528
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 71, Number 3 (Spring 2022)
Public Administration and Policy
Degree Programs in Legal
Education: The McGeorge
School of Law Case Study
John Kirlin
Jeffrey Michael
Francis J. Mootz III
Here we are, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, using a model of legal education
that was developed in the latter part of the nineteenth. Since that time, the nature of legal
practice has changed, the concept of law has changed, the nature of academic inquiry has
changed, and the theory of education has changed. Professional training programs in other
fields have been redesigned many times to reflect current practice, theory, and pedagogy,
but we legal educators are still doing the same basic thing we were doing one hundred and
thirty years ago. Many law professors are conscientious and devoted teachers, and quite a
few are inspired ones, but their efforts are constrained and hobbled by an educational model
that treats the entire twentieth century as little more than a passing annoyance.
—Edward Rubin
1
If modern legal education began with the publication of Dean Langdell’s
contracts casebook,
2
it is apparent that during most of its short history it
has faced sharp criticisms. In particular, the Legal Realist movement issued
fundamental critiques that remain unanswered. Karl Llewellyn, in his
customary florid prose, indicted legal education as an utter failure. Deriding
the Langdellian model because “it blinds, it stumbles, it conveyor-belts, it
1 Edward Rubin, What’s Wrong with Langdell’s Method and What to Do About it, 60 vAnd. l. rev. 609,
610 (2007).
2 c.c. lAngdell, A selectIOn Of cAses On the lAw Of cOntrActs (1871).
Francis J. Mootz III is Professor of Law and former Dean at McGeorge School of Law, University
of the Pacific.
John Kirlin is Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at McGeorge School of Law, University
of the Pacific, and a Fellow, National Academy of Public Administration.
Jeffrey Michael is Professor of Public Policy and Director of Policy Programs at McGeorge
School of Law, University of the Pacific.
529Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
wastes, it mutilates, and it empties,”
3
Llewellyn urged legal educators to prepare
students to lead full and enriching professional lives by educating them about
the political and social context in which law operates rather than teach them
how to manipulate rules with a faux-deductive method. This reconstruction
would have to be both root and branch to be effective. “Law school education,
even in the best schools, is, then, so inadequate, wasteful, blind and foul that
it will take twenty years of unremitting effort to make it half-way equal to its
job.”
4
Llewellyn’s lament poses a multifaceted and rich challenge for American
legal education. In this short article we address only one part of the necessary
full response.
5
Llewellyn and the Realists, and critical scholars who have
followed in their footsteps, paid particular attention to the way in which
legal education limited its task to the exposition of rules, leaving students
blind to the institutional realities that shape the workings of the legal system.
Llewellyn called for educators to teach the “law jobs” that students will
encounter in the real world rather than have them jump through the hoops of
abstract fictions and intellectualized puzzles. This new orientation is essential
given fundamental developments after World War II, including the rapid
expansion of the modern administrative state, the related bureaucratization of
civil society, complete globalization, and the thorough interpenetration of law
and social life to replace the role that shared religious belief once provided to
more homogeneous societies.
6
3 K.N. Llewellyn, On What is Wrong with So-Called Legal Education, 35 cOluM. l. rev. 651, 653 (1935).
4 Id. at 678.
5 Mootz has argued that Llewellyn called for a return to the rhetorical tradition in which law
was a form of practical reasoning under conditions of verisimilitude rather than a formal
system of rules. Francis J. Mootz III, Vico, Llewellyn and the Task of Legal Education, 57 lOyOlA
l. rev. 135, 143–46 (2011); see also Justin Simard, The Recurrent Current Crisis in Legal Education,
56 wIllAMette l. rev. 407 (2020). Mootz has expanded on these themes in several
articles devoted to a hermeneutical and rhetorical understanding of legal practice that has
implications for legal education. See Francis J. Mootz III, Introduction: The State and Future of
Legal Education, 45 McgeOrge l. rev. 1 (2013); Perelman in Legal Education: Recalling the Rhetorical
Tradition of Isocrates and Vico (2008), https://ssrn.com/abstract=1291570; Vico’s “Ingenious Method”
and Legal Education, 83 chI-kent l. rev. 1261 (2008). We do not address these matters in this
article, which is devoted to offering public policy degrees within the law school.
6 Ed Rubin provides a similar summary of the features of the modern world that the legal
system must address:
The momentous developments of the 1880s and 1890s were not a temporary disturbance
or a passing fad, but rather harbingers of a new era, the modern era in which we live. The
twentieth century did, in fact, occur. Those decades saw the exponential growth of a national
administrative state, the displacement of common law, the recognition that common law
simply projects state authority, a new conception of human beings and human society, vast
bodies of social science scholarship based on that understanding, new theories of learning,
and new approaches to education based upon those theories. The prescription for an up-
to-date, well-designed approach to legal education, simply put, takes cognizance of these
developments, rather than ignoring them or rationalizing them away.
