Juris Doctor
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"J.D." redirects here; for alternative uses, see JD.
Template:Copyedit Juris Doctor (J.D.) is a professional doctorate awarded by American law schools as the first degree in law. During the 1960s it replaced the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree that had previously been awarded as the first degree for those who wished to practice law. Following suit, some law schools in Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia have renamed their LL.B. degrees to Juris Doctor and are now awarding the Juris Doctor degree. The J.D. degree is also being awarded in Japan as of 2004.
With the exception of the United States, universities in jurisdictions whose legal systems are based on the common law generally award the Bachelor of Laws degree as the basic professional law degree; and bars and law societies in those jurisdictions generally accept the Bachelor of Laws degree as the educational requirement for admission as a barrister and/or solicitor. In the case of the United States, the bar in each of its 55 jurisdictions generally accepts the Juris Doctor degree as the educational requirement for admission as an attorney in the jurisdiction.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the Juris Doctor as "a degree equivalent to bachelor of laws". [1]
Lawyers in some jurisdictions, such as Austria, sometimes use "J.D." to translate the name of their own doctoral degrees in law, as when they translate their resumes from their native language (e.g., German) to English. A number of American law schools confer the degree in English instead of Latin, as Doctor of Jurisprudence (in Latin, Jurisprudentiae Doctor — literally, "Teacher of Legal Knowledge"), which some people abbreviate D.Jur. but most appear to use the Latin abbreviation.
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The American degree in general
The American J.D. is a professional doctorate, as opposed to a research doctorate. As yet, there are no common requirements for preliminary and/or qualifying examinations in the course of its completion, and no universal requirement for a thesis or dissertation. Some law schools, however, have introduced special "integrated", "honors lawyering", and certificate programs which do have these special requirements. At the Golden Gate University School of Law, for example, students can earn certificates in public interest law, environmental law, and a number of other areas, some of which require submission of a short thesis, a terminal project or internship, etc., as a requirement for the certificate, but not as a requirement for the degree.
As a condition of admission, most J.D. programs require an applicant have obtained a baccalaureate degree with a 3.0 or "B" grade average, and present scores from the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) that are at least in the seventieth percentile. No particular subject is required for the degree, and many law schools prefer students come to them as a tabula rasa as far as legal subjects are concerned. While actual standards are left to individual institutions, law schools that wish to be professionally accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) must require a bachelor's degree and LSAT scores as a condition of admission, or the ABA simply will not accredit them.
Most American law schools require the J.D. be completed in not less than six semesters (formerly measured as three academic years, excluding summers) and not more than than six calendar years (inclusive of summers, leaves of absence, etc.). The latter time limit is an industry standard in American graduate-level education, applicable to most post-baccalaureate degrees.
Most American law students complete the J.D. in three years of full-time enrollment, though an increasing number are doing four-year programs. It helps to defray some of the annual costs.
Louisiana State University in the U.S. bestows on the graduates of its basic law program a combined J.D. (Juris Doctor)/B.C.L. (Bachelor of Civil Law) in view of the Louisiana civil law components in the program and the additional (i.e., seventh) semester of study.
By contrast to the J.D. degree, the Bachelor of Laws degree (LL.B.), which is the most common law degree for qualification as a barrister and/or solicitor in Commonwealth countries (e.g., the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, etc.) is a usually three-, sometimes four-year undergraduate degree. (Until recently in South Africa, the LL.B. took five years to complete; now, it takes four.) The exception within the Commonwealth is Canada, where the LL.B. – although still a baccalaureate and, thus, an undergraduate degree – is typically offered as a second-entry bachelor's degree, not as a first-entry bachelor's degree. Note, however, that many Canadian universities only require three years for a general (i.e., not an honours) bachelor's degree that satisfies entry requirements into law school. As well, most Canadian universities accept students into the LL.B. program who do not have a prior university degree as long as they have three (and sometimes two) years of undergraduate studies towards the first bachelor's degree. The University of Toronto, however, strongly advises prospective students to have a four year degree before admission to its law school, and offers a J.D. rather than an LL.B.
In all 55 U.S. jurisdictions, graduation from an ABA-accredited law school presumptively meets the educational requirements for admission to practice law. Some states will only accept a degree from an ABA-accredited school. Other states will accept foreign legal education, with or without subsequent American legal education, but typically requiring the foreign degree was earned in a country where the basic law is the common law of England. A few states – California and New York among them – still do not require a law degree for admission to practice as an attorney, though practicality weighs against pursuing such a course. California has the law school-accrediting California Bar Association which accredits law schools that may not be ABA-approved, as a result it is the only U.S. jurisdiction which will accept a degree from a correspondence or "on-line" law school (such as Concord Law School). See Admission to the bar for more details.
History
- See also Doctor (title).
