Academics As Law-Makers‪?‬

Pierre Schlag famously derided those U.S. legal academics who sought, in his image, to be law clerks to judges, without realizing that they weren't, and that law clerks did not have much influence on the judges for whom they worked anyway. (1) Schlag's criticism has been echoed in more temperate and seemingly less post-modern terms by Richard Posner, (2) and there may be little more to say on the subject. Here I venture some additional thoughts, beginning by identifying several ways in which legal academics are indeed law-makers and then continuing with my version of critiques like those of Schlag and Posner. I conclude with some observations about the legal academic enterprise in general. I Legal Academics as Law-Makers: The Case of International Law