12 Sep And The Award for Progress in the Field of Law Goes To…
12.09.06
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Nobel. Fields. Pulitzer. Booker. Templeton. The disciplines of physics, chemistry, medicine, peace, literature, economics, mathematics, history, journalism, photography, and religion all have their prize. Law has no such award. Why is there no comparable prize for advancement in the field of law? Is it something about the discipline of law that does not justify such an award? Or is it perhaps that the legal community has yet to develop an award befitting the discipline? Of course, the ASIL does award book prizes. But our discipline has nothing close to the prestige of a Fields, Templeton or Nobel. It should.
I think the lack of an analogous award is symptomatic of the fragmentation of “law” viewed as an analogous discipline. Despite the varieties of genres, literature is literature. Despite the varieties of sects and denominations, religion is religion. And so forth. But “law” is utterly polysemic. It is not, in other words, merely a singular–a “the”–discipline. Not only are there jurisdictional divisions (which are roughly analogous to, say, national literatures), but there are radically different sorts of engagement with law–academic, practical, activist, for example. I think these distinctions are not so glaring in physics, chemistry, economics, poetry, music, etc. What behaviors amount to “doing” law for purposes of noting the territories where advances might occur? Should there be an award? I’m not so sure. Much of what we regard as law is already dysfunctionally competitive. (Legal scholarship? Somewhat, but not excessively so, perhaps. Advocacy Anglo-American style? Heck, yeah.) In addition to the legitimate purpose of public recognition, an award would highlight the undeniably mercenary elements of the profession. Unless, that is, it were limited to, say, crediting advances in less mercenary undertakings, such as legal scholarship…but then that’s not what Prof. Alford is suggesting.
Perhaps it’s because the rich folks who typically endow such awards spend much of their lifetimes manipulating the law to their own ends, including skirting the law (e.g. avoiding taxes) and paying lawyers for this or that service, that the last thing on their minds is funding a prize analogous to the Nobel or Templeton (not unrelated to a couple of the provocative points made by Dean above). Funding such a prestigious prize could only be seen as incestuous and unseemly, not philanthropic and altruistic, and certainly not serving to burnish those gravestones in dire need of such burnishing!