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INTRODUCTION I. AN HISTORICAL SNAPSHOT OF U.S. LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP A. Academic Legal Scholarship B. Another Kind of Legal Scholarship C. Legal Scholarship Today II. SCHOLARSHIP IN ACTION CONCLUSION APPENDIX: LEGAL [...], This Feature examines the role of legal scholarship in judicial decision making. It first provides a historical snapshot of U.S. legal scholarship, noting that the advent of legal realism and other academic schools of thought may have contributed to a gap between legal scholarship and judicial practice. The Feature then conducts an empirical survey of recent citations to legal scholarship on the Seventh Circuit and concludes that most citations were on points of legal doctrine rather than broad legal theory. While legal scholarship could well serve purposes other than influencing judges--such as introducing new ideas, helping to shift norms, and subtly affecting the development of the law--the Feature draws attention to the disconnect between the bulk of legal scholarship and the judicial decision-making process.

Judicial decisions as taught in under-graduate political science classes, tend to focus on civil rights and liberties cases centered on Bill of Rights protections from federal government activity. A simulation is that offers both theoretical and practical suggestions for professors who want to move beyond information transfer to engage students in the dynamics of judicial decision making, is presented.