Rubin, supra note 1, at 650. As Rubin explains, the “great irony of legal education is
that it is not only out of date, but that it was out of date one hundred years ago.” Id. at 611.
530 Journal of Legal Education
Can legal education, at long last, address the challenges of contemporary
society? Interestingly, a road map was suggested in the middle of the last
century that still holds relevance for contemporary discussions. In a remarkably
prescient article, Harold Lasswell and Myres McDougal argued for the joining
of legal education and public policy to provide professional training that
would serve the public interest.
7
Taking direction from Llewellyn’s critique,
they insisted that lawyers should not be educated as technocrats devoted
to serving the powerful economic and political vested interests. Llewellyn’s
primary message was that law students should be steeped in the liberal arts
to cultivate prudent judgment and wise leadership for the benefit of society,
8
but his focus is certainly congenial with, if not inevitably connected with,
reorienting legal education to encompass policy science.
Lasswell and McDougal propose an audacious and fundamental
reconfiguration of legal education to achieve the vague promises by the Realists
to integrate law and the social sciences.
9
“What we propose is that training
in the distinctive core of the lawyer’s repertory of skills and information be
given a new sense of purpose and new criteria of relevance.”
10
This grand
proposal was doomed to failure, however, because of the scope of the project.
Developing a “policy science would require major retooling of law professorial
skills and orientation,”
11
given the extreme positivism of legal education. The
“Legal Positivist mythology that courts find domestic law from sources such
Langdell’s creative innovations addressed yesterday’s problems and never engaged with the
developing new realities.
7 Harold D. Lasswell & Myres S. McDougal, Legal Education and Public Policy: Professional Training
in the Public Interest, 52 yAle l. J. 203 (1943). Lasswell was a political scientist who served as
Visiting Sterling Lecturer at Yale Law School, and McDougal was a Professor of Law at Yale
Law School.
8 kArl n. llewellyn, the study Of lAw As A lIberAl Art, In JurIsprudence: reAlIsM In
theOry & prActIce, 375–94 (1962).
9 They explain that heroic “but random efforts to integrate ‘law’ and ‘the other social sciences’
fail through lack of clarity and what is being integrated, and how and for what purposes.” Lasswell
& McDougal, supra note 7, at 204.
10 Id. at 216. As they describe legal education, it is a stunted exercise that disserves democratic
society. It should be obvious that our existing law school curriculum is not adequately
oriented toward achieving the distinctive values and conditioning variables of a free society.
For the most part the organizing principle still appears to be legal technicality; problems are
defined and classified in terms of overlapping legal concepts of high-level abstraction rather
than in reference to social objectives. Id. at 232.
Little orientation is given in the historical and contemporary trends that are most helpful
in determining what problems are most important and what objectives are most practicable,
and in supplying the background necessary to the formation of realistic judgments about
such important problems as do find their way—more often by accident than design—into the
present curriculum. Id. at 233. Presaging what has become a constant refrain, they conclude
that legal education is too focused on a single institution: “the appellate court and the norms
it announces.”
11 Jack Van Doren & Christopher J. Doederer, McDougal-Lasswell Policy Science: Death and
Transfiguration, 11 rIchMOnd J. Of glObAl lAw & busIness 125, 133 (212).
531Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
as constitutions, cases and statutes, largely exclusive of policy, has carried the
day and contributed to the demise of policy science in the domestic United
States.”
12
Put simply, legal elites don’t wish to concede that their practice is
essentially politics rather than rigorous and univocal reasoning.
13
Additionally,
at the time that Laswell and McDougal wrote, the interdisciplinary approach
to public policy formation and enforcement was still nascent.
14
Consequently,
any attempt to implement the Legal Realist movement as a positive program
by developing policy science within the law school has been declared “virtually
dead” in the United States domestic scene.
15
Where do matters stand today? Despite unremitting and persuasive
critiques of legal education, the inertia of the status quo remains quite strong.
This leads commentators to endorse minimalist proposals that can be adopted
without wreaking havoc on the 150-year-old model of legal education and its
solidified vested interests.
16
For example, many schools now acknowledge the
relative insignificance of the common law by requiring first-year students to take
courses in regulatory law, transactions, and international law. Nevertheless,
the integration with law remains woefully inadequate.
If law has failed to take bold steps, the same may be said of public policy
and administration programs. Andrew Osorio observes that American public
administration is of law and from law.
Public organizations exist to administer the law, and every element of
their being—their structure, staffing, budget, and purpose is the product
of legal authority.”
17
Accordingly, Rosenbloom, O’Leary, & Chanin argue
“any vision of public administration that ignores the contemporary legal
dimension is seriously inadequate”.
