Law School and Moral Thinking

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (a major higher education think tank) has recently published an extensive analysis of the state of legal education in the US.

The report itself is published as a book, but the Carnegie Foundation website has posted a free and brief Executive Summary.

Here is a quote from page 6:

In their all-consuming first year, students are told to set aside their desire for justice. They are warned not to let their moral concerns or compassion for the people in the cases they discuss cloud their legal analyses. This warning does help students escape the grip of misconceptions about how the law works as they hone their analytic skills. But when the misconceptions are not addressed directly, students have no way of learning when and how their moral concerns may be relevant to their work as lawyers and when these concerns could throw them off track. Students often find this confusing and disillusioning. The fact that moral concerns are reintroduced only haphazardly conveys a cynical impression of the law that is rarely intended.

In other news, although law school represents the apex of an education, some elementary schools are better at providing basic lessons in moral thinking.