No one in one’s right mind would claim to be a scholar of chemistry after just three years of courses even if all of them were in natural science or even just chemistry. Nor would a business student, after just three years in a business school, claim to be a scholar of business, even if those three years were filled with only courses in business. My first degree comes very close to that (which is why I later studied humanities at Yale), and yet it took two more years in a MBA program and six more in a doctoral program (business and religious studied) before I was declared to be a scholar. So it is with a cringe of incredulousness that I read an opinion piece on MSNBC.com in which the author, Jamal Greene, put in his essay’s title, “I’m a legal scholar.”[1] That he avers that the U.S. was then in a constitutional crisis is hardly a trivial claim in American politics, so his claim of being a legal scholar, rather than only a practitioner and instructor, is important and thus should be subjected to a critique.
The full essay is at "An American Constitutional Scholar."
1. Jamal
Greene, “I’m a Legal Scholar. We’re in a Constitutional Crisis—and This Is theMoment It Began,” MSNBC.com, April 26, 2025.
