Justice Antonin Scalia is famous for making controversial comments about everything from law school to gay people.
At the University of New Hampshire School of Law last Friday, Scalia said legal education is a "failure" and has declined since Harvard created a formal law curriculum in 1870, the Portsmouth Herald reports.
He added that law schools offer too many elective courses that allow students to slack off and miss the "austere pleasures of doctrinal courses."
“We now have classes in the law and ... the law and literature, the law and feminism, the law and poverty, the law and economics,” Scalia said.
He made similar comments at University of Wyoming Law School last fall, according to the Casper Star-Tribune.
“The only time you’re going to have an opportunity to study a whole area of the law systematically is in law school,” Scalia said. “You should not waste that opportunity. Take the bread and butter courses. Do not take, ‘law and women,’ do not take ‘law and poverty,’ do not take ‘law and anything,’” he said.
He also said that law professors focus much more on publishing books and academic articles than they do on teaching. The academic system rewards them for "not...how they teach but how they publish." During his years as a UVA law professor, he said he "begrudged" how much time he spent teaching students instead of writing and researching.
Please follow Law & Order on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
