Article by Paul T. Wangerin
This Article, which principally concerns the special responsibilities of law school professors, has three parts. After briefly discussing the work of John Dewey and Jean Piaget, Part I demonstrates that William Perry, a developmental psychologist, describes a cognitive development sequence in the intellectual abilities of young adults that can readily be used to catalogue the various developmental phases through which many law students seem to pass. This Article uses both empirical and anecdotal data to link Perry's ideas to law school students. Perry describes intellectual movement in young people as movement toward gradual acceptance of multiplicity and relativism and then as movement toward commitment in relativism. This part of the Article also briefly compares Perry's scheme to Karen Kitchener's and Patricia King's ideas about the development of reflective judgment. Unlike Perry's sequence, Kitchener's and King's sequence suggests that intellectual movement in young adults is gradually toward the appreciation of objective truth. Finally, Part I discusses some cognitive developmental dangers that legal education poses for young adults.
Part II of this Article explores theories of moral development, as opposed to cognitive development. The theories principally discussed in this section are those of psychologists Lawrence Kolhberg and Norma Haan. Kolhberg describes moral development as the gradual movement through a series of stages toward ultimate appreciation of objective truth. Haan disagrees. She thinks development involves an increased ability to engage in what is essentially relativistic moral dialogue. Again, this Article uses empirical and anecdotal data to explore these different ideas regarding law students and lawyers.
Part III links the dispute about objectivism and relativism to ideas put forward by radical critics in the fields of legal education and developmental psychology. In legal education, members of the Critical Legal Studies movement attack mainstream legal theory from the far left on the political spectrum. In developmental psychology, feminist psychologists similarly attack mainstream developmental theory. Both of these attacks are launched, it will be shown, from a platform of relativistic truth.
An important introductory point must be made in an Article like the present one, an Article directed at widely differing scholarly audiences. Some developmental theorists who read this Article may think that parts of its discussion are overly simplistic. These readers may well be correct. They should remember, however, that few legal educators know anything at all about developmental theory. Likewise, some legal educators who read this Article may think that other parts of it are overly simplistic. These readers may also be correct. They too, however, should consider that legal education is only one small part of the very large world of educational theory. Finally, philosophers who read this essay undoubtedly will shudder at oversimplifications it contains about the epistemological concepts of relativism and objectivism. They are correct to shudder. All of these readers should keep in mind, however, that legal educators, psychologists, and philosophers have themselves made such oversimplifications necessary. They have created the huge gulfs that exist between these various fields of scholarly activity. They have done so principally because they too often cloak their respective work in professional and mystic languages that exclude nonspecialists from understanding.
About the Author
Paul T. Wangerin. Professor of Law, John Marshall Law School.
Citation
62 Tul. L. Rev. 1237 (1988)