The Ph.D. in Law

The PhD in law program, which is a joint effort of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Yale Law School, is designed in part to pursue the question of what does it mean to study law? Is law a discipline? Legal education in the United States, once upon a time, was an exclusively professional training, but it’s become an academic enterprise. It’s become a coherent and important part of the university and of intellectual life in the United States. The PhD is an opportunity for us to ask about that and to think about that and make those kinds of connections within the legal academy. The PhD is a structured program. It has coursework requirements. It has examinations. It is aimed at preparing legal academics and preparing them in a rigorous fashion to make a real contribution to law and the study of law in the United States and around the world.