Matthew G. Andersson is the author of the upcoming book Legally Blind, which discusses how ideology affects legal doctrine and education. A former CEO, he has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the National Academy of Sciences, and the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning report by the Chicago Tribune. He received the Silver Anvil Award by the Public Relations Society of America, has testified before the U.S. Senate and is a graduate of the University of Chicago. He studied with White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He is a native of Queens, New York City.
“Philosophy would indeed be the easiest of studies, if we might arrive at truth by assuming that one of two accounts must be true, and prove the one by disproving the other; but in philosophy this is just what cannot be done.” F.H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 1927 “It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the […]
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“All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that […]
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Law students at the University of Chicago recently used colored playground chalk to protest a conservative speaker. This raises the question: are they maturing adults or regressing adolescents? Perhaps philosophy has some lessons for how to understand the problem, and where to look for a solution. One of my favorite philosophers is Robert Hanna. He specializes in the writings […]
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The purpose of ruthless objectivity and extreme expertise “Those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, should think in terms of Education itself. Any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism’ becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms’ that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then […]
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“If a belief guides practical actions, it works best if it is true, but if a ‘belief’ defines a group identity then it can still work, or even work better, if it is not true.” – Neil Van Leeuwen, “The Puzzle of Belief,” Cognitive Science Vol. 47 (2023) The comments and reactions to a recent […]
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“Sheet music is a bunch of black marks; they have no significance. I play violin, but in order to play well you have to be much more than a violin player. There is an entire world that lives together with it, like the currents in the ocean.” – Ivry Gitlis As a 2022 year-end exercise, […]
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Our founding document was designed to maintain a wall between your private life and government. Modern law schools profit by tearing it down. “A free society is as much offended by the dictates of an intellectual oligarchy as by those of an autocrat.” – Patrick Arthur Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals “In the social domain, […]
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A Two-Part Essay on the University Law School in the American Legal System “The logic of the common law is really economics. The teaching of law could be simplified by exposing students to the clean and simple economic structure beneath the particolored garb of legal doctrine.” Richard A. Posner In Part 1 of this essay, […]
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A Two-Part Essay on the University Law School in the American Legal System “Darwinian theory applies to many other aspects besides the natural sciences: An institution must be understood by the way it developed as well. How did it arise and what have been the stages through which it has passed? Is there any justification for […]
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The legal industry, and the law academy in particular, are in a high state of contention concerning one of their most protected traditions: the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT. The American Bar Association (ABA) that regulates our law-school industry is thinking of doing away with it. This exam is among the most heavily weighted […]
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An alumnus remembers a university professor and how he demonstrated the promise of higher education. With so many problems plaguing higher education, I thought it would be healthy to recognize one example of the often unexpected ways in which the modern university brings people together. A long-time member of the University of Chicago faculty recently […]
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“Professors believe they should be free to express their opinions and free of penalties for themselves and their institutions. That is asking quite a lot. If we could decrease our entanglement in contemporary policy issues, whether by anonymity or self-discipline, we would not invite the often-correct suspicion that professional knowledge was being used for partisan […]
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“When economists find that they are unable to analyze what is happening in the real world, they invent an imaginary world which they are capable of handling.” Nobel law and economics scholar Ronald Coase, University of Chicago Law *** Two law professors from the University of Chicago and UCLA, respectively, recently wrote a fascinating essay […]
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Some Thoughts On the University of Chicago’s New Conservative Student Newspaper “In place of seeing a mature person as a source of rational discourse, we might see them as reacting appropriately to situations, in terms of disciplined perception. Today we have techniques of manipulation on a scale that would have made Callicles proud. If there […]
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In a previous MTC article, I discussed some of the challenges in the format and economics of modern American legal education. That format includes an elongated graduate program (three years) on top of a four-year undergraduate degree. I argued that the UK employs a better method through its three-year undergraduate LL.B (Bachelor of Laws) and […]
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For a model, we must turn to the U.K. “We learn how to behave as lawyers, soldiers, merchants, by being them. Life, not the parson, teaches conduct.” Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Frederick Pollock, April 1926 “As a man is said to have a right in his property, he may equally be said to […]
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