Legal Academia Faces a Crisis of Ideological Imbalance
The third in my occasional series of articles on reforming legal academia appeared in Law & Liberty on September 20, entitled “Ideological Balance Is Essential to Sound Pedagogy in Legal Academia.” The link is here. (The first two installments are here and here.) I point out that law school faculties-especially at elite schools–are overwhelmingly liberal. This ideological imbalance diminishes the quality of legal education, and ought to be of concern to the organizations that regulate (and accredit) law schools. One-sided faculties create an echo chamber.
The ABA, which imposes “diversity” standards on law schools’ student bodies and faculty, is indifferent toward the most important form of diversity: intellectual balance. The article was kindly cited and quoted in a post by Pepperdine law school dean Paul Caron in his TaxProf Blog.
Here’s my conclusion:
The U.S. Department of Education, and the state supreme courts which have entrusted the ABA with quasi-governmental powers in this area, must not allow the nation’s law schools to become monolithic progressive enclaves, indoctrinating students with leftist dogma posing as scholarship. Some reformers have described the status quo as “the left’s Kulturkampf.” It is worse than that. “Kulturkampf” refers to a struggle for control; the Left’s current domination of legal academia constitutes a rout. The ABA’s abysmal dereliction in this critically-important area justifies a re-evaluation of its supervisory role.
