Posted on 02/07/2017 6:58:43 AM PST by Academiadotorg
Here's why good Supreme Court justices, or, for that matter, attorneys in general, let alone attorneys general, are going to keep getting harder to find: Law schools going the way of the Modern Language Association (MLA).
"The tendency toward designing a curriculum to suit the interests and eccentricities of law professors can be seen in the decline of the core law school curriculum, with its basic building block courses like Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Corporations, Criminal Law, Evidence, Professional Responsibility, Property, and Torts," Gail Heriot wrote late last year in a policy analysis for the Cato Institute. "That decline is mainly a function of the fact that fewer faculty members want to teach them."
"Meanwhile, a plethora of esoteric and boutique courses -- such as Harvard's 'Alternative Sexual Relationships: The Jewish Legal Tradition' and 'Progressive Alternatives: Institutional Reconstruction Today' -- have found their way into the curriculum because, well, some law professor feels like teaching them and nobody has an incentive to tell him that he can’t." These course titles can easily make it as panels at the annual MLA convention.
Heriot, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, also serves on the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
There are a few law forums that I read frequently, and I can tell you that they are astonishingly left-leaning.
Do bears chit in the woods?
Yes, but the Federalist Society helped save a few students.
Liberalism ruins everything it touches.
Even STEM is under attack given the silliness emanating from climate science “research”.
Law Schools have been messed up for over 100 years due to the near universal adoption of the Case Book Method of teaching.
While not the worst thing for preparing one to be a judge, it isn’t the most efficient way to prepare one to be a lawyer, who has to deal with the mechanics of the system as well as legal precedents.
All judges and attorneys should have a solid grounding in logic, history and philosophy even before setting foot inside a law school, though law schools could do a better job of applying these fundamental to law within their classes. The undergraduate schools have not been providing this for 50 years for the most part.
The smart and qualified students will seek out the right courses to prepare them for being competent judges. We will continue to have enough of these folks from the very small pool who ever get to be high level judges. Of course unqualified people may get high positions due to politics, but that has always been the case.
So, sadly, law schools are mostly producing liberal lawyers, who in turn will become liberal judges.
And this, in retrospect, can be seen as part of the liberal long march through the institutions.
yes it did.
This is the question with Gorsuch. Have you seen where he was educated?
Roosevelt mess ping.
I mention this often. Roosevelt couldn't get his reforms through normal judges. Roosevelt (and Truman after him) had to appoint kook-bat judges who didn't adhere to real law, but instead followed this "living constitution" crap. (which means the constitution says whatever we want it to say)
They had 20 years to pollute the courts with kooks, and then the law schools thereafter had to teach the new Kook-Bat theory because that's what you would have to use when you dealt with the Kook-Bat judges.
And that's why the legal system is so nonsensical today.
I know, but it meant something then, or at least something more than it does now...
Do you have to be a lawyer to be a judge? Seems to me that common sense and reading comprehension skills should be all that is necessary.
“There are a few law forums that I read frequently, and I can tell you that they are astonishingly left-leaning.”
My experience is anecdotal, and makes you completely correct. Conservative law students fear for personal safety, and are fearful of getting slammed on grades by leftists in schools.
Antonin Scalia went to Harvard Law. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito went to Yale Law. They have been as reliably conservative as any Justices of the 20th century.
In my humble opinion, its not the law school, its the law student. The kind of conservatives that I want on the bench are the kind who were able to maintain and strengthen their ideological integrity even though surrounded by liberals. That mirrors the real world.
No you do not need to be a lawyer. Quite a few Supreme Court Justices were not lawyers.
John Jay, Founding Father and our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was not a lawyer.
John Marshall, considered to be one of the greatest Chief Justices: Was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, 1782, 1787, 1795; Diplomatic envoy to France, 1797; US House of Representatives, 1799; US Secretary of State, 1800-1801; Nominated Chief Justice US Supreme Court, 1801; despite confirmation, Marshall continued to serve as Secretary of State through Adams’ term.
Think of that, Secretary of State AND Chief Justice at the same time.
Anyway, he wasted his time as Secretary of State. He failed to get a single contribution from a foreign country for the John and Mary Marshall Foundation.
The most votes against the confirmation of any of FDR’s appointees was 16 votes against Hugo Black. Seven FDR appointees were confirmed on a voice vote, no roll call.
FDR was president for so long that he got to appoint 8 members of the Supreme Court plus a Chief Justice. Among them was Justice Hugo Black who is credited with inventing Textualism (Justice Scalia’s judicial philosophy based on plain reading of the actual words of the Constitution). But Black was a liberal and pro-New Deal as a U.S. Senator he had voted for every New Deal bill.
Stanley Reed was the last Supreme Court Justice to not have a law degree. “Reed was considered a moderate and often provided the critical fifth vote in split rulings. He authored more than 300 opinions, and Chief Justice Warren Burger said “he wrote with clarity and firmness.” Reed was an economic progressive, and generally supported racial desegregation, civil liberties, trade union rights and economic regulation. On free speech, national security and certain social issues, however, Reed was generally a conservative. He often approved of federal (but not state or local) restrictions on civil liberties. Reed also opposed applying the Bill of Rights to the states via the 14th Amendment.”— Wikipedia
Felix Frankfurter was founder of the American Civil Liberties Union but on the Supreme Court he espoused the philosophy of “judicial restraint,” meaning he believed the Supreme Court should not overturn the actions of the other branches except in rare cases. He also was against SCOTUS messing with business.
Harlan Stone was a Republican who had been appointed Associate Justice by President Coolidge. Roosevelt elevated Justice Stone to Chief Justice.
Although he had been a Republican U.S. Attorney General Stone was a big supporter of the New Deal.
Robert H. Jackson became world famous as the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. He had previously been Solicitor General and Attorney General.
Justices William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, Hugo Black and Wiley Rutledge were always reliable liberals for FDR.
James Byrnes was also a Roosevelt appointee but he was only on the Court for a year, he left to be director of FDR’s Office of Economic Stabilization.
That’s a tempting thought; on the day that RWR announced the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor, a letter to the Editor appeared in The Wall Street Journal suggesting that an economist should be on the high court, who would understand the economic impact of the court’s rulings. My reaction to that was, “Wonderful idea! And I know exactly who that person should be - Thomas Sowell!” I then happened to glance at the byline of that letter - and it was Thomas Sowell!LOL.
But seriously, the answer to that question is probably best given by the late, lamented Justice Antonin Scalia himself. He dismissed the idea that a SCOTUS justice only made decisions what a layman could make. He said that the real day to day work of the court requires the expertise of well-educated lawyer.
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