Now that LawProf has outed himself as Colorado law professor Paul Campos in a post that included a sharp attack on Brian Leiter, the latter replies:
Paul Campos is, of course, most notorious in the legal academy for going on the O'Reilly Factor--yes,the O'Reilly Factor--to call for Ward Churchill to be fired for his offensive political opinions (long before any allegations of academic misconduct arose). And this wasn't an anomaly: he also called for Glenn Reynolds (Tennessee) to be sanctioned by his university for his offensive political opinions. Fortunately for Professor Campos, his contempt for the First Amendment rights of state university professors do not constitute binding precedents on the courts, and I am confident his university won't sanction him for his irresponsible speech. They should, however, launch an investigation into whether he is performing his duties, since his blog is tantamount to an admission of dereliction of duties and his 'scholarly' record is prima facie evidence of failure to do his job as a professor at a major research university.
But back to the fact-free smear. Among the gems: (1) denying that he's met me, when we've met more than once; (2) attacking me for running law and philosophy blogs and rankings (despite my cyber-hobbies, I've produced more scholarship in the last five years than he's produced in twenty); (3) stating, falsely, that "law school costs have increased exponentially, even as the job prospects of law school graduates have declined" (law school tuition, like all higher education tuition, has increased exponentially for thirty years, and during most of that time the legal job market was strong; tuition increases have slowed considerably since the downturn in the job market that began with the Great Recession in 2008); (4) stating, falsely, that I've never held a job for which a law degree is required; and so on. And then, of course, there's the pitiful anti-intellectualism, worthy of Rick Perry's approach to higher education, but there's no need to belabor that for this audience. Given that Professor Campos's "scholarship" would not survive his Rick Perry approach to scholarship, perhaps it's time for him to resign? ...
It is unfortunate that some victims of the recession think, falsely, that ScamProf Campos is doing something courageous on their behalf. He's not, he's just doing what he always does, trying to surf the wave of the latest fad and attract attention to himself. For years, I've pressed for better job placementdata and cautioned students about the reality of the recent job market and relying on the data in US News. There's no dispute about the importance of that. There's no dispute that some law schools have misled prospective students; some are now being sued, and we will see what facts come to light. There's no dispute that some faculty, in all disciplines, abuse the privilege of tenure--Campos is a prime example. None of this warrants the absurdly offensive description of American legal education as a "scam." The American legal system is one of the best in the world--did that happen despite American legal education? The leading law firms continue to recruit at the leading law schools, the ones that produce all the scholarship ScamProf Campos derides. Are they simply benighted? Law professors, at least the good ones (like most of Campos's colleagues at Colorado that I know), teach substantive doctrine in many areas of law as well as analytical and dialectical skills that lawyers need. (My teaching evaluations, by the way, are a matter of public record, will ScamProf Campos share his?) There's been debates for years about the relative balance of doctrinal, theoretical, and clinical teaching in legal education, and those will no doubt continue, independent of ScamProf Campos.
