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One thing that I really like about traditional legal scholarship is that it asks the writer to deal with legal issues in the abstract.
That helps to ensure that legal principles and generalized analysis drive conclusions rather than just situational facts.
That helps to ensure that legal principles and generalized analysis drive conclusions rather than just situational facts.
That's why, when it comes to the hot topic of the day, I am always eager to read the opinions from legal scholars who wrote about the issue before it became enmeshed with present-day politics
They are less likely to let the situation in which the issue arose affect their analysis
They are less likely to let the situation in which the issue arose affect their analysis
That's certainly not always possible. Some topics are just too obscure to have warranted the time and effort that is required to write traditional legal scholarship. (Hello, GSA ascertainment!!)
But for plenty of other topics there's at least a law review article or two.
But for plenty of other topics there's at least a law review article or two.
Experts who want to participate in public discourse can feel incredibly frustrated when the discourse is dominated by those who know even less. (The tendency of news networks to hire former prosecutors as experts on basically all legal matters can be particularly galling.)
And as @danepps pointed out to me recently, some scholars probably err too much in the other direction--failing to participate in public discourse when they actually have a lot of subject matter expertise out of fear that they might inadvertently say something wrong.
But I continue to believe that law professors need to do the hard work that comes with traditional scholarship *before* they write the high profile op eds or give the national news interviews.
If we don't, then we run the risk of giving partisan opinions, rather than legal ones.
If we don't, then we run the risk of giving partisan opinions, rather than legal ones.
(Tagging in @espinsegall so he can tell me why I'm wrong! 
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