This [i.e., engaging in the conversation started in this post] wasn’t where I’d planned to start, but since I’ve got some thoughts on the scholarship-practice divide I might as well add my two cents. I spent just over eight years in practice before entering academia, so I have some understanding for the practitioner perspective. My firm maintained subscriptions to many of the top law reviews, which I would browse as time permitted. My reactions ranged from “wow that’s really interesting!” to “wow that’s complete ivory tower BS!” to “you know, I think I can actually use that!” And use them I did. I distinctly recall, for example, discussing Alan Michaels’ “Constitutional Innocence” article in the Harvard Law Review at oral argument before the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Nobody laughed.

So I think there’s plenty of scholarship, even work done at relatively high levels of abstraction, that can be put to work in practice.