18
Unfortunately, the subject of law
(in all its myriad forms) continues to suffer from the “anti-legal temper”
12 Id. at 156.
13 Id. at 145.
14 Rubin, supra note 1, at 635–40. The Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and
Administration (NASPAA), which serves as the principal accreditation body for public
service programs, was not formed until 1970. University programs to support and develop
professionals in public service had been offered for four decades. By the 1970s, public
administration degrees were offered widely, frequently within departments of political
science. Master of Public Policy degree programs began to be offered in the 1960s. Today,
many programs operate within their own department, and offer highly interdisciplinary
curricula.
15 Van Doren & Doederer, supra note 11, at 125 (noting that the movement has had some effect
through the New Haven School of International Law).
16 See, e.g., Rubin, supra note 1.
17 dOnAld r. kettl, the pOlItIcs Of the AdMInIstrAtIve prOcess (6th ed. 2015).
18 dAvId h. rOsenbluM, rOseMAry O’leAry & JOshuA chAnIn, publIc AdMInIstrAtIOn And
lAw (3d ed. 2010).
532 Journal of Legal Education
of public administration scholarship.
19
Neglect of the legal foundation is
evidence by the relatively few public administration scholars who have
published work primarily on matters of law, or legal institutions, over
the last two decades.
20
This trend reveals “a remarkable contradiction
between what is happening in public-administration science and in
public-administration practice. In the former, legal approaches have
been displaced by managerial and political approaches. This shift sharply
contrasts with the continuous legalization and juridification of public
administrative practice. Public-administration practice has gradually
converged with the law.
21
In this article we provide a short case study of the strategy adopted by the
McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific to steer a course
between wholesale reconstruction of legal education as a policy profession,
on one hand, and tinkering with courses in the required curriculum to expose
law students to pertinent topics and modes of analysis on the other hand.
In fall 2016, McGeorge launched new Master of Public Administration
(MPA) and Master of Public Policy (MPP) degrees within the law school.
This marked the first time that public service degrees had been offered by an
ABA-accredited law school. Although there were many factors in play in the
decision to offer these degrees, an important substantive consideration was
to develop interdisciplinary synergies of legal education and policy studies as
a step toward addressing the long-standing isolation of legal education in a
professional cul de sac. By housing law degrees and policy degrees within a law
school, McGeorge provided a basis for the continued integration of faculty,
students, and curricula to develop an appropriate educational experience
for the twenty-first century. Whether this opportunity will be realized in the
future is highly uncertain, as the inertia of academic silos continues to exert
tremendous force. But McGeorge has taken a significant first step.
This article is organized in three parts. First, we review the adoption of the
policy degree programs to provide a practical and concrete guide for other
schools interested in pursuing this path. Other schools may face very different
institutional hurdles and roadblocks, but it is almost certain that they will
encounter some form of resistance. Second, we describe the interdisciplinary
character of the policy degrees, which emphasizes legal education at their
center. This side of the equation is being realized already and can be deepened.
Finally, we hypothesize that the introduction of policy degree programs in a
19 dwIght wAldO, the AdMInIstrAtIve stAte: A study Of the pOlItIcAl theOry Of
publIc AdMInIstrAtIOn (2d ed. 1984).
20 Andrew A. Osorio, et al., Systematically Reviewing American Law And Public Administration: A Call For
Dialogue And Theory Building, 4 perspectIves On publIc MAnAgeMent And gOvernAnce 100,
100–17 (2021).
21 Stavos Zourdis, Rule Of Law Or Law Overruled? Why The Rule Of Law Should Be On The Public
Administration Research Agenda, 4 nIspAcee J. Of pub. AdMIn. & pOl’y 23, 23–37 (2011). The
quoted paragraph is from course material prepared by Andrew Osorio (on file with authors).
533Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
law school may open the path, at long last, to rehabilitating legal education.
Integrating policy studies is not the only approach to reforming legal education,
but it is an important step. It is important to underscore that this case study
does not claim universal significance, but neither is it merely anecdotal. We
believe that the experience at the McGeorge School of Law may prove to be
an important first step toward the reenvisioning of legal education in a policy
frame.
The Launch of Public Policy Degrees Offered
by the McGeorge School of Law
McGeorge School of Law provided a distinctive site for the exploration of
public-policy-centered education. McGeorge is an ABA-accredited law school
of a comprehensive university in the capital of the most populous state in
the United States. In 2015, at the time of these actions, California’s was the
seventh-largest economy in the world. Moreover, many McGeorge graduates
have experienced excellent careers in the capital region. The law school has
long maintained a Capital Center for Law and Policy as a center of excellence
that coordinates its role of preparing professionals for careers in the Capitol.
McGeorge has a large presence in Sacramento, with its graduates regularly
topping lists of most influential lawyers in this region. It is ranked number two
among government law programs in the nation. The McGeorge commitment
to effective professional education, its positive reputation, and large alumni
base in public service careers all provided a solid foundation on which to build
new MPA and MPP degree programs.
