The Impact of Scholarly Legal Analysis on Law Reform

Banks McDowell was a law professor at Washburn and at Boston University.  I already knew the truth in this quotation from McDowell's 1985 article, The Collateral Source Rule: The American Medical Association and Tort Reform, 24 Washburn L.J. 205 (1985).  But I was pleased to find it, and I appreciate the elegant way in which it captures a truth all-too-humbling to the legal academic.  

Rarely does scholarly analysis about a legal problem and the need for reform lead directly to change. Some politically active group who stands to gain by the reform has the responsibility of turning a dispassionate analysis into a new and effective legislative program.