In the common law tradition in the United States and Britain, law originally was learned by apprenticeship. Someone from a family seeking a profession would apprentice with a local lawyer. After several years, the lawyer would file a motion with a local court for admission of the apprentice to the bar and the court would enter an order admitting the apprentice as an attorney.
After the concept of law as an elite profession collapsed during the era of Andrew Jackson,Template:Ref a typical law student would usually attend a short undergraduate program – usually of two years or less in length – which culminated in a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) degree. Most lawyers then underwent a brief oral examination in the chambers of a local judge, and became members of the bar.
The creation of the modern Juris Doctor program is largely credited to Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895. Langdell dedicated his life to reforming legal education in the United States; the historian Robert Stevens wrote that "it was Langdell's goal to turn the legal profession into a university educated one — and not at the undergraduate level, but through a three-year postbaccalaureate degree."Template:Ref He was generally successful in remaking most American law schools in Harvard's mold, since they often drew their faculty from Harvard.
First, Harvard extended its LL.B. program from 18 months to two years in 1871, and then to three years in 1899. Then, in 1896, Harvard was the first law school to officially require an undergraduate degree as a prerequisite to admission (although the rule was not strictly enforced until 1909). By 1921, the same rule had been adopted by the law schools at Columbia, Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve, Stanford, and Yale.
However, although the entry-level law program was revamped as a graduate program, the degree conferred continued to be called an LL.B. For graduates with high grades, some schools started conferring a degree titled Juris Doctor as a Latin honor. Eventually, the disparate treatment prompted schools to abandon the distinction and call all degrees conferred a doctorate. Yale Law School was one of the last to rename the degree; it was still conferring the LL.B. as late as 1970.
Length of study
The course of study usually takes three years for full-time students and four years for part-time students. At ABA-accredited schools, it is not possible to finish in less than two years; depending on the academic calendar at a given school, it may not be possible to do so in less than two and a half years. In schools that use the semester system, two and a half years is the minimum because of ABA rules regarding time in residence. The minimum time required at a school that uses the quarter system is roughly the same. It is possible to graduate in two years from a school that uses the trimester system.
Beginning in 2005, the ABA has dropped the residency requirement described above, although it still remains the standard format.
To be eligible to sit for the bar examination, students must take a specified minimum number of semester hours each semester (for example, a student could not spread the eighty-four required semester hours over eight years, taking only three or four semester hours per semester, including summers.)
Titles
Licensed attorneys in the United States may append a variety of titles to their names, most of which are intended to convey that the person is licensed to practice law in at least one jurisdiction. "Attorney", "attorney-at-law", "esquire" ("esq."), "lawyer", "J.D." are all generally acceptable titles that an attorney may use; however, "J.D." may be used to denote that the person has graduated from law school, not that they are licensed to practice law. Those who are not admitted to practice law in a particular area, but nonetheless make use of these titles, may be subject to penalties for the unauthorized practice of law or impersonating a lawyer, both of which are criminal offenses in many jurisdictions. The ABA allows an attorney with a J.D. to use the title "Doctor", though this is not common practice. An attorney licensed in another country may use the titles appropriate in that country, e.g., solicitor and barrister for someone licensed in England and Wales.
Comparison with other degrees
A Juris Doctor is considered a professional doctoral degree. In the United States, professional degrees refer to graduate degrees that are specific to a particular vocation, such as law, medicine, or theology.
The J.D. is also considered a terminal degree, inasmuch as it qualifies its holder to become an attorney, law professor, or law school dean. For those who wish to specialize in the study of law, there are two other degrees (i.e., academic graduate degrees, as discussed below) which can be obtained subsequently: the LL.M. (Master of Laws) and the J.S.D. (Doctor of Juridicial Science). The J.S.D., sometimes abbreviated as S.J.D., is very rare and the LL.M. is considered a specialty degree.
Although a J.D. program requires at least eighty-four semester hours of post-baccalaureate course work whereas a Ph.D. typically only requires sixty semester hours of courses, Ph.D. programs normally require a related undergraduate major and contain no survey courses. The essence and most time-consuming part of a Ph.D. program is not the semester hours of course work but the research, preparation, and defense of the doctoral dissertation before a thesis committee. Depending on the discipline, the research, preparation and defense of the doctoral thesis could take three to six years following completion of the doctoral course work, although that period may be affected by the fact that Ph.D. students usually are engaged in teaching, research, and/or other work. Typically the Ph.D. student engaged in teaching, as a Graduate Assistant spends as much time in the classroom as the J.D. student.
J.D. students, however, are generally engaged in the full-time study of law in the rigorous, competitive, and highly-structured environment of the American law school. While the J.D. student's focus is more on course work than research, there is a trend toward research and writing. The American legal system is still an adversarial system: whereas collaboration is encouraged in the typical Ph.D. program, competition is the norm in the typical American law school. However, as American law becomes more prone to settlement, mediation and arbitration, and transactional business law, the American law schools are moving more toward training negotiators, writers, and researchers than advocates.