Sacramento, the capital of the state of California, is an extraordinary location
in which to study public affairs and in which to launch or build a career in
public service, with a full range of well-developed domestic public policies.
Indeed, in most areas of domestic public policy, from natural resources and
the environment through workplace safety or unemployment insurance to
marital status, California has public policies that precede national policies,
sometimes by decades. It is often considered at the forefront of public policy
making among states. The University of Southern California established an
MPA program in Sacramento in the 1970s, and California State University,
Sacramento, launched a Master of Public Policy and Administration degree
more than twenty-five years ago. With the thirteen-acre McGeorge campus
less than four miles from the state Capitol, there was a natural reason to pursue
a policy-focused strategy.
A. Development of the Concept and Approval of the Degree Programs
To analyze the newly adopted McGeorge policy programs, we use as a prism
Barth’s
22
“reflections” on building an MPA program and the recent analysis of
22 Thomas J. Barth, Reflections on building an MPA program: Faculty discussions worth having, 8 J. Of pub.
AffAIrs educ. 253, 253–61 (2002), https://www.jstor.org/stable/40215579.
534 Journal of Legal Education
organizational forms for public service programs by Perry and Mee (2022).
23
This permits us to situate the McGeorge programs in the context of existing
policy programs at other schools.
There are important distinctions between Barth’s experience and the
McGeorge experience. Barth engaged in four years of organizational work,
after which the University Board of Governors approved a new MPA and
admitted the first cohort of students. In contrast, the development and launch
at McGeorge were much more compressed. Legal education faced a “perfect
storm” of declining enrollments, stagnation in the legal market and general
economic turmoil after 2010. Within a year of arriving on campus in 2012,
Dean Mootz had overseen the approval of a new Master of Science in Law
(MSL) degree to serve the educational needs of lobbyists and others working
in the capital in positions that do not require a legal license. Several law
schools adopted similar graduate programs in an equally expedited fashion.
Following this model of quick development, in spring 2014 Dean Mootz
worked with Dean Lewis Gale of the university’s business school to develop a
plan for expanding the professional master’s degrees offered on the Sacramento
campus, which at that time was exclusively the home of the McGeorge School
of Law. The provost and two deans charged Clark Kelso, professor of law,
and Jeff Michael, director of the university’s Center for Business and Policy
and Research, to evaluate and develop concepts for master’s degrees at the
intersection of business, law, and public policy. Both were deeply experienced
in public policy in California government and veterans of the university.
They proposed a joint venture between the Eberhardt School of Business
and the McGeorge School of Law to collaboratively offer master’s degrees in
business administration, public administration, public policy, and nonprofit
management. This approach would fit within the existing models of MPA
degrees (Perry and Mee, 2022) described in the next section.
However, the joint venture to create synergistic interdisciplinary offerings
in law, policy, and business proved to be too complex for the university. The
university administrative and financial structure required new programs to be
housed within an existing academic unit, creating an administrative barrier
to a joint venture. In addition, many of the business school faculty were not
interested in public administration and collaboration with the law school, and
the proposal failed to gain sufficient support from the business school.
At this point, Professor Michael had developed a cogent analysis of the
potential student demand for graduate public administration and public
policy degree programs. Working with Dean Mootz, Professors Michael and
Kelso developed a proposal for the law school to offer such programs within
the law school on the foundation of programmatic strengths in government
law and the recent adoption of the MSL degree. After securing the support
of the law faculty, Dean Mootz worked with Professors Kelso and Michael to
23 James L. Perry & Emily D. Mee, The evolution of organizational forms for public service education, 28 J.
Of pub. AffAIrs educ. 3, 3–34 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2021.2025330.
535Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
develop detailed and data-rich formal degree proposals for presentation to the
university in late fall 2014.
In April 2015, the University of the Pacific Board of Regents approved the
offering of both the MPA and MPP degrees by McGeorge School of Law,
with an initial allocation of funding for the start-up phase from a designated
Strategic Investment Fund. As is common at private universities, the programs
were approved on the premise that they would be financially self-sufficient,
covering all direct and indirect costs, plus a university administrative charge.
The plan was to market the unique character of the programs being housed
within a law school and to match that distinctiveness in the hiring of faculty
and development of a curriculum.
B. Creating and Staffing the Policy Degree Programs
The provost authorized Dean Mootz to conduct a national search for
a founding director with a strong background in public administration
education and professional experience in the nonprofit or private sector.
Several candidates for the position had interesting academic backgrounds,
including specialization in political science and political philosophy. Rather
than pursue these options, the committee selected John Kirlin to begin as the
founding director and distinguished professor of public policy in July 2015.
