Juris Doctor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor)

A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence,[1] or Doctor of Law[2] (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree in law. The JD is the standard degree obtained to practice law in the United States, where there is no undergraduate professional law degree. Some jurisdictions, such as Australia, Canada and Hong Kong, offer both the JD and undergraduate qualifying law degrees.

In the United States, the JD has the academic standing of a professional doctorate (in contrast to a research doctorate),[3][4] and is described as a "doctor's degree – professional practice" by the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.[5][6] In Australia, South Korea, and Hong Kong, it has the academic standing of a master's degree,[7][8] while in Canada, it is considered a second-entry bachelor's degree.[9][10] Notwithstanding the use of the word "doctor" in the title, JD holders typically do not use the honorific "Dr".

The degree was first awarded in the United States in the early 20th-century as a modern version of the old European Doctor of Law degrees, such as the Dottore in Giurisprudenza in Italy, and the Juris Utriusque Doctor in Germany and central Europe. A century prior, the most common law degree awarded in the US was termed the LLB, but by the late 20th century, the LLB was phased out in favor of the JD. JD programs in the US are typically three years full time, although some law schools offer longer part-time as well as accelerated programs. ABA Rules do not allow an accredited JD to be obtained in less than 2 years.[11][12]

To be fully authorized to practice law in the courts of a given state in the United States, the majority of individuals holding a JD degree must pass a bar examination,[13][14][15][16] except from the state of Wisconsin.[17][18] US patent courts also involve a specialized "Patent Bar" which require applicants to hold an additional degree in certain scientific fields alongside their JD.[19]

Etymology and abbreviations

In the United States, the professional doctorate in law may be conferred in Latin or in English as Juris Doctor (sometimes shown on Latin diplomas in the accusative form Juris Doctorem) and at some law schools Doctor of Law (JD),[20] or Doctor of Jurisprudence (also abbreviated JD).[21][22] "Juris Doctor" literally means "teacher of law", while the Latin for "Doctor of Jurisprudence" – Jurisprudentiae Doctor – literally means "teacher of legal knowledge".

The JD is not to be confused with Doctor of Laws or Legum Doctor (LLD). In institutions where the latter can be earned, e.g., Cambridge University (where it is titled "Doctor of Law", though still retaining the abbreviation LLD) and many other British institutions, it is a higher research doctorate, representing a substantial contribution to the field over many years – a standard of professional experience beyond that required for a Doctor of Philosophy.[23] In the United States, the LLD is invariably an honorary degree.

Historical context

Origins of the law degree

The first university in Europe, the University of Bologna, was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 11th century who were students of the glossator school in that city. This served as the model for other law schools of the Middle Ages, and other early universities such as the University of Padua.[24] The first academic degrees may[a] have been doctorates in civil law (doctores legum) followed by canon law (doctores decretorum); these were not professional degrees but rather indicated that their holders had been approved to teach at the universities. While Bologna granted only doctorates, preparatory degrees (bachelor's and licences) were introduced in Paris and then in the English universities.[26][27][28][29]

History of legal training in England

The Inns of Court of London served as a professional school for lawyers in England

The nature of the JD can be better understood by a review of the context of the history of legal education in England. The teaching of law at Cambridge and Oxford Universities was mainly for philosophical or scholarly purposes and not meant to prepare one to practice law.[30]: 434, 435  The universities only taught civil and canon law (used in a very few jurisdictions, such as the courts of admiralty and church courts) but not the common law that applied in most jurisdictions. Professional training for practicing common law in England was undertaken at the Inns of Court, but over time the training functions of the Inns lessened considerably and apprenticeships with individual practitioners arose as the prominent medium of preparation.[30]: 434, 436  However, because of the lack of standardisation of study, and of objective standards for appraisal of these apprenticeships, the role of universities became subsequently important for the education of lawyers in the English-speaking world.[30]: 436 

