[whoops -- posted in wrong place -- I deleted and moved]
Well, I would argue that the primary reason you're not qualified to teach law classes is NOT that you haven't previously taught law, but rather that you haven't graduated law school. Additionally, presumably you wouldn't have experience practicing the type of law that you wanted to teach.
Your pitcher/catcher analogy is also inapplicable. Pitching and catching are two distinct skills using different sets of muscles. In contrast, judges and litigating attorneys use the same set of analytical skills. That's why law school graduates who go on to clerk at a high-profile court are so heavily desired by big law firms -- by the time they start at the law firm, they've already had a year or two of developing their legal reasoning skills. That's also why it's not rare to see people shift back and forth between serving as a judge and a litigator.
The skills used by a litigating attorney and a judge are the same. To oversimplify: both read the applicable case law and consider how that caselaw could be applied to the issue at hand. The distinction is that a) attorneys then select the interpretation of the case law that best serves their client, while b) the judge considers the interpretations presented by both sides, and decides which interpretation she considers more on point. So, the steps and the reasoning are the same, it's just the end result that is different.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 12:43 pm (UTC)Well, I would argue that the primary reason you're not qualified to teach law classes is NOT that you haven't previously taught law, but rather that you haven't graduated law school. Additionally, presumably you wouldn't have experience practicing the type of law that you wanted to teach.
Your pitcher/catcher analogy is also inapplicable. Pitching and catching are two distinct skills using different sets of muscles. In contrast, judges and litigating attorneys use the same set of analytical skills. That's why law school graduates who go on to clerk at a high-profile court are so heavily desired by big law firms -- by the time they start at the law firm, they've already had a year or two of developing their legal reasoning skills. That's also why it's not rare to see people shift back and forth between serving as a judge and a litigator.
The skills used by a litigating attorney and a judge are the same. To oversimplify: both read the applicable case law and consider how that caselaw could be applied to the issue at hand. The distinction is that a) attorneys then select the interpretation of the case law that best serves their client, while b) the judge considers the interpretations presented by both sides, and decides which interpretation she considers more on point. So, the steps and the reasoning are the same, it's just the end result that is different.