The Yale LL.M: ORIGINALISM

It may come as a surprise, but Yale Law School - despite its liberal leanings (according to Fisman et al, Science, 18 September 2015, Vol. 349 no. 6254, less than 1 out of 10 students self-identifies as Republican) - is deeply originalist. Though, I must clarify, this originalism is of a different mold than the originalism used by Justices Scalia or Thomas to justify their conservative claims. It is, in fact, quite the opposite of a conservative attitude. Yale Law School’s originalism is its obsession with originality.

You will notice this on the first day of orientation, when you may enjoy the pleasure of having Harold Koh, former dean of YLS and security advisor to Hilary Clinton during her time at the State Department, introduce you to the culture of the law school. Citing Guido Calabresi, Koh urged us to – sooner or later – come up with “our IDEA”. Without any such truly original idea, our distinctive take on the legal world, our lives as scholars would be doomed to fail.

(This is how you're supposed to always look like at Yale. But how can you do that? And do you have to wear a tie?)

This prep talk raised several questions that have haunted me (and most likely other LLMs) through most of my Yale experience: Is one idea enough? Will somebody actually be willing to pay me for the remainder of my life for having delivered a single IDEA? What does this mean for my hourly wage while I come up with the IDEA? It must be astronomical. Is IKEA such an IDEA? Seriously: What kind of IDEA can fuel an entire life of scholarship? It must be quite big. If that is the case, isn’t it too much to be asked for? How many big ideas are still out there? Can any of us come up with one? Does the IDEA have any content or is it more like a mindset, a lens through which we look at law’s empire? Is this IDEA what makes my thoughts original?

However vague the idea of the IDEA may be, it has considerable traction on life at YLS. Faculty workshop, where Yale professors discuss their recent scholarship, is one good place to observe IDEAS at work. It is striking, to what degree most professors’ questions and comments are shaped and structured by their respective IDEA. These IDEAS provide originality, precision and an interesting ring to most of the discussion. On the other hand, IDEAS and originality come at a prize: Not all issues are fit for all IDEAS. I may have a hammer, but not all things are nails. Sometimes deference to the IDEA of someone else may be the order of the day.

This kind of modesty is certainly not being encouraged at Yale (nor - from what I've heard - at other US law schools). Instead, the BUBBLE infuses us with millions of ideas while classes and teachers push us to develop and – as boldly as prematurely – state our own. The READING MYTH contributes to this tendency by assuring a constant exposure to new IDEAS, while not allowing the time to effectively and conclusively wrestle with any of them. So far, Yale’s ORIGINALISM, its extreme prime on originality, is what has made my experience so rich. This does not mean that it isn’t an obsession.

For more on the LL.M. programs at Yale Law, please see the school's profile on LLM GUIDE.

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