In England in 1292 when Edward I first requested that lawyers be trained, students merely sat in the courts and observed, but over time the students would hire professionals to lecture them in their residences, which led to the institution of the Inns of Court system.[30]: 430  The original method of education at the Inns of Court was a mix of moot court-like practice and lecture, as well as court proceedings observation.[30]: 431  By the fifteenth century, the Inns functioned like a university, akin to the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, though very specialized in purpose.[30]: 432  With the frequent absence of parties to suits during the Crusades, the importance of the lawyer role grew tremendously, and the demand for lawyers grew.[30]: 433 

Traditionally Oxford and Cambridge did not see common law as worthy of academic study, and included coursework in law only in the context of canon and civil law (the two "laws" in the original Bachelor of Laws, which thus became the Bachelor of Civil Law when the study of canon law was barred after the Reformation) and for the purpose of the study of philosophy or history only. As a consequence of the need for practical education in law, the apprenticeship program for solicitors emerged, structured and governed by the same rules as the apprenticeship programs for the trades.[30]: 434  The training of solicitors by a five-year apprenticeship was formally established by the Attorneys and Solicitors Act 1728.[30]: 435  William Blackstone became the first lecturer in English common law at the University of Oxford in 1753, but the university did not establish the program for the purpose of professional study, and the lectures were very philosophical and theoretical in nature.[30]: 435  Blackstone insisted that the study of law should be university based, where concentration on foundational principles can be had, instead of concentration on detail and procedure provided by apprenticeship and the Inns of Court.[31]: 775, 793 

The 1728 act was amended in 1821 to reduce the period of the required apprenticeship to three years for graduates in either law or arts from Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, as "the admission of such graduates should be facilitated, in consideration of the learning and abilities requisite for taking such degree".[32] This was extended in 1837 to cover the newly established universities of Durham and London,[33] and again in 1851 to include the new Queen's University of Ireland.[34]

The Inns of Court continued but became less effective, and admission to the bar still did not require any significant educational activity or examination. In 1846, Parliament examined the education and training of prospective barristers and found the system to be inferior to that of Europe and the United States, as Britain did not regulate the admission of barristers.[30]: 436  Therefore, formal schools of law were called for but were not finally established until later in the century, and even then the bar did not consider a university degree in admission decisions.[30]: 436 

Until the mid nineteenth century, most law degrees in England (the BCL at Oxford and Durham, and the LLB at London)[35][36][37] were postgraduate degrees, taken after an initial degree in arts. The Cambridge degree, variously referred to as a BCL, BL or LLB, was an exception: it took six years from matriculation to complete, but only three of these had to be in residence, and the BA was not required (although those not holding a BA had to produce a certificate to prove they had not only been in residence but had actually attended lectures for at least three terms).[38][39] These degrees specialised in Roman civil law rather than in English common law, the latter being the domain of the Inns of Court, and thus they were more theoretical than practically useful.[40] Cambridge reestablished its LLB degree in 1858 as an undergraduate course alongside the BA,[41] and the London LLB, which had previously required a minimum of one year after the BA, become an undergraduate degree in 1866.[42] The older nomenclature continues to be used for the BCL at Oxford today, which is a master's level program, while Cambridge moved its LLB back to being a postgraduate degree in 1922 but only renamed it as the LLM in 1982.[43]

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, law schools in England took on a more central role in the preparation of lawyers and consequently improved their coverage of advanced legal topics to become more professionally relevant. Over the same period, American law schools became more scholarly and less professionally oriented, so that in 1996 Langbein could write: "That contrast between English law schools as temples of scholarship and American law schools as training centers for the profession no longer bears the remotest relation to reality".[44]

Legal training in colonial North America and 19th-century United States

Initially there was much resistance to lawyers in colonial North America because of the role they had played in hierarchical England, but slowly the colonial governments started using the services of professionals trained in the Inns of Court in London, and by the end of the American Revolution there was a functional bar in each state.[31]: 775  Due to an initial distrust of a profession open only to the elite in England, as institutions for training developed in what would become the United States they emerged as quite different from those in England.[30]: 429 

Initially in the United States the legal professionals were trained and imported from England.[30]: 438  A formal apprenticeship or clerkship program was established first in New York in 1730 — at that time a seven-year clerkship was required, and in 1756 a four-year college degree was required in addition to five years of clerking and an examination.[30]: 439  Later the requirements were reduced to require only two years of college education.[30]: 439  But a system like the Inns did not develop, and a college education was not required in England until the 19th century, so this system was unique.

