Elite law faculties are overwhelmingly liberal. Jim Lindgren has proven the point empirically. I will just add my impressions from Georgetown Law School to reinforce the point. We are a faculty of 120, and, to my knowledge, the number of professors who are openly conservative, or libertarian, or Republican or, in any sense, to the right of the American center, is three—three out of 120. There are more conservatives on the nine-member United States Supreme Court than there are on this 120-member faculty. Moreover, the ideological median of the other 117 seems to lie not just left of center, but closer to the left edge of the Democratic Party. Many are further left than that.
These numbers are stark, but they are not unusual; this ratio actually seems fairly typical of most elite law schools.
It's certainly true here at UCLA, where our numbers--never large--are shrinking. (When I say "our," does it surprise any of my readers that I lean right of center?) Back to Professor Rosenkranz:
This lop-sidedness would be a shame in any academic department. But it is a particularly ironic sort of shame at a law school. After all, it is a fundamental axiom of American law that the best way to get to truth is through the clash of zealous advocates on both sides. All of these law professors have, in theory, dedicated their lives to the study of this axiomatically adversarial system. And yet, at most of these schools, on most of the important is- sues of the day, one side of the debate is dramatically underrepresented, or not represented at all.
Please go read the whole thing.
