In 1903, the University of Chicago Law School, which was one of five law schools then demanding a college degree from its applicants, conferred the J.D. on its graduates. The editors of the HARVARD LAW REVIEW [18 Harv. L.R. 51 (1904)] agitated for a similar change at Harvard…but their cry went unheeded
On April 7, 1969, the Harvard Corporation voted that the J.D. would thereafter be awarded as the first degree in law and that it would be made available retroactively upon application to recipients of the LL.B. degree of the Harvard Law School.
Call it one more instance, a trivial one, of Chicago exceptionalism. I have heard the rationale given as that a law degree represents roughly the magnitude of post-graduate study required for a PhD, hence it is logical that the degree granted would reflect this. I had not known of Chicago being at that time (1905) one of only five law schools that required an undergraduate degree for admission. There may have been an older idea embedded in the LLB designation that it was or could be a first degree. That could never be the case at Chicago. Chicago has always been big on logic. It does, however, fit a bit awkwardly with the name to be given to any degree granted for post-law-school studies in law, though I don’t think there are many serious degree-granting programs of that sort. Would stand to be corrected.
I think you are half-wrong on that. Many U.S. law schools, including the great ones, have programs awarding LL.M. and in some cases (mainly high-prestige schools) S.J.D. degrees. There are two or three lucrative markets being served by those programs. First, foreign lawyers who want to practice in the U.S. generally have to take some minimum number of courses at an accredited U.S. law school in order to sit for the bar exam, and LL.M. programs generally provide a framework for that. The LL.M. programs at high-prestige law schools also allow graduates of lower-prestige law schools to burnish their resumes some, and they help students move from one market to another (below the higher prestige levels, the market for entry-level law jobs tends to be very regional).
Also, lots of schools offer specialization programs – probably the best is N.Y.U.'s LL.M. in Taxation, which is a high-prestige credential no matter where your J.D. comes from. Breadth rather than depth is baked into the curriculum design of all U.S. law schools, so enforced by the requirements of ABA accreditation, the need to prepare students for bar examinations, and tradition. In a field like tax, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to know to practice while you are in a J.D. program. To become a great tax lawyer, you either need to find an organization willing to invest considerable time and money in your training, or you need more academic training, or often both.
S.J.D.s are useful for foreign law school graduates who want to study American law and also want a doctorate-level degree that will qualify them to teach in their home countries, and also for American law graduates who want to teach but who weren’t academic stars at top-tier law schools.
Harvard has also recently started a law PhD program as well.
The LLB was awarded in the US by most law schools until the late 1960s or early 1970s. Currently the JD (juris doctorate) is awarded by all ABA accredited US law schools, with the higher law degree being an LLM (master’s in law) usually in a specialty area of the practice of law. Additionally, a few schools offer an SJD degree designed for those seeking to teach law. The SJD is uncommon in the US even among law professors.
The LLB degree is still awarded in most common law countries. The JD degree is awarded only in the US & Canada to the best of my knowledge.
The JD (of some form) is awarded in these other countries as well: China, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Philippines and Singapore. I can see influences of UK and US in most of these countries, except maybe China & Italy…
For US law students, the degrees are JD, LLM & SJD. Very few US law professors earn either the LLM or the research oriented SJD.
LLMs tend to be for specialization for those practicing as attorneys, while the SJD is not a degree for practicing attorneys, but for those desiring to do scholarly research.
@Publisher Technically they are all JDs, but their localized language translations dont usually just literally mean Juris Doctor. Sometimes there are other words interspersed between Juris and Doctor. Sometimes, due to the local name, there are shades of meaning not captured in the JD name. Italy’s JD is a masters degree, while in Japan it is a professional degree, in Mexico it is a doctoral (research level, PhD type) degree. While all of these other countries’ JDs require a prior bachelors or masters degrees as a prerequisite to admission, not all of them allows a JD graduate to be able to teach law afterwards…