The Necessity of Legal Education in Undergraduate Curricula

What is the relationship between philosophy, rhetoric and law? What can we still learn from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers like Socrates and the Socratics? How is thinking like a martial art? 

Ward Farnsworth is a professor of law and former dean of the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s also the author of numerous books that explore law, philosophy, and rhetoric including, The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law, The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook, and The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual.

Ward and Greg discuss the symbiotic relationship of law and philosophy, stoicism and its modern relevance, and the value of philosophical thinking particularly through the lens of the Socratic method in legal education and at universities as a whole.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

The Socratic method isn’t just a teaching technique but a way of living and thinking

05:09: The Socratic method is a style of thinking first before it's a style of teaching or a way to talk to others. It's a style of thought. And the reason it's an effective teaching method, as far as I'm concerned, is that in the classroom, if it's used effectively, it can provide a model that you can internalize and use as a style of thought for yourself, which is important because most of us do not spend a lot of our lives engaged in real Socratic dialogue with others.  So we have the 99% of our time when we are not doing that. What's going on then? And hopefully the answer is still something Socratic. It's obviously a lot easier to do well when you've got another person doing it, because other people can see your own blind spots a lot more easily than you can uncover them. But still, in the end, I think it's trying to—the Socratic method I see as being a model for thought that, when thinking is going well, is internalized. And it's something you do yourself.

Why great lawyers need to think like philosophers

02:21: If you really want to be a great lawyer, you have got to understand something about psychology. I think you have got to be a little bit of a philosopher. You have got to understand some economics.

Legal education is about thinking like a judge

03:07: If you are doing legal education right, you are often trying to teach students how to think like a judge would, and a judge is trying to find the right answer—whatever that might mean—or the best answer. We can talk about the nature of the answers the judge searches for. But I think in a case like that, it is helpful to be thinking not as if you have a dog in the fight, but as if you are trying to discover what the best way is to resolve the case. And then if you are a lawyer, you are trying to anticipate the way the judge will think and beat that. It is also true that if you are a lawyer, you are trying to understand your case and also the other side's case. And that is a very important part of what I call Socratic thinking—being able to anticipate the response to whatever you are imagining saying or thinking, and to be good at going back and forth.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Socrates
• John Stuart Mill
• Daniel Kahneman
• Seneca the Younger
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the University of Texas at Austin
• Professional Website

Guest Work:

• The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law
• The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook
• The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual
• Farnsworth's Classical English Argument
• Farnsworth's Classical English Metaphor