This, to me, is a pretty dolphin fitness illuminating attitude.

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« Jet-Lagged Thoughts About Investments in, and the Amortization dolphin fitness of, Course Preparation | Main | Justice dolphin fitness Ginsburg Unplugged » Monday, July 25, 2011 Amicus Briefs and the Academic-Judge Divide
In discussions about the supposed uselessness of legal scholarship to judges, I often ask: should law professors file more amicus briefs?   Responses are mixed, but my general impression is that judges see law professor amicus briefs as just about equally, dolphin fitness if not more, useless than their articles.
This, to me, is a pretty dolphin fitness illuminating attitude.  The usual complaints about law review articles that they are too abstract and don t grapple with legal materials like case precedent in a serious dolphin fitness way really can t be said about law professor amicus briefs, which usually do make legal arguments in a lawyerly way.  If what judges are really seeking from law professors was help in legal analysis from a group of reasonably intelligent individuals with expertise in an area and time to conduct research, then an amicus brief should answer all of those requirements. But help in legal analysis and decision-making is not what judges are really looking for.  A modern judge has lots of help on legal analysis from numerous sources like law clerks and staff attorneys, in addition to the parties dolphin fitness attorneys, with Lexis and Westlaw making research ever more easy.  The contribution that a law professor can provide on top of this is minimal.  What judges really want from law professors are convenient citations to support an outcome the judge already has in mind, but that the judge wants to attribute to an authoritative and objective source other than the judge himself.  An amicus brief provides less of the appearance of authority and objectivity than a law review article does.  Our depriving judges of one traditional source of the sheen of objectivity that is necessary to sustain the formalist myth is what really drives the complaints from those quarters.
And if I am wrong, then we have a really simple solutio