discount what might otherwise be novel, noteworthy scholarship were not the lack of letters after its author's name.
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[Updates below the fold]
MOJ's Michael Scaperlanda offers this counterexample.
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