I've often said – that when done right – law school makes students smarter. I've even speculated that if researchers gave IQ tests to students before entering and after graduating from law school, they'd find a rise in IQ scores. That, I suspect, would especially be the case for students who took as many courses as possible from teachers who stressed critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and persuasive argument rather than memorization. Now there's intriguing support for that proposition from researchers who have discovered that just studying for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), which is designed to test reasoning ability, increases connections between portions of the brain associated with reasoning and thinking. Here’s a link to a short article about the study.
EDMUND BURKE
Edmund Burke -- the great eighteenth century British statesman -- was both a liberal and a conservative. For a relatively concise but complete profile of Burke, and an explanation of why by today's standards Burke may be considered either a liberal or a traditional conservative -- but emphatically not a libertarian, neoconservative, or social conservative -- read Professor Bogus' article Rescuing Burke, 72 Missouri Law Review 387 (2007).
Here are some quotes from Edmund Burke:
"We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation."
"Society become a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
"The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right."
"Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he a right to all which society, with all its combinations and skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things."
EDMUND is a blog by Professor Carl T. Bogus.