Many leading European universities offer the Ph.D. in law; now Yale, another one of the leading world institutions in legal scholarship, announces that it is offering the United States' first Ph.D. in law.

Dean Robert Post observes that "...increasing numbers of law professors now pursue Ph.D.’s in allied disciplines like economics, history, philosophy, or political science. Because such disciplines train students in standards and questions that are different from those of the law, the natural next step for the legal academy is to create our own Ph.D. program that can focus on the questions and practices of the law itself. "