The clerkship program required much individual study and the mentoring lawyer was expected to carefully select materials for study and guide the clerk in his study of the law and ensure that it was being absorbed.[31]: 781  The student was supposed to compile his notes of his reading of the law into a "commonplace book", which he would try to memorize.[31]: 782  Although those were the ideals, in reality the clerks were often overworked and rarely were able to study the law individually as expected. They were often employed to tedious tasks, such as making handwritten copies of documents. Finding sufficient legal texts was also a seriously debilitating issue, and there was no standardization in the books assigned to the clerk trainees because they were assigned by their mentor, whose opinion of the law may have differed greatly from his peers.[31]: 782, 783 

It was said by one famous attorney in the United States, William Livingston, in 1745 in a New York newspaper that the clerkship program was severely flawed, and that most mentors

 ''  "have no manner of concern for their clerk's future welfare ... [T]is a monstrous absurdity to suppose, that the law is to be learnt by a perpetual copying of precedents".[31]: 782 ''

There were some few mentors that were dedicated to the service, and because of their rarity, they became so sought-after that the first law schools evolved from the offices of some of these attorneys, who took on many clerks and began to spend more time training than practicing law.[31]: 782 
Tapping Reeve, founder of the first law school in North America, the Litchfield Law School, in 1773

In time, the apprenticeship program was not considered sufficient to produce lawyers fully capable of serving their clients' needs.[45]: 13  The apprenticeship programs often employed the trainee with menial tasks, and while they were well trained in the day-to-day operations of a law office, they were generally unprepared practitioners or legal reasoners.[30] The establishment of formal faculties of law in United States universities did not occur until the latter part of the 18th century.[30]: 442  With the beginning of the American Revolution, the supply of lawyers from Britain ended. The first law degree granted by a United States university was a Bachelor of Law in 1793 by the College of William and Mary, which was abbreviated L.B.; Harvard was the first university to use the LLB abbreviation in the United States.[46]

The first university law programs in the United States, such as that of the University of Maryland established in 1812, included much theoretical and philosophical study, including works such as the Bible, Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Montesquieu and Grotius.[31]: 794  It has been said that the early university law schools of the early 19th century seemed to be preparing students for careers as statesmen rather than as lawyers.[31]: 795  At the LLB programs in the early 1900s at Stanford University and Yale continued to include "cultural study", which included courses in languages, mathematics and economics.[46]: 19  An LLB, or a Bachelor of Laws, recognized that a prior bachelor's degree was not required to earn an LLB.

In the 1850s there were many proprietary schools which originated from a practitioner taking on multiple apprentices and establishing a school and which provided a practical legal education, as opposed to the one offered in the universities which offered an education in the theory, history and philosophy of law.[45]: 15  The universities assumed that the acquisition of skills would happen in practice, while the proprietary schools concentrated on the practical skills during education.[45]: 15 

Revolutionary approach: scientific study of law

In part to compete with the small professional law schools, there began a great change in United States university legal education. For a short time beginning in 1826 Yale began to offer a complete "practitioners' course" which lasted two years and included practical courses, such as pleading drafting.[31]: 798  United States Supreme Court justice Joseph Story started the spirit of change in legal education at Harvard, when he advocated a more "scientific study" of the law in the 19th century.[31]: 800  At the time he was a lecturer at Harvard. Therefore, at Harvard the education was much of a trade school type of approach to legal education, contrary to the more liberal arts education advocated by Blackstone at Oxford and Jefferson at William and Mary.[31]: 801  Nonetheless, there continued to be debate among educators over whether legal education should be more vocational, as at the private law schools, or through a rigorous scientific method, such as that developed by Story and Langdell.[30][b] In the words of Dorsey Ellis, "Langdell viewed law as a science and the law library as the laboratory, with the cases providing the basis for learning those 'principles or doctrines' of which law, considered as a science, consists.'"[48] Nonetheless, into the year 1900, most states did not require a university education (although an apprenticeship was often required) and most practitioners had not attended any law school or college.[31]: 801 

