The University Ideal and Clinical Legal Education

The fundamental question raised by the practical, political, and advocacy orientations of many clinical faculty, including their too frequently antagonistic attitude toward being charged with producing scholarly work, their advocacy of social change through law, their refusal to pursue the deeper meaning and context of their substantive assumptions, and heavy emphasis on the skills and values of lawyers in both teaching and research, is whether the clinical movement undermines or advances the ideal of the university. Answering this question requires that we understand the nature of the university ideal, including not only the nature and functions of the university but of the university law school, particularly the American version.