He had four decades of experience as a leading faculty member and academic
administrator at top programs across the country. Most of Kirlin’s academic
research focused on public policy making and implementation in California
and had recently served for several years as executive director of two successful
state public policy initiatives regarding natural resources. Kirlin brought to
the role strong academic knowledge and experience in public administration
and policy, deep current experience in California public policy processes, and
a sophisticated understanding of legal processes despite not having a J.D.
He was charged with building the policy programs to complement the law
school’s strong focus on law and policy.
Kirlin began rounds of discussions within McGeorge, other university
actors, and an informal group of eleven experienced public-sector professionals
in the Sacramento area, plus two longtime academic colleagues with deep
experience. Those with direct experience included a past legislative analyst;
head of the Legislative Analyst Office, California Legislature; the former city
manager of both the city of Sacramento and Cincinnati, Ohio; a past director
of the California Department of Finance; the president of the Association of
Independent California Colleges and Universities; and an individual (holder
of J.D.) who had been mayor of Sacramento, a member of the California
Assembly, a legislative advocate, and a leader in efforts to improve both public
policies and public policy implementation. Those with academic experience
included a successful dean of a top-ranked public administration/public
policy school; and an individual who had been president of the American
Society for Public Administration and editor of Public Administration Review,
among other roles.
536 Journal of Legal Education
The McGeorge faculty were presented with a fully elaborated design of
both the MPA and MPP degree programs and course descriptions in August
2015. These were approved during the fall 2015 semester, with classes beginning
in fall 2016. Elements of the design and course descriptions were refined
over the first years of operations, with adjustments to course descriptions to
better match student needs and faculty competencies. However, the four core
competencies—in law, public policy formation and implementation, public
administration/management, and quantitative analysis—endure.
C. Comparing the McGeorge Policy Programs with Other Models
Perry and Mee (2022) place public service programs into three categories:
stand-alone school of public service, department or program of public service,
or department of political science. In this schema, the McGeorge programs
are in the second category. In their supplementary material the authors
provide eight more “operational definitions by organizational forms,” also
advancing expected “patterns of activity” and “normative order” for each
formal structure.
24
The programs at McGeorge do not fit easily into this classification. Of these,
McGeorge is closest to a “department dedicated to public administration/public
policy.” However, the degree programs are not housed in a formal department,
because of the desire to avoid conflict and controversy with the University
Political Science Department in Stockton. Dean Mootz fully intended to
create two departments in the law school (one for law, and one for policy) once
the programs were fully built out and established. The interim solution works
well because there are fewer than fifty full-time faculty members at McGeorge,
and it has well-functioning committees. In practical terms, however, the
MPA and MPP programs operate as if they were a department. They have
a defined budget, two academic degrees, their own “PUB” prefix for courses
(in contrast to the “LAW” courses of the J.D. program), and defined processes
for appointment of faculty within McGeorge. Admissions and recruitment
are coordinated with the university graduate admissions rather than the law
school’s assistant dean of admissions. The program director reports to the
Dean of McGeorge, having responsibility for the academic program, student
affairs, academic and staff personnel, and budget of the programs. The degree
to which various services are provided within the program by McGeorge
and the university continues to evolve. It has no undergraduate or doctoral
students.
The Interdisciplinary Character of Public Policy
Programs Offered within a Law School.
To a casual observer, the development of the policy programs within the
law school might be seen simply as an effort to generate additional revenue for
the law school, much as the MSL is sometimes viewed. Housing the programs
24 Id. at Appendix 1.
537Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
in a law school could also be deemed a practical concession to the reality that
the law school was the only school operating on the Sacramento campus,
and the policy programs are necessarily located near the Capitol. Admittedly,
these pragmatic considerations were relied on to secure approval, but the law
school faculty (certainly, the dean) regarded this as an opportunity to garner
the interdisciplinary distinction and benefits that had been discussed as part
of the proposed joint venture with the business school.
A. The McGeorge Programs Move beyond Expectations of Public Administration Scholars
The public administration literature provides little guidance on which
elements of a J.D. curriculum would be most beneficial for MPA and MPP
students. Despite common assertions that the law is central to the practice
of public administration, most master-level programs do not require any law-
based courses, and the focus of any law-based courses differs. Hartmus (2008)
25
analyzed information on 100 NASPAA-accredited MPA programs, finding
that only four required administrative law in their core curriculum, with an
additional seventeen identifying such a course as an elective. Five offered, but
did not require, constitutional law. Information was available on the faculty of
seventy-nine of the 100 programs, of which forty-seven had at least one faculty
member with a J.D. or a J.D. and a Ph.D. degree. Six programs had a joint
J.D. and MPA degree program. Holzer and Lin (2007) found that a majority
of forty-six MPA programs offered an administrative law course, and that
coverage of “legal processes” in the curricula increased from fewer than twenty
percent of programs in 1975 to seventy percent in 2006.
