<p>It’s more or less completely beside the point, but a JD is the highest degree most legal academics receive. It’s not uncommon these days for lawyers and law professors to have graduate degrees in other fields, including PhDs, but most of the leading law academics don’t. People whose work garners significant respect from non-lawyers – like, off the top of my head, Akhil Amar, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Posner, Bruce Ackerman, Cass Sunstein, Alex Kozinski – do not have meaningful advanced degrees other than their law degrees.</p>