Scholarship Amok: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure

Abstract

In 1937, when Fred Rodell issued his once-famous diatribe, some 150 law-related journals were being published (not to mention thousands of local newspapers and countless full-color comic books). Now there are over eight hundred legal periodicals (not to mention a drastically dwindled number of daily papers, and precious few comics). Both Solomon and Rodell have been all but forgotten. What, indeed, have we wrought? Although Rodell predicted his original panning would have no effect, could he have anticipated the sheer dimensions of this worst-case scenario - that his "professional purveyors of pretentious poppycock" would have spawned so furiously, that the contemporary law reviews he collectively called "spinach" would have mushroomed into such a gargantuan souffle of airy irrelevance? Lo, the voices are heard once again in the wilderness, from the bewildered among us innocent (or ignorant) enough to try writing the wrongs perpetrated in the name of Scholarship.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.