Szypszak (2011)
26
completed a similar analysis of internet sites of the
twenty-five top-ranked programs in the U.S. News & World Report, finding only
four that required a law-based course, with nine others offering elective
courses in administrative or constitutional law, plus eight others which offered
a policy-area law course (e.g., environmental law, labor law) as an elective.
The remaining four programs offered no law-based courses. He argues for
broad coverage of legal issues (constitutional, due process/equal protection/
civil rights, freedom of speech/religion/information, administrative law and
procedure, property, contracts/companies, employment, torts, criminal law/
procedure, public ethics, civil litigation/alternative dispute resolution, and
managing the lawyer relationship).
Newbold (2011)
27
argues, “If the historical, political, intellectual, and
institutional legitimacy of the American administrative state is found only
25 Diane M. Hartmus, Teaching constitutional law to public administrators, 14 J. Of pub. AffAIrs educ.
3253, 3253–360 (2008), https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2008.12001530.
26 Charles Szypszak, Teaching Law in Public Affairs Education: Synthesizing Political Theory, Decision
Making, and Responsibility, 17 J. Of pub. AffAIrs educ. 483, 483–99 (2011), https://doi.org/10.1
080/15236803.2011.12001658.
27 Stephanie Newbold, No Time Like the Present: Making Rule of Law and Constitutional Competence the
Theoretical and Practical Foundation for Public Administration Graduate Education Curriculum, 17 J. Of
pub. AffAIrs educ. 465, 465-81, 467 (2011), https://www.jstor.org/stable/23036122?seq=1.
538 Journal of Legal Education
within the nation’s constitutional heritage, then the core curriculum of an
MPA/MPP education must have a legal and constitutional foundation course
as a degree requirement.” Specifically, she advocates attention to the (1) rule of
law and constitutional competence, (2) constitutional legitimacy of American
public administration, (3) oath of office, (4) public-sector decision-making in
a separation-of-powers regime, and (5) conservation of public bureaucracies.
These are to be engaged through readings and analyses of cases.
In establishing the McGeorge MPA and MPP programs, it was decided to
require two courses already present in the law school curriculum. Moreover,
these courses are taught by LAW faculty, reflecting strong integration of the
degrees into McGeorge. Introduction to Legal Analysis had been developed
as a first course for students pursuing the Master of Science in Law (MSL)
degree. It was not taken by J.D. students but was taught by a member of
the law school faculty. This course covers the structure and roles of courts
in the United States and emphasizes analyses of cases, legal research, and
writing. From the perspective of those writing on the role of law in public
administration, this addresses Newbold’s (2011) emphases on rule of law
and constitutional competence and constitutional legitimacy of American
public administration, and Koenig’s (1998)
28
goal of competence in analyzing
cases. For this program, it also prepared students to succeed in Statutes and
Regulations, a course required of second-semester 1L J.D. students who would
have completed five LAW courses in their first semester and would be enrolled
in more during the second term. In the coming year this course has been
expanded to three units, reflecting the importance it has in the curriculum.
Statutes and Regulations had become a required course for all McGeorge
J.D. students in 2013, in recognition of the importance of this area of law in
a complex society, especially in the state capital of California. This required
a substantial restructuring of the curriculum to make room for the new three-
credit course in the first year. Administrative Law is taught as an elective LAW
course. Leib (2008)
29
analyzes the impacts of Harvard Law School’s requiring
a Legislation and Regulation course in its first-year curriculum. Though
several other law schools had required a similar course before, and there
were statutory elements in first-year contracts, civil procedure, and criminal
law courses, unanimous approval of the change by the Harvard Law School
faculty of this stand-alone course elevated attention to the issue among law
schools as they refined curricula for the J.D. degree.
The MPA and MPP programs schedule a special summer offering of
this course taught by a full-time McGeorge Law faculty member, but a few
students each year enroll in the day or evening sections with J.D. students.
Students who complete a six-unit area of concentration, optional for the MPA
28 Heidi Koenig, Teaching Law in Public Administration: The Use of Case Analysis, 4 J. pub. AdMIn.
educ. 19, 19-24 (1998), https://www.jstor.org/stable/40215367.
29 Ethan J. Leib, Adding Legislation Courses to the First-Year Curriculum, 58 J. legAl educ. 166, 166–89
(2008), https://www.jstor.org/stable/42894064.
539Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
and required for the MPP degree, will take more LAW courses, as twenty-four
of the possible thirty-five courses across the four areas of concentration are
LAW courses. Among these, Administrative Law is an option in three of the
four areas of concentration. In all LAW courses, students use the analytic skills
of a lawyer and are also exposed to a different pedagogy than in PUB courses.
