Monica Sandu '24
Production Editor
For too long, lawyers have been denied a right which is rightfully ours. For too long, J.D.s have contented themselves with a measly “esquire,” while M.D.s and Ph.D.s have held an unconstitutional monopoly on the title of “doctor.” No more, I say! I implore my educated brethren to take a plain-meaning approach to the textual interpretation of our degree. If Medical Doctor and Doctor of Philosophy can call themselves “doctor,” why shouldn’t the Juris Doctor, the oldest[1] and most prestigious of the degrees, take this title for themselves as well? Surely, the leisure of an operating theatre cannot compete with the stress of a cold call.
“But wait,” I hear you say. “We don’t practice medicine! Why should we call ourselves doctors?” To this, I answer that you need only look towards our beleaguered colleague, the Ph.D. student, to realize that it’s not medical knowledge that makes a doctor—it’s suffering through a graduate program. If Ph.D.s can call themselves “doctor,” why not J.D.s? We both do research. We both suffer through interminable readings to get asked pointless philosophical questions by our professors. We were both gifted children in elementary school who quickly burnt out in college and had an identity crisis, only to take on another degree and a mountain of debt in order to kick the can of reality down the road for just a little bit longer.
Without this honorific, we are alienated from our esteemed peers in graduate education and instead are lowered to a status of that most inferior graduate degree—the MBA. And, if you’re ever in the situation where a flight attendant on a plane asks, “Is there a doctor on board,” you can finally answer, “Yes.” And I think we all want that.
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ms7mn@virginia.edu
[1] Europe’s first university, the University of Bologna, was a school of law, founded in the Eleventh Century by legal scholars. In contrast, while the first medical degrees were awarded by the Schola Medica Salernitana around 1000 AD, they were only officially sanctioned in 1127 AD by Roger II of Sicily and in 1231 AD by Emperor Federico II, meaning that the origin of our modern legal degree is at least contemporary to, if not predating, the medical degree. However, the first modern M.D. was granted in 1703 by the University of Glasgow, while the first modern J.D. was offered by the University of Chicago in 1902, so I’m calling it a draw.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Medicine.