Misrule of Law

A frivolous lawsuit in KY shows how the ABA has turned law schools into leftist indoctrination centers through silly accreditation rules

Thanks to Steve Bannon’s War Room (here), Ace of Spades HQ (here), and the Tennessee Star (here)!

Even though Tennessee and Kentucky share a long border, they are very different states. For example, Kentucky voters elected (and re-elected) a liberal Democrat, Andy Beshear, as Governor, after having previously elected him Attorney General. (His father, Steve Beshear, was also a two-term Democrat Governor.) Moreover, despite having a Republican-leaning electorate (as evidenced by two Republican U.S. Senators and a veto-proof GOP majority in both chambers of the state legislature), the Bluegrass State’s higher education system has long been dominated by wokeness and DEI.    

What difference a state border makes! God bless Tennessee.

Earlier this month, former federal district judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove (appointed to the E.D. KY by GWB in 2006, and retired in 2026) was appointed as Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Law, by UK’s provost. Van Tatenhove in a UK Law alumnus who previously served as U.S. Attorney in the E.D. of KY (2002-2005) and clerked for a judge on the E.D. KY. Van Tatenhove also served as Chief of Staff for a KY congressman and as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. By any measure Van Tatenhove has had an impressive legal career that the University of Kentucky should be proud of.

According to the ABA Journal,

A spokesperson for the school told the [Kentucky] Lantern that Van Tatenhove was appointed “following an extensive process that is the same as other dean selections,” adding: “The result is an outstanding new Dean who has been a proven leader and is excited about helping lead a talented group of faculty, staff and students forward.” He stated that Van Tatenhove’s appointment was scheduled to begin on July 20.

But Van Tatenhove’s appointment as Dean has created a major controversy in KY. Because he is a conservative Republican, and the faculty of UK’s law school is overwhelmingly liberal, the Ivory Tower drama queens are throwing a hissy fit. Leftists on the faculty have called the retired federal judge “an unacceptable candidate.” Of course, left-wing Gov. Andy Beshear, who has presidential ambitions, is wading into the fray. But what put this controversy in the news is that a suspended UK law professor, Ramsi Woodcock, has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging Van Tatenhove’s appointment. (Woodcock, a fanatical anti-Semite who maintains a website called Antizionist Legal Studies Movement, was suspended in 2025 for circulating an online petition calling for the armed destruction of Israel and support for Hamas in the Gaza war.)

The venue for Woodcock’s lawsuit is the E.D. of KY, where Van Tatenhove sat for two decades, resulting (predictably) in the recusal of the entire bench. The Sixth Circuit’s Chief Judge will have to reassign the case elsewhere. Woodcock’s lawsuit is patently frivolous. One of his claims is that Van Tatenhove’s appointment as Dean violates Woodcock’s First Amendment right of “expressive association.” The argument is that “Because a dean evaluates faculty scholarship, …installing a dean the faculty deemed unqualified to evaluate scholarship ‘dilutes’ the faculty’s collective message that their work is peer reviewed.” Ridiculous, especially coming from a “law professor.”

If this makes law school faculty seem like entitled divas, that’s because they are. Most law professors have never practiced law, or have done so briefly and without distinction. The overrated bloviators teach a few classes a year and write non-peer-reviewed articles that hardly anyone reads. These overpaid prima donnas enjoy tenure, which means lifetime employment. Law professors are nothing but employees complaining that the board of directors hired someone they don’t like to be CEO. No union in America is so power-drunk to make that complaint out-loud. But it is the centerpiece of the lawsuit.

Woodcock also brings a flimsy tortious interference claim based on the American Bar Association’s accreditation standards for law schools. The standard in question, Standard 203, states that “Except in extraordinary circumstances, a dean shall also hold appointment as a member of the faculty with tenure” (203(b)), and “Except for good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty.” (Interpretation 203-1) (Emphasis added.)

Workers don’t get to veto management’s decisions regarding who runs the company. That would amount to Marxist seizure of control of the means of production. If the UAW were to ask GM for this type of employee control in contract negotiations, they would be laughed out of the room. Yet, ironically, the ABA confers this awesome power over law professors, as a condition of law schools gaining ABA accreditation. As matters now stand, the ABA requires law schools to surrender control over the hiring decision for Dean (CEO) to the workers he supervises, the faculty. Once leftists comprise a majority of the faculty at a law school, which is the case at virtually every law school in America, the ABA wants them also to control who will be their boss.  So only compliant Deans are selected, perpetuating the leftist control of the law schools. What a racket!

The significance of ABA accreditation is up to each state’s supreme court, which has jurisdiction over regulation of the legal profession, in particular the licensure of new attorneys. In most states, only graduates of ABA-accredited law schools are allowed to take the bar exam. Each state’s supreme court decides whether (or not) to grant these monopoly powers to the ABA.

Tennessee allows graduates of the Nashville School of Law, which is not ABA-accredited, to take the bar, due to its century-long record of providing quality legal education to working adults. The Tennessee Supreme Court is considering whether to replace the ABA as the accrediting authority for other law schools. I urge them to do so.

This absurd lawsuit in Kentucky shows why the ABA’s role in legal education must be eliminated.  UK’s governing body, representing the interests of KY taxpayers, chose an impressive candidate that the faculty didn’t want. Boo hoo. An esteemed former federal judge who served as the U.S. Attorney surely qualifies to be Dean of the UK law school. Technical arguments to the contrary show the true agenda of the ABA—to put the faculty inmates in charge of the asylum.