Therefore, the modern legal education system in the United States is a combination of teaching law as a science and a practical skill,[31]: 802  implementing elements such as clinical training, which has become an essential part of legal education in the United States and in the JD program of study.[45]: 19 

Creation of the JD and major common law approaches to legal education

The JD originated in the United States during a movement to improve training of the professions. Prior to the origination of the JD, law students began law school either with only a high school diploma, or less than the amount of undergraduate study required to earn a bachelor's degree. The LLB persisted through the middle of the 20th century, after which a completed bachelor's degree became a requirement for virtually all students entering law school. The didactic approaches that resulted were revolutionary for university education and have slowly been implemented outside the United States, but only recently (since about 1997) and in stages. The degrees which resulted from this new approach, such as the MD and the JD, are just as different from their European counterparts as the educational approaches differ.

Legal education in the United States

Stages

Pre-law - Law school - Legal clinic - Juris Doctor - Master of Laws - Doctor of Juridical Science

Exams and licensure

LSAT Admission to the bar Continuing legal education

Organizations

Law School Admission Council - Association of American Law Schools - American Bar Association - Practising Law Institute

Professional doctorates were developed in the United States in the 19th century, the first being the Doctor of Medicine in 1807,[49]: 162  but at the time, the legal system in the United States was still in development as the educational institutions were developing, and the status of the legal profession was at that time still ambiguous and so the professional law degree took more time to develop. Even when some universities offered training in law, they did not offer a degree.[49]: 165  Because in the United States there were no Inns of Court, and the English academic degrees did not provide the necessary professional training, the models from England were inapplicable, and the degree program took some time to develop.[49]: 164 

At first the degree took the form of a B.L. (such as at the College of William and Mary), but then Harvard, keen on importing legitimacy through the trappings of Oxford and Cambridge, implemented an LLB degree.[49]: 167  The decision to award a bachelor's degree for law could be due to the fact that admittance to most nineteenth-century American law schools required only satisfactory completion of high school.[50] The degree was nevertheless somewhat controversial at the time because it was a professional training without any of the cultural or classical studies required of a degree in England,[51][49]: 161  where it was necessary to gain a general BA prior to an LLB or BCL until the nineteenth century.[51]: 78  Thus, even though the name of the English LLB degree was implemented at Harvard, the program in the United States was nonetheless intended as a first degree which, unlike the English B.A., gave practical or professional training in law.[49]: 169 [51]: 74 

Creation of the Juris Doctor

In the mid-19th century there was much concern about the quality of legal education in the United States. C.C. Langdell served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, and dedicated his life to reforming legal education in the United States. The historian Robert Stevens wrote that "it was Langdell's goal to turn the legal profession into a university educated one — and not at the undergraduate level, but through a three-year post baccalaureate degree."[52] This graduate level study would allow the intensive legal training that Langdell had developed, known as the case method (a method of studying landmark cases) and the Socratic method (a method of examining students on the reasoning of the court in the cases studied). Therefore, a graduate, high-level law degree was proposed: the Juris Doctor, implementing the case and Socratic methods as its didactic approach.[53] According to professor J. H. Beale, an 1882 Harvard Law graduate, one of the main arguments for the change was uniformity. Harvard's four professional schools – theology, law, medicine, and arts and sciences – were all graduate schools, and their degrees were therefore a second degree. Two of them conferred a doctorate and the other two a baccalaureate degree. The change from LLB to JD was intended to end "this discrimination, the practice of conferring what is normally a first degree upon persons who have already their primary degree".[54] The JD was proposed as the equivalent of the German J.U.D., to reflect the advanced study required to be an effective lawyer.