At McGeorge, the two courses provide students useful legal analytic skills
and a foundation in statutes and regulations, the context in which many will
work. The state of California, like most states and the federal government,
offers few direct services. State highways, prisons, and parks are among the
few direct services. Most state policies and programs are implemented through
regulations and/or grants of funds to local governments. Moreover, effectively
all state and local governments in California have legal staffs to advise on
matters of law and to litigate issues as needed. Approximately 4,500 attorneys
are employed by the state of California as attorneys, administrative law judges,
or hearing officers. California local governments either employ lawyers or
contract for legal services.
Department heads, city managers or county administrators will be involved
in hiring lawyers, but most professionals in public service will be working
within policies and programs already judged legally sufficient. The primary
benefits of the two law classes required of McGeorge policy students are:
(1) establishing/reinforcing that all public action rests on a foundation of
constitutions, laws, statutes, and court decisions, (2) grounding students
in the useful tools of legal analyses, and (3) providing tools with which to
understand the nuances of statutory construction. Students who pursue an
area of concentration will often take Administrative Law, and others will
enroll in courses such as Environmental Law or Water Law, learning about
foundational statutes and regulations in these areas.
B. Student Success in the Distinctive Policy Programs
The graduates of the McGeorge policy programs have indicated strong
approval of the law-focused curriculum. The statistics from the first years of
operation are impressive. As of December 2022, 150 individuals have now
graduated from the programs, 126 earning the MPA and twenty-four earning
the MPP. Three of these recent graduates were dual-degree students who also
completed a J.D., and two current students are in the joint J.D. program. A few
students transferred from the J.D. program into the MPA program after their
first semester or year of law school. The MPA and MPP programs’ students
are extremely diverse in race, age, and experience. Reflecting California’s
population, the program’s students have been majority nonwhite since its
inception, and the current student body is approximately thirty percent white.
Hispanic students have grown to about thirty-five percent of enrollment, and
Asian and Black students have each ranged between ten percent and twenty
percent of enrollment. Incoming students have ranged between twenty-one
and sixty-five years of age, with a median age of twenty-nine. The typical
MPA and MPP student is a few years older than the typical J.D. student
540 Journal of Legal Education
at McGeorge and is more likely to be enrolled part time. Since the start of
the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment has declined, particularly among mid-
and early-career students, who appear to be more attracted to fully online
programs. The programs were fully in-person before the pandemic, and the
programs are now increasing online courses and shifting to a hybrid program
model to better meet students’ changing needs.
Like many programs, McGeorge enrolls students who are career starters,
in careers, and changing careers. To best accommodate this variety, all PUB
classes meet in the evenings or on Saturdays, including online courses. One
benefit of this schedule is that those beginning careers can take advantage of
opportunities for internships or even beginning-level full employment. Recent
graduates have had significant success advancing and launching public service
careers, and many credit this program structure and the enhanced exposure
to law in alumni surveys. However, a disadvantage of this schedule is that it
makes integration with the J.D. program, both academic and extracurricular,
more difficult.
Recent graduates have had significant success advancing and launching
public service careers, and in alumni surveys, many credit this program structure
and the enhanced exposure to law. In an extraordinary example, a student from
Texas with no prior public-sector experience began the program in fall 2017 as
a twenty-two-year-old. Securing work as an analyst in a health department
during their studies, they became a budget analyst at the Department of
Finance upon receiving the MPA (2019). After a short period at the City and
County of San Francisco as a financial analyst in public works, they were
selected in February 2021 as an assistant deputy director (with rank of a career
exempt appointee) to formulate, oversee, and administer a department’s five-
year $1.1 billion capital financing program. They report: “[K]nowing how to
interpret law and cases that have set precedent has been extremely helpful in
my career in the public sector . . . [including] . . . when working on budgetary
issues before the legislature.” Other program alumni are experiencing success
moving into management roles at a variety of agencies, nonprofits, consulting,
and key staff positions in the state Legislature.
C. Building for the Future
In 2021, Jeff Michael was appointed as the programs’ second director,
succeeding John Kirlin, who remains as distinguished professor of public
policy. As discussed earlier, Michael was one of the two lead faculty members
involved in the initial feasibility study and program proposal and stayed
engaged through program launch, with a joint appointment between the
McGeorge policy programs and the School of Business for the first five
years of the program. Six years after enrolling its first students, McGeorge is
moving to increase the integration of the programs into the school of law and
building the programs for future success. For example, as the MPA and MPP
programs transition from an in-person to a hybrid instructional mode, they are
collaborating with McGeorge’s existing online MSL program to increase course
541Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education
offerings and best practices for online instruction. In addition, McGeorge is
providing dedicated career advising support in a career development office
that exclusively served the J.D. program in the past.
