To Dress for Dinner: Teaching Law in a Bureaucratic Age

This reflective essay employs literary narratives—Lampedusa's The Leopard and the film Wild River—to explore questions facing law professors navigating an era of bureaucratic change. Schlegel uses The Leopard's aristocratic character Don Fabrizio, who reluctantly declines political appointment amid Italy's transition to a constitutional monarchy, as a lens for examining generational tensions about the future. The essay contrasts Don Fabrizio's nostalgia for the old order with his nephew Tancredi's embrace of modern change, asking whether law teachers should accommodate or resist contemporary bureaucratic transformation. Schlegel draws parallels to Wild River's protagonist Chuck Glover, a TVA official attempting to convince Ella Garth to abandon her riverside property for government progress—a struggle between preserving traditional ways and advancing modernization. The essay poses fundamental questions about legal education: should professors maintain traditional values while the world modernizes, or adapt to serve changing institutional demands? Through these narratives, Schlegel explores how legal educators might meaningfully engage with futures that undermine foundational values.

Topics: Legal Theory · Legal History

Keywords: legal education · bureaucracy · modernization · tradition · generational change · institutional values · teaching law