<p>Do you have to have a law degree in order to study legal history?</p>
<p>That depends…</p>
<p>It’s possible to go either direction on this one. Many legal historians have doctorates in history; others have law degrees. Some have both. I had a doctorate in medieval English history with a specialty in constitutional and legal development. I studied with Bryce Lyon and S.B. Chrimes many years ago. I essentially had to picky my grad school according to the research specialty of my prof. </p>
<p>My husband has both a law degree and JD. He’s a practicing attorney, but has also taught in the classroom and published many articles that qualify as “legal history” (with a splash of social history thrown in).</p>
<p>PhD and law degree?</p>
<p>I know professors who have both. I was wondering if you can study legal history without the JD since the degree itself is very expensive (with loans).</p>
<p>You can definitely study legal history without a law degree. You just need to go to a History department where somone has a research specialty in the area that interests you.</p>
<p>I want to study legal history, both American and common law, maybe comparative. I’ve been doing research on joint JD/PhD programs. I love doing research, and I love teaching; however, at this time I think I would rather end up at a decent but smaller institution than at a crazy research-driven top 10. If I go the undergraduate/graduate history department professor route, would I generally be just as well served with a PhD alone? What about law school professor? Is the job market more amenable to a candidate with both degrees? What about publishing requirements/environmental differences (i.e. is one focus more demanding than the other? are people less collaborative or more competitive in law than in history departments? or are those unfair questions to generalize?)? How about ease of changing research focus? It seems like my history professors have sort of gotten trapped in their one subsection of their subfield of their field. Is being a law professor more or less flexible? Or is it just that I haven’t had a legal history professor (we don’t have one specifically in that field at my school), and legal history (i.e. constitutional or common law) is more maneuverable as my interests develop over time?</p>
<p>Oh, and I’ve read another thread on this forum from last November in which people were questioning the need to do “so much work” and “spread yourself so thin.” Just so I’m clear, I would just go to school for the rest of my life if I could make money for food and shelter at it. Academia is where my heart is and always has been.</p>
<p>Sable - all I could think when I read that first paragraph was… that’s a lot of school. Think six years for Ph.D. and then three long, harsh years for law school. The other thing is that you may have a very hard time even paying for food and shelter after going into a lot of debt - and law school will cost you a fortune. Reasonably expect that, in five years, law school will cost $200,000. If you do your Ph.D. first (so you don’t accrue interest on the l.s. debt as you go through your Ph.D.), you’ll be going to law school in about ten years. Consider that law school will cost an exhorbitant amount of money then. </p>
<p>You could always take law school courses if you are cross-enrolled, or you could, at some schools (UF, I think, does this), just take a few courses. </p>
<p>It isn’t about whether or not your heart is in academia - it’s about whether or not what you are doing even makes sense. Why would you study civil procedure, bankruptcy, accounting, the federal rules of criminal procedure, business arrangements, and tax when you want to study legal history? Most of the courses you would take in law school would not be at all relevant to legal history. You also would be learning legal research and writing, which could be somewhat helpful but mostly will be a waste of your time. There’s only a handful of law school classes that you’ll take which will actually be helpful for legal history. Even though the upper two years are largely elective, most schools won’t have two semesters worth of legal history courses. Law school isn’t a ton of fun - and if you want academia, you’ll have to maintain good grades.</p>
<p>So basically it’s a lot of time, a ridiculous amount of money, and a lot of effort for very little help.</p>
<p>Aries, is it possible for graduate students to take upper-level law electives??</p>
<p>That sounds reasonable. (Of course, it helps that I won’t have any undergrad debt). That’s the kind of answer I’ve been trying to get from school, but I hadn’t found anyone who could be honest with me.</p>
<p>One question, then–why do so many of the top schools, as well as many second and third tier law schools, offer these joint programs (some enrolled in law and graduate concurrently, and some simultaneously/alternating years or semesters)? I guess it’s clearer with policy or international relations or some of those, but then why are people getting these joint degrees in history? Why bother? What are they doing with them?</p>
<p>Of course, I’m definitely still exploring my options, testing the waters, so to speak; there’s conflicting info out there, so your opinion is definitely appreciated.</p>
<p>Well, to pull in a discussion from another thread, I can imagine that someone who wants to be an international lawyer would want a Ph.D. in the foreign language of choice so as to gain enough fluency to conduct law in that language.</p>
<p>Also, do not assume that, because a school offers something, a lot of students do it. You may have only a handful of students - at most - at those schools who take advantage of such programmes.</p>
<p>Even without undergrad debt, you’ll spend a fortune. The average undergrad debt of $19,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to law school debt.</p>