Joint Law and FAS Degree Program Satisfies Students of Two Minds

When she graduated from Harvard College in 2000, Katerina Linos had ambitious academic plans: she knew she wanted to pursue a doctorate in government and a concurrent degree from Harvard Law School (HLS).

But at the time, Linos was something of an oddity at Harvard: “Many faculty were ambivalent—or simply new to the possibilities of combining these degrees,” she says.

And she met stiff resistance when—as a first-year law student—she tried to enroll in the third semester of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) government Ph.D. seminar. “I had to make my case to two deans before the registrar agreed to do this,” Linos says.

For years, a small handful of students have earned law degrees and doctorates from Harvard, but without any formal arrangement or a reduction in total courseload.

But as scholars with interdisciplinary training gain more prominence in the legal world, the University is set to launch a new joint program that could let Ph.D. candidates such as Linos count a full semester of Ph.D. coursework toward their Law School graduation requirement—in the process saving nearly $16,000 on Law School tuition.

When the program begins in September, Linos will be among the first to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Increasingly, the most important work in legal academia is being done by scholars with research training as well as law training,” University President Lawrence H. Summers said in an interview earlier this month.

And after years of planning, HLS has finally formalized joint degree arrangements with the economics and government departments, while also laying the groundwork for an innovative cooperative effort that will allow law students to graduate with a doctorate in health policy.

Progress between the Law School and several other FAS departments is moving at a slightly slower pace, according to Rise Shepsle, who is the graduate student affairs officer at FAS. “The history department has expressed strong interest and will complete the process for participation in the near future,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Law School Dean Elena Kagan said last week that talks with the philosophy department “are a little behind,” but she added that “we are very confident that there will be a program with the philosophy department of that kind.”

Meanwhile, Kagan said that the Law School is taking preliminary steps toward establishing a joint-degree program with Harvard’s Graduate School of Design—and perhaps with MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning as well. But she said that the process is “still in the talking stages,” and she doesn’t expect the schools to finalize arrangements by next year—“unless we’re superhuman.”

The joint degree program between the Law School and FAS has been in the works since even before Kagan became dean of the school two years ago. “I have been the lucky recipient of a lot of planning that was done under” former HLS Dean Robert C. Clark, Kagan said.

While Clark holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, Kagan—like the vast majority of Law School professors—does not have a doctorate. Of the Law School’s 81 senior faculty, assistant and adjunct professors, 13 have Ph.D.s and one has a medical doctorate, according to the school’s website.

Kagan emphasized that “a Ph.D. is in no sense a prerequisite for us. And I don’t think it should be.” But she added that “there’s no doubt that law schools have been strengthened by having people on our faculties who have deep knowledge of another discipline.”

Specifically, Kagan said that scholars with J.D.s as well as Ph.D.s had sparked the growth of the law and economics discipline, which examines how rules affect behavior and assesses laws in terms of their economic efficiency.

Kagan noted that one of the founders of the discipline, Judge Richard A. Posner of the 7th federal circuit, does not have an economics degree, although among the movement’s leaders, “that’s rare.”

“When you’re at the intersection of fields like that, it helps to have training in both,” Kagan said.

Joseph P. Newhouse ‘63, who is chairman of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy, wrote in an e-mail last week that he knows of no other school that has established a joint program between law and health policy, “although I wouldn’t want to stake my life on the issue that we are the first.” So far, one student has applied to the joint program, Newhouse wrote.

While the new program will allow students one less semester of law school work, it might not put students on an accelerated track toward a Ph.D. “Credit decisions will be made by the individual program,” Shepsle wrote in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, joint degree students—although they will spend five semesters in residence at the Law School instead of six—“will graduate having met all the same J.D. requirements as our other students,” HLS Assistant Academic Dean Catherine Claypoole said in an interview last month.

And joint degree students whose doctoral dissertations cover subjects related to legal scholarship can use part of their Ph.D writing to satisfy the Law School’s writing requirement, Claypoole said.

FAS becomes the fourth Harvard school to establish a joint degree arrangement with HLS—and the Design School could become the fifth. Since the early 1970s, students have been able to earn joint degrees in law and business within four years—as opposed to the five that would be required to satisfy HLS and Business School requirements separately. Law students can add a masters of public policy or masters of public administration/international development degree from the Kennedy School in four years instead of the standard five. And with just one extra summer of coursework, law students can earn a masters degree from the School of Public Health.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.