On Defining Academic Scholarship

This article seeks to find a definition of “scholarship.” Scholarship, to be fully recognized in the academic community, must address the theory of law - not its application. The basic premise of this essay is that such a definition of scholarship is detrimental to the law teaching profession and demeaning of the legal profession as a whole. As in the sciences, there is a need for both theoretical scholarship and applied scholarship. Both should be recognized as contributing to the overall knowledge, development, and beauty of the law as well as to the justice that that law seeks to achieve.