The University of Chicago Law School was the first to offer the JD in 1902,[29]: 112–117  when it was just one of five law schools that demanded a college degree from its applicants.[50] While approval was still pending at Harvard, the degree was introduced at many other law schools, including at the law schools at NYU, Berkeley, Michigan, and Stanford. Because of tradition, and concerns about less prominent universities implementing a JD program, prominent eastern law schools like those of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia refused to implement the degree. Harvard, for example, refused to adopt the JD degree, even though it restricted admission to students with college degrees in 1909.[55] Indeed, pressure from eastern law schools led almost every law school (except at the University of Chicago and other law schools in Illinois) to abandon the JD and re‑adopt the LLB as the first law degree by the 1930s.[55]: 21  By 1962, the JD degree was rarely seen outside the Midwest.[55]

After the 1930s, the LLB and the JD degrees co‑existed in some American law schools. Some law schools, especially in Illinois and the Midwest, awarded both (like Marquette University, beginning in 1926), conferring JD degrees only to those with a bachelor's degree (as opposed to two or three years of college before law school), and those who met a higher academic standard in undergraduate studies, finishing a thesis in their third year of law school.[56] Because the JD degree was no more advantageous for bar admissions or for employment, the vast majority of Marquette students preferred to seek the LLB degree.[56]

As more law students entered law schools with college degrees in the 1950s and 1960s, a number of law schools may have introduced the JD to encourage law students to complete their undergraduate degrees.[56] As late as 1961, there were still 15 ABA-accredited law schools in the United States which awarded both LLB and JD degrees. Thirteen of the 15 were located in the Midwest, which may indicate regional variations in the United States.[56]
A Juris Doctor conferred by Suffolk Law School.

It was only after 1962 that a new push — this time begun at less-prominent law schools — successfully led to the universal adoption of the JD as the first law degree. The turning point appears to have occurred when the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar unanimously adopted a resolution recommending to all approved law schools that they give favorable consideration to the conferring of the JD degree as the first professional degree, in 1962 and 1963.[50] By the 1960s, most law students were college graduates, and by the end of that decade, almost all were required to be.[55] Student and alumni support were key in the LLB-to-JD change, and even the most prominent schools were convinced to make the change: Columbia and Harvard in 1969, and Yale (last) in 1971.[55]: 22–23 [50][57] Nonetheless, the LLB at Yale retained the didactical changes of the "practitioners' courses" of 1826, and was very different from the LLB in common law countries, other than Canada.[31]: 798 

Following standard modern academic practice, Harvard Law School refers to its Master of Laws and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees as its graduate level law degrees.[58] Similarly, Columbia refers to the LLM and the JSD as its graduate program.[59] Yale Law School lists its LLM, MSL, JSD, and Ph.D. as constituting graduate programs.[60] A distinction thus remains between professional and graduate law degrees in the United States.

Major common law approaches
See also: Legal education in the United Kingdom

The English legal system is the root of the systems of other common-law countries, such as the United States. Originally, common lawyers in England were trained exclusively in the Inns of Court. Even though it took nearly 150 years since common law education began with Blackstone at Oxford for university education to be part of legal training in England and Wales, the LLB eventually became the degree usually taken before becoming a lawyer. In England and Wales the LLB is an undergraduate scholarly program and although it (assuming it is a qualifying law degree) fulfills the academic requirements for becoming a lawyer,[61] further vocational and professional training as either a barrister (the Bar Professional Training Course[62] followed by pupillage[63]%29 or as a solicitor (the Legal Practice Course[64] followed by a "period of recognised training"[65]) is required before becoming licensed in that jurisdiction.[44] The qualifying law degree in most English universities is the LLB although in some, including Oxford and Cambridge, it is the BA in law.[66] Both of these can be taken with "senior status" in two years by those already holding an undergraduate degree in another discipline.[67] A few universities offer "exempting" degrees, usually integrated master's degrees denominated Master in Law (MLaw), that combine the qualifying law degree with the legal practice course or the bar professional training course in a four-year, undergraduate-entry program.[68][69]

Legal education in Canada has unique variations from other Commonwealth countries. Even though the legal system of Canada is mostly a transplant of the English system (Quebec excepted), the Canadian system is unique in that there are no Inns of Court, the practical training occurs in the office of a barrister and solicitor with law society membership, and, since 1889, a university degree has been a prerequisite to initiating an articling clerkship.[49]: 27  The education in law schools in Canada was similar to that in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, but with a greater concentration on statutory drafting and interpretation, and elements of a liberal education. The bar associations in Canada were influenced by the changes at Harvard, and were sometimes quicker to nationally implement the changes proposed in the United States, such as requiring previous college education before studying law.[51]: 390 
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