Most, if not all, American law schools now require students to undergo a year long legal research and writing program that is similar to the research methods classes many Ph.D. programs require. Also, most American law schools are now requiring all students to complete a substantial research paper, of publishable quality, in order to obtain the J.D. degree. Lastly, the scholarly publications in the field of law – unlike in other fields – are edited and published by J.D. students rather than professors. Being a member of one of these publications requires the writing of a student "note", which is the equivalent of a intermediate-length scholarly article in any other field.
One of the generally-accepted definitions of a master's or doctoral degree is that its holder is capable of independent research in a certain subject. Certainly law schools prepare their graduates to this level, inasmuch as practicing attorneys must be able to do such legal research in order to function. However, by its nature, the study and practice of law involves research of jurisprudence and statute laws; students graduating from professional programs in law in other common-law countries awarding a Bachelor of Laws degree programs (instead of a J.D. degree) are similarly prepared for the research functions required of practising lawyers.
The ABA has a formal statement on the matter:
- "WHEREAS, the acquisition of a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree requires from 84 to 90 semester hours of post baccalaureate study and the Doctor of Philosophy degree usually requires 60 semester hours of post baccalaureate study along with the writing of a dissertation, the two degrees shall be considered as equivalent degrees for educational employment purposes;
- THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all appropriate persons be requested to eliminate any policy, or practice, existing within their jurisdiction which disparages legal education or promotes discriminatory employment practices against J.D. degree-holders who hold academic appointment in education institutions."
[2].
There is no Ph.D. in law in the United States. In the U.S., the equivalent research degree in law is the Doctor of Juridical Science, abbreviated either JSD or SJD, and in other common-law jurisdictions it is the LLD (which U.S. institutions traditionally award only as an honorary degree). A Juris Doctor is all that is required to teach at an American law school, although many law professors hold LL.M. degrees in their area of specialization. Universities in some countries outside the U.S. offer a Ph.D. in law (e.g., University of British Columbia [3] in Canada and Cambridge University[4] and University of London in the United Kingdom).
Other law degrees in the United States
Below the J.D.: paraprofessional degrees
- Some schools, such as Adelphi University, offer paraprofessional degrees at either the undergraduate or graduate level, such as a Bachelor of Legal Studies or a Master of Legal Studies. A Bachelor of Legal Studies degree is not equivalent to a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), and paraprofessional degrees are not considered to be law degrees. They do not satisfy the academic requirements for admission to practise law. Holders of these degrees often are employed as paralegals or in a law-related field such as insurance, trust companies, or banking.
Above the J.D.: post-professional degrees
- Master of Laws (LL.M.) is a post-Juris Doctor degree, usually in a specialized area such as tax law, intellectual property law, international law, or advanced tort law similar to post-professional doctorate programs at the master's level found in dentistry and veterinary medicine; such programs accept graduates of U.S. law schools and often, graduates of non-U.S. law schools. As well, some U.S. law schools offer an LL.M. in comparative law for graduates of non-U.S. law schools; this will meet the educational requirements for admission to the bar in some states, notably New York. The comparative law program generally consists of twenty-four semester hours of courses surveying U.S. law, because the foreign law graduates are expected to be fluent in English and to understand legal reasoning and the main concepts of tort, contract, property, procedure, and other major areas of law.
- Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) is a post-Juris Doctor degree now only awarded as an honorary degree in the United States, although in Canada and most other common-law jurisdictions it can still be earned after the LL.M. While the J.D. is referred to as the Doctor of Jurisprudence, the LL.D. is referred to as the Doctor of Laws.
- Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.) is a research doctorate typically earned by those wishing to pursue academics rather than practice as an Attorney. Earning an J.S.D. for an attorney is similar to a physician who, subsequent to the M.D., earns a Ph.D. Unlike a J.D., a J.S.D. program includes a doctoral dissertation and other features common to academic doctorates such as a Ph.D. Generally, the only people who seek a J.S.D. are professors at law schools that require that degree for tenure, though the degree is not a prerequisite to entry into legal academia.
See also
- Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L)
- Bachelor of Laws (LL.B)
References
- Template:Note Anton-Hermann Chroust, The Rise of the Legal Profession in America, Volume 2: The Revolution and the Post-Revolutionary Era (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p.286. This era is commonly referred to as the "deprofessionalization" of the American legal profession.
- Template:Note Robert Stevens, "Two Cheers For 1870: The American Law School," in Law in American History, edd Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971), p.427.
- Chapter I of Title 8 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York, Section 3.47. Requirements for Earned Degrees and Section 3.50. Registered Degrees