Do you happen to remember when or where the ABA said that a J.D. can use “doctor”? I find that surprising since, as you note, the doctorate in law is the LL.D. or S.J.D.
However, while the J.D. (or, in the past, its equivalent, the LL.B.) is not a true doctorate, it does require three years of intensive postgraduate study, so is more than a master’s degree.
I don’t have the source at hand, but it was in an ethics committee ruling or something like that. I don’t think they distinguished between a true Scotsman doctor and … not one. “Juris Doctor” means “doctor of law,” so that was good enough, especially with analogy to “Medicinae Doctor.”
How do you define a “true doctorate”?
I understand a doctorate to be the most advanced degree in a field, typically following a master’s degree and requiring significant research, often embodied in a thesis or dissertation. That describes the LL.D./S.J.D., but not the J.D.
so what about MD?
Qualified surgeons (say in the UK) revert-- are allowed to revert-- from “Doctor” to “Mister/Mistress”, right? But there are historical reasons for this, just as for the habit of addressing physicians as “Doctor”, so I wouldn’t read too much into it.
This distinction doesn’t really matter for the purposes of legal ethics. Logically, a person with a degree that says “Doctor” is a Doctor. The question isn’t whether the degree itself is a “true doctorate” but rather whether its use is misleading in a material way.
The M.D. is not a research doctorate, so it does not require a thesis/dissertation, but it is the most advanced degree in its field.
Not at all. Someone with an MD can go on to get a PhD in medicine, for a research career in medicine.
A few states including CA allow you to read the law which means you work with a lawyer to learn and then you take the bar exam. No law school needed . As strange as it sounds Kim Kardashian says she is doing that route to become a lawyer.
Surgeon who took out my gall bladder also had a PhD
WV Law:
So Dr. Dre can never set foot in WV ??
On the few times there is any discussion about the law, yeah, it seems as if Dr. Dre or Dr. J would run afoul of the law if they came to WV and advertised an appearance.
Dr. J has an honorary doctorate from UMass as well as an honorary doctorate (in dance) from Temple.
West Virginia was forced to enact this law after all those times when Doctor Doom attacked Huntington and the Fantastic Four couldn’t be bothered to fight any crime outside of Manhattan.
Almost every school that gave Bill Cosby an honorary doctorate revoked the degree. He had around 40.
Catholic church has Doctors of the Church but they are all long dead.
But Cosby also has a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, which as far as I know has not been revoked.
Could they even do that? I mean, he went to class, passed the tests, and earned the degree. Just because he did a real bad thing later in life doesn’t change the fact that he passed the prescribed course of study. Can they take away his high school diploma or his victory in the Third Grade Spelling Bee?
I wouldn’t have thought so. Sounds like a unilateral contract to me: “You pay us find o’money, take classes as we prescribe, pass exams and do all the assignments, and if you meet our grading requirements, we give you a degree.”
Unless there’s a moral turpitude clause in there (and I’ve never seen one in a university sign-up), don’t see how they could revoke because you do bad things later in life.
Based on some online research, a college can revoke your degree. But only based on the belated discovery of things you did in college. So Cosby’s earned doctorate could not be revoked based on his conviction for rapes he committed years later. But if he was convicted of an old rape case that dated back to when he was a student, they could retroactively declare that he had violated the school’s rules, even though they were unaware of it at the time, and therefore should not have been awarded his doctorate and take it back. This also applies for the discovery of non-criminal academic violations like cheating, plagiarism, or faking your research results.