History Majors

JHS
Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:57:00 +0000

History was the single most popular major at my (elite) college many years ago. Law school was a common choice for history majors, as was business / business school, journalism, and the foreign service and civil service. Relatively few history PhDs. A few best-selling novelists and successful politicians.

As a lawyer (and non-history-major), I think that the historian’s tool set is a very close fit with law. Not so much accumulating an extensive data base of “history facts” as the method of historical research – identifying evidence, both in obvious and in odd or surprising places, bringing interpretive skill and social science theory to bear on that evidence, shaping it into a coherent narrative, and presenting that narrative fairly but persuasively. I have always wanted to experiment by hiring history grad students to help with certain kinds of work – securities prospectus writing, due diligence, documentary discovery in litigation.