What do most prospective law students hope to get out of a legal education? Ask them, and they'll tell you. A good academic grounding. An opportunity to work with a collegial group of teachers and students. A new way of thinking.

But that's not all they want. Although they may not admit it, they secretly long for something else: a law degree, debt-free.

No chance, you say? Visions of a six-figure debt stalking the graduate like a drooling brown bear after a honeypot?

Well, come on over to Heidi Hurd's office, because she has some good news for law students: a financially free University of Pennsylvania law degree.

Ah, yes, but there is a catch. You must be one of the best philosophy students in the land and willing to spend six grueling years in Penn's nascent joint Ph.D.-J.D. program in philosophy and law.

"This is a unique program," said Hurd, the associate dean of academic affairs at the Law School . "I'm sure it's absolutely unique in its financial relations. We guarantee them six years of full financial assistance. The goal is for them to come out of the program to be well-trained academics.

"When you come out of law school in America, you come out with such tremendous debt you feel you have to go into a big law firm. This program was designed to be debt-free. It is designed to allow students to graduate with a first-class education in law and philosophy, so they can become first-class philosophers."

Certainly, it is a bit flip to call the law-philosophy program merely a free ride through Penn's Law School. It is, Hurd believes, a cutting-edge academic idea with a rigorous basis. Hurd came to Penn seven years ago from the University of Southern California with the idea of forming this type of program. She herself has a J.D. degree and a doctorate in philosophy from USC, and a master's degree in legal philosophy from Dalhousie University in Canada. She is jointly appointed in law and philosophy. She coordinates the program with her husband, law professor Michael Moore, and Samuel Freeman of the Philosophy Department.

"Penn has long failed to take its place among the leading institutions that turn out teachers," Hurd said. "When we go after law professors, we are still looking for people who come from Columbia or Harvard or Yale or Stanford . It's time Penn stepped up its effort to produce teachers in law and philosophy. I hope this program will make us a teacher of teachers, as well as a teacher of lawyers. This should be good for Penn as an institution as a whole."

The first two students in the joint law-philosophy program--Joseph Farmer and Ned Diver--are finishing up their second year. The first two years of the program are spent entirely in the Philosophy Department . Next year, Farmer and Diver will become first-year law students. The following two years, they will take courses in both disciplines, so that both degrees will be completed by the end of the fifth year. In the sixth year, they will do their philosophy thesis work.

"We debated about designing an initial couple of courses for the program, but in the end we decided against that," Hurd said. "We already have a number of courses that fit the program, and we wouldn't be adding anything by having more."

Hurd said her biggest hurdle was convincing the Law School to treat the students in the program as academics and, thus, give them complete financial assistance. Now, she hopes the Law School will extend the program to other disciplines.

"We are looking for other things, maybe law and sociology or law and history, so that people will be able to get advanced degrees in those fields in order to become academics," she said. "The Law School has become an enormously successful theoretical law school. Its future fame lies in that direction, and it has been going that way for about 10 years now. To that end, it should go towards increased multidisciplinary courses."

Hurd noted that there are four Law School professors with advanced degrees in philosophy, "plus a number of fellow travelers interested in the philosophical."

"This is the place to go for law and philosophy," she said. "And that is not just true of the Law School. Penn is an astonishingly philosophical place."

While the aim of the law-philosophy program is to produce professors, Hurd notes that those completing the program should remain attuned to the important issues of the day.

"As a general matter, the kinds of social problems we face are those that are imminently relative to philosophy and philosophers," she said. "At a time when personal responsibility is at issue, no one is more attuned than a moral philosopher." She added that the law component is a bonus.

"Lawyers like to say that law is philosophy with a point," Hurd continued. "Law is the writing down of political philosophy along with economics and sociology. You can't be a good lawyer if you aren't thoughtful on what the law is about. And nowhere else in the academy do we teach about how to think analytically as we do in the Philosophy Department."

Hurd said that the inspiration of the program has several students in both disciplines looking to get degrees in both law and philosophy even without the free version of law school. And it has resulted in impressive applicants. "Extraordinary people are applying for this program," she offered. "We will be able to use these fellowships to attract the best and the brightest from around the world."

Hurd expects that virtually all of those who go through the program to become professors, but she said that you never know with philosophers.

"I have a Ph.D. colleague of mine who is doing philosophy-of-mind work for Boeing ," she said. "Maybe one of these folks in the program will be able to put out a shingle and just philosophize."

Return to Compass Features for April 30, 1996