On the faculty side, McGeorge has established a permanent faculty
committee to oversee and support the public policy programs. The faculty
intends to add full-time professors with competencies in both law and policy
and to integrate better with the McGeorge law faculty members. Finally, after
five years of operation and over 100 graduates, the MPA program is now eligible
to pursue Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration
(NASPAA) accreditation and was approved in July 2022 to enter the self-
study stage of candidacy by NASPAA. If successful, the University of the
Pacific McGeorge School of Law MPA program will be the first to earn initial
NASPAA accreditation within a law school.
Concluding Thoughts on the Significance for Legal Education
of Offering Public Policy Degree Programs in a Law School
Law programs can increase their public policy content, and public affairs
programs can increase their legal content, without taking the further step
of creating policy degree programs in a law school. In many law schools
there is already a history of collaborating in scholarship with nonlawyers
on public policy issues, particularly in special issues of law reviews.
30
The
benefit of deep program integration may make less formal collaborations
easier because faculty members are in close contact. For example, Michael
and Mootz recently co-authored an article on the policy and legal issues
attendant to defining “employee” status for workers in platform economies.
31
Additionally, Mootz added a chapter to his employment law casebook that
required students to apply the aspirational eightfold method of policy analysis
and had Kirlin lecture on that material to his class.
32
Michael, an economist,
was recently invited by another law school to contribute to its symposium on
housing policy because of his affiliation with McGeorge and is collaborating
with law faculty at another university on development regulations.
33
This is just
a beginning, and the amount of interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogy
will undoubtedly expand as the programs expand and develop. In this article
we have attempted to identify the benefits that are achieved by the deeper
integration made possible by offering policy degree programs in this setting.
30 See, e.g., John Kirlin, The Impact of Fiscal Limits on Governance, hAstIngs cOnstItutIOnAl lAw
QuArterly 25, 195 (1998); John Kirlin & Jeffrey Chapman, Land Use Consequences of Proposition
13, 53 sOuthern cAl. l. rev. 95, 95–124 (1979).
31 Francis J. Mootz III & Jeffrey Michael,“Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothin’ Left to Lose”: The
Ongoing Struggle to Properly Regulate the Gig Economy in California, 21 revIstA dA Agu, brAsIlIA-df
17, 17–44 (2022).
32 frAncIs J. MOOtz III, et Al., leArnIng eMplOyMent lAw 1142–46 (2019).
33 Jeffrey Michael & Stephen McCarty, Reforming Housing Impact Fees to Support Housing Affordability:
Analyzing the Impact of Proposed Legislation Through a Case Study of Four Inland California Cities, cAl.
western l. rev. (Spring 2023 Symposium).
542 Journal of Legal Education
Since these programs began at McGeorge School of Law in 2016, we are
aware of two other ABA-accredited law schools that have started offering
similar degrees. The University of Montana recently moved a long-established
NASPAA-accredited MPA program from the political science department
to the school of law, where it resides as a separate department of public
administration and policy within the Baucus Institute. In July 2022, Vermont
Law School renamed itself Vermont Law and Graduate School and is launching
master’s degrees in public policy. While created by a previously stand-alone
law school, these new programs will be housed in a graduate school with its
own dean.
34
As these examples illustrate, the process and structure will vary
across institutions, and there will likely be more in the future. Both legal and
public affairs education should benefit as a result.
Different methods of implementation provide flexibility in the approach
taken as schools develop the interdisciplinary programs to suit their capacities
and goals. The method with the fewest start-up costs and challenges would be
to merge an existing public policy program with an existing law program. Of
course, in bringing together two programs that likely have had minimal contact
with each other, there is a risk that the interdisciplinary educational program
will not be realized. A second approach is to develop new programs in public
policy and administration within an existing law school, as at McGeorge.
The extent of articulation and integration between the new MPA and/or
MPP and existing J.D. programs requires clear initial commitments and then
adjustments over time. Inevitably, the law school plays the more prominent
role at the start. This can require deft handling of accreditation issues to
ensure the distinctiveness of the law program as a professional degree leading
to licensure. Moreover, ordinary academic turf battles within the university
can complicate matters. Additionally, as at McGeorge, the ability to achieve
the potential of having a public policy program within a law school necessarily
must be deferred in favor of successfully launching the program with stable
enrollments and financial security. Finally, a university could choose to make
a bold move by building a school of law and policy from the beginning as
an integrated program. This approach poses potential accreditation issues
if the university already operates a law school, but careful structuring of the
enterprise would offer the most opportunity for successful realization of the
Legal Realist goal of, at long last, expanding the potential of legal education
by acknowledging its deep connections with public administration, public
policy, and politics.
34 Trevor Mason, Vermont Law School changes name and adds master’s programs, the nAtIOnAl JOurnAl
(July 5, 2022), https://nationaljurist.com/national-jurist/news/vermont-law-school-changes-
name-and-adds-masters-programs/#:~:text=Vermont%20Law%20School%20changed%20
its,an%20anonymous%20%248%20million%20donation.
