Blackboard law has little relevance to the real world. What really matters is the law in the context of the political, economical, and social nature of the society.

John Drobak

 

Director John Drobak

 


A Message from the Director:
Moving Beyond Boundaries
Professor of Law and Professor of Economics
Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies

These are, indeed, exciting times at Washington University School of Law. The center for Interdisciplinary Studies began with an inaugural program that impressed not only scholars throughout Washington University, but also lawyers, judges, and law professors throughout the country. That program is described in detail in the pages that follow, but let me highlight some of its aspects for you here.

Guests touring the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
Participants and guests tour the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Anheuser-Busch Hall.

Devoted to "Norms and the Law," the inaugural conference last March featured two recipients of the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: Amartya Sen (master of Trinity College, Cambridge) and Douglass C. North (the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Economics at Washington University)-as well as two world-renowned political scientists-John Ferejohn (Stanford University and New York University School of Law) and Elinor Ostrom (co-director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University). We complemented those scholars with some of the best-known and most interesting legal scholars from throughout the country. Again, these distinguished participants are recognized later on in this brochure. However, I would like to acknowledge four of those names, to illustrate the quality of the program. Papers were presented by Lawrence Friedman of Stanford, who is probably the leading legal historian in the world today; Robert Ellickson of Yale Law School, who is one of the founders of the law and economics movement in legal education and scholarship; Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago, one of the best-known constitutional and administrative law scholars; and Lawrence Lessig of Stanford, world-renowned for his expertise in "cyberlaw" and the special master in the first Microsoft antitrust law suit. Harry T. Edwards, the chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, led a sterling array of commentators (including the prestigious legal historian Richard Helmholz, who for many years taught at Washington University). The program set the standard for future interdisciplinary programs to be sponsored by the Center.

Next year the Center will co-sponsor, with Washington University's School of Medicine, "Law and the Human Genome Project: Research, Medicine, and Commerce. " The School of Medicine is home to one of the world's leaders in identifying the human genomic code. That program, scheduled for the spring semester of 2002, will feature distinguished participants from law, the medical and social sciences, and the humanities.

All future programs sponsored by the Center will focus on interdisciplinary topics centered around the law. Our goal is to vary conference topics and involve faculty members from as many disciplines and students from the entire campus as is possible. Blackboard law has little relevance to the real world. What really matters is the law in the context of the political, economic, and social nature of society. Our understanding of the law and our understanding of the law's actual relevance will benefit tremendously from the perspective of other academic disciplines.

Douglass C. North and John Drobak in discussion
Nobel Laureate Douglass C. North (right), the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences, and John N. Drobak, professor of law and professor of economics, team up to explore the interaction between business and government.
The Center is not just about interdisciplinary legal scholarship, however. It is also committed to bettering legal education through interaction with other academic disciplines. Each year law students will have the opportunity to take a course in conjunction with the year's program. In our inaugural year, for example, 35 students participated in a course titled "Norms and the Law. " After reading the scholarship of the program authors, students met with each scholar informally to discuss their ideas and the evolution of their work. The unparalleled success of this exercise was reciprocal: The scholars enjoyed the experience of discussing their entire career of scholarly works with the students, and the students enjoyed the opportunity to engage in a serious academic discussion with some of today's most renowned legal scholars. It was fulfilling for me as well to observe such a lively, intellectual interchange between the two. Along with the human genome conference, Rebecca Dresser, professor of law and professor of ethics in medicine at Washington University, will lead a course on "The Human Genome Project: Law, Policy, and Ethics." Such courses provide students another learning opportunity not available prior to the Center's creation.

We also plan to expand our graduate programs by supporting doctoral programs in political science, economics, history, and other related disciplines for those highly qualified law graduates. The plan is to prepare these students for law professorships. This first year has been a tremendous step toward fostering the long-term goals of the Center. We are committed to becoming recognized throughout the world as a leader in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching.

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