Posted on 07/29/2015 7:54:07 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Are the nation’s Ivy League schools giving short shrift to conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices when they confer honorary degrees? A survey by one professor suggests the answer is yes, and that the reason is ideology.
Of the 14 honorary degrees bestowed by Ivy League institutions to living justices, 12 went to those on the high court’s left side, said ...legal scholar John McGinnis of Northwestern University School of Law. The two exceptions, from Brown and Yale, went to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate...
Ginsburg, perhaps the court’s most liberal justice, is the record holder with honorary degrees from every Ivy League university except Cornell, which doesn’t award them....
Justice Sonia Sotomayor has one each from Princeton and Yale—her alma maters. Justice Samuel Alito Jr., who graduated from both of those schools, has yet to be recognized.
Justices Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens and David Souter—also viewed as left of center—have one each....
And how about ....Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., and justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas? No Ivy League honorary degrees.
“What makes this performance even more obviously ideologically driven is that these academic institutions have neglected the one who has had the most academic influence—Antonin Scalia,” McGinnis wrote. “Regardless of whether one agrees with him, his textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation have been driving the academic debate...”
McGinnis believes the different treatment of justices on the right and left “offers some indirect evidence” that professors on the right also suffer discrimination.....
“After all, the faculty and the administration of the law schools likely have some influence on who gets honorary degrees,” he wrote. “And no doubt there is likely to be a similar message in many classrooms about which justices are worthy of emulation.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nationallawjournal.com ...
Ted Cruz would be a great Supreme Court justice.
Give them a break, it’s the only way they can get any honors at all .... but also consider that if you are honored as the best whore by all the other whores it is only an honor in the whore house!!!!
Yep, after his two terms as President. ;-)
Who cares? Would you actually want plaudits from a bunch of corrupt libs?
For some reason the academic world finds it to be of grew notoriety to give these honorary degrees to know nothing liberals. When was the last time Ginsberg write an opinion based on law as opposed T her ideological decree?
Like Reagan said of liberals it’s not that they don’t know anything, it’s just that so much of what they know is wrong” (or something lime that). Half these libs couldn’t even figure out how to change a tire.
Like these people are surprised?
“For some reason the academic world finds it to be of grew notoriety to give these honorary degrees to know nothing liberals. “
The University of Virginia does not grant honorary degrees. All degrees are earned.
Unfortunately, this once moderate university is going through the same type of radical progressive transformation as the United States under its first female president Teresa Sullivan. Her handling of the false Rolling Stone rape article demonstrated the hard left oppressive tactics. She immediately responded to the outrageous and unsubstantiated charges by immediately suspending all fraternities without an investigation or any pretense of due process. Even when she ended the suspension in January, after the article was proven to be a hoax, she force the fraternities to sign new contracts with the university as the price of readmission, given the university more control over their activities. She was the perfect Alinsky disciple in not letting a crisis go to waste.
Sullivan has also replaced most of the deans and senior administrators with Ivy League leftists. The daily email newsletter from the university’s public relations office is a celebration of diversity and social causes. Unfortunately her contract was recently renewed but that is to be expected with a Democrat activist governor. In reality she should have been fired for her inept and biased handling of the Rolling Stone affair.
I would not be surprised to see Sullivan’s University of Virginia to join the other progressive academic institutions in awarding meaningless honorary degrees. Perhaps Ms. Sullivan will break the school’s earned degree tradition by awarding the first honorary degree from the university founded by Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama. Imagine the media sensation she could stir by taking that action.
As to the Supreme Court, a degree from elitist Ivy League law schools or near Ivys (Stanford), seems to be a prerequisite for nomination to the Court. I wish Trump, Walker, Cruz, or Fiorina would make a point of stating it is time consider state university law graduates as well. The Ivys are the center of teaching the concept of the living constitution. The esteemed Justice Kennedy, who has become increasingly adept at interpreting his personal opinions into the Constitution, is a Harvard Law graduate as are Barack Obama and Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kagan, and Justice Breyer.
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