Legal Commentary

In a comment to Lyrissa's interesting post on sabbaticals, Rob Vischer (buy his new book!) writes: 

[W]hat exactly is the purpose of a sabbatical if not to delve more deeply into a single, sustained scholarly project? I'm sure that folks in many jobs would love six months off from their primary responsibility in order to learn a new language or get to know the various constituents in their place of employment better. Of course, with summers off and only three (or four) courses per year, law profs already have time to delve deeply into a single, sustained scholarly project. So can we still justify making our students take on more debt in order to let us take entire semesters (or years) off from teaching?

This is a good question, but I do think the answer is that it can be good for a lot of things besides a single, sustained scholarly project.  

For one thing, the three primary elements of the academic life are teaching, scholarship, and service.  Even if one is not teaching, I don't think it's illegitimate to use a sabbatical to engage in serious service projects.  It's true that service is traditionally valued a lot less than teaching or scholarship, but that doesn't mean it's not a valuable -- indeed, a central -- part of the academic life.  Moreover, in addition to the obvious institution-building aspects of engaging in a serious service project, it can have spillover effects for both one's teaching and scholarship.  Say, for instance, that you engage in a significant pro bono representation that ends up feeding your future scholarship or forming the basis for a new class.  I would look less favorably on a sabbatical project that was really about making money and did not contribute much to your general academic work, but I certainly would not categorically rule out service as a sabbatical possibility.

For another thing, if one focuses on writing, I'm not sure why Rob focuses on the idea of a single and sustained project.  Why not several shorter projects?  They take time and effort as well, and although one could finish any one of them while teaching, one certainly might not be able to do several of them while also shouldering a regular teaching load.  Surely the focus should be on making significant scholarly contributions rather than on whether that contribution comes singly or serially.

Finally, although I appreciate Rob's suggestion that we would all value time off to engage in self-fulfillment, and thus that scholars should not view this time as a vacation, it seems to me that there are other things one could do that would have genuine value.  Let's say you teach criminal law but have little practice background in the area, and so decide to spend six months shadowing prosecutors.  Or you are a constitutional scholar with little background in history, and you spend six months engaged in extensive coursework across the campus.  Projects like these aren't the same as, say, deciding to spend six months learning about Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.  They are generally difficult or impossible to do while teaching and can have real downstream benefits to one's life as a scholar and teachers.  I agree that the sabbatical should not be a time to master computer Solitaire, or to "refresh" oneself in an abstract sense.  But neither does it have to be confined to the single category of working on a single major research project.

That said, I'm just coming off a one-semester teaching leave, and I loved it.  I did engage in one single sustained project -- the first six chapters of my first book.  I also did about a half-dozen other pieces, read a lot, and just occasionally tried to be a supportive spouse and parent.  It was a great experience, and I am sure Lyrissa will do great things with her time.