Writers here at MoneyLaw have taken a mostly dim view of "law porn," the technical term for the flow of correspondence that floods law schools each September and October in anticipation of the annual U.S. News & World Report popularity contest. Jeff Harrison adamantly opposes the practice. For my part, I look upon the custom whimsically. In very practical terms, I have nixed a mass-mailing of the University of Louisville's law alumni magazine to legal academics.
As I look at Alistair the Peacock, who belongs to the author of Beyond the Fringe, an Australian blog, I realize that law porn is better explained as a manifestation of sexual selection rather than natural selection. After giving a very cursory explanation of the underlying evolutionary biology, I will apply my insight to law school administration and the "law porn" phenomenon.
Recall what Charles Darwin said about the peacock's tail. The garish -- indeed, crippling -- display of feathers comes at some expense to the peacock's survival. It takes more energy. It reduces the peacock's ability to escape predators. But those costs are offset by the tail's value in attracting peahens:
If the above video does not render, click here to view it in a popup window
Moving from peacock courtship to law teaching, let us apply this wisdom to our own little ecosystem. Law schools send out self-promoting porn, not because it enables them to do their jobs better (quite the contrary is demonstrably true), but rather because it is crippling. Sending out law porn, at enormous expense in terms of printing, postage, and personnel, issues a readily understood signal: My law school can afford to promote itself this way. Vote generously.
Indeed, in even more precise biological terms, law schools' practice of shipping law porn manifests a human variant of koinophilia. Organisms exhibiting koinophilia prefer mates who do not have unusual, peculiar, or deviant features. In other words, sexual creatures prefer mates with common or average features. Peacock courtship is often cited as the classic instance of koinophilia. If peacocks are any guide (and I am strenuously arguing that they are), law porn will not only be persistent. Over time, it will converge toward a stylistic sameness that becomes rigidly obligatory. Woe be unto the law school that attempts to opt out, or to deviate in its porn-shipping strategies.To sum up:
- Law schools send out porn, not because it helps them do their jobs, but precisely because it is costly and everyone else knows it.
- Law porn is an ironically appropriate term because the evolutionary phenomenon it resembles is sexual rather than natural selection.
- Because law porn, like the tail feathers of the peacock, reflects the underlying koinophilia of its producers and consumers, it is not only persistent. It will converge toward a consistent "industry standard."