Free Republic

In almost every state, law students who pass their state bar examination, which allows them to practice law, take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. But the country's top law schools teach future lawyers and judges the opposite. Many now teach that the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the nation since its ratification in 1788, is broken and should be scrapped. At least that's what two members of conservative think tanks believe after reviewing courses at the country's Top 10 law schools, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in 2022. They examined the teaching at Yale,...

A CUNY Law professor who has previously complained about the university's alleged anti-Semitism says the entire place is being run by a faculty of 'far left, Marxist lunatics.' The comments come after a shocking commencement speech on May 12 by pro-Palestine law graduate Fatima Mousa Mohammed, who accused Israelis of 'settler colonialism' and called for 'rage' to tackle the 'fascist NYPD'. It was the second year in a row the school - one of the largest in New York City, which receives more than half its funding from government - allowed such pro-Palestine, anti-Israel remarks at the graduation ceremony.

Note: This is the fourth in a 10-part series at PJ Media examining what our nation’s top 10 law schools – according to U.S. News and World Report – are teaching. J. Christian Adams and I are undertaking a deep dive into what is being taught in these law schools. We have already covered Yale, Stanford, and Chicago. If you thought based on our coverage of the curriculums at Yale, Stanford, and Chicago that you had seen the worst of the political indoctrination that passes for a law school education these days, wait until you see the curriculum at the...

The arm of the American Bar Association that accredits U.S. law schools on Friday voted to eliminate the longstanding requirement that schools use the Law School Admission Test or other standardized test when admitting students. But under a last-minute revision, the rule change will not go into effect until the fall of 2025—giving law schools time to plan for new ways to admit students. The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar overwhelmingly voted to do away with its testing mandate after years of debate and over the objections of nearly 60 law school...

The recent protest at Yale Law School and the similar one at UC Hastings Law School earlier this month are part of a growing trend. In the same way that views founded in critical race theory have been adopted in newsrooms and corporate settings, a similar transition is happening within the legal profession and at the nation’s law schools. CRT has gone from being a minority view to being mandatory. Aaron Sibarium, who broke the story about the Yale Law School protest for the Washington Free Beacon has a piece up today at Bari Weiss’ Substack about that transition. Critical...

Legal education is about to undergo a revolutionary change, with the American Bar Association poised to mandate race-focused study as a prerequisite to graduating from law school. ... This race-focused educational mandate is being forced on law schools through the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (ABA). Much of ABA’s power stems from the federal government. Law students must attend schools whose accreditor is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to receive federal student loans. The ABA is the only federally recognized law school accreditor. Yet, ABA’s accreditation power doesn’t...

A prominent Yale Law School professor on Friday blasted the administration’s treatment of law student Trent Colbert and the Federalist Society, calling it "dishonest, duplicitous, and downright deplorable." Akhil Amar, one