Nevertheless, assuming that law school is the great determinator, this is one time in our history when we may need the Yale approach more than the Harvard one. As the market and economy spiral down, it's becoming increasingly clear that the old, traditional models have failed — and continue to do so. What's needed is something new, dramatic, and unusual. All things being equal, a group of Yale Law graduates is likelier to come up with something outside the box than their Harvard counterparts.
That, in fact, is the lesson of the early days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. At that time, Columbia Law School was the Yale of its era. In the 1920s and early 1930s, it was the center of the Legal Realist movement, with future New Dealers such as Felix Cohen and a young William Douglas on the faculty. The Realists insisted that legal education should include social-science analysis — hardly a radical idea now — but one resisted by many then, including the "formalists" at Harvard. Vastly oversimplifying, the Realists believed that the law was not something determinate but whatever any particular individuals (judges, legislators, etc.) decided at a particular time.
FDR, a fellow Columbian, relied heavily on a Columbia "Brain Trust" (including Adolph Berle and non-lawyer Rex Tugwell) when he constructed the largely experimental programs of the early New Deal. (It's worth mentioning that Harvard came to play a significant role, too, especially with the "Second New Deal," as Harvard Professor Felix Frankfurter, who argued against some of the more leftist programs of the New Deal, sent dozens of former students to DC to work in the administration.)
Experimentation or the tried and true? Creativity or discipline? The truth is we need a mixture of both. But if one is to be preferred to the other, when the Democrats had a choice this past spring between a graduate of Harvard Law and a graduate of Yale Law — namely Hillary Clinton — did they pick the wrong school?
To read the "Stark Ravings" blog, go to thePhoenix.com/blogs/starkravings. Steven Stark can be reached at sds@starkwriting.com.
