At first blush, Northwestern University law professor Stephen B. Presser’s just-released survey of legal education, Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law, seems to lack a clearly defined mission. Presser, a self-described paleoconservative who says he was influenced by the journal Chronicles, where he has long served as legal affairs editor, has produced a treatise-length book (with 473 pages of text and nearly 1,400 footnotes) on a subject—legal academia—that many people regard as a bastion of left-wing ideology. Published by a scholarly press (West Academic) at a relatively hefty ($48) cover price, the book is aimed, at least in part, at a lay audience: “the general American public.”
Equal parts legal history, biography, and primer on jurisprudence, Law Professors defies categorization. Is it a text book, a reference work, a tutorial for pre-law students, a compilation of biographical profiles, a cautionary tale about the modern legal culture, or a synthesis of all the foregoing? The author calls it “a love letter to the teaching of law,” his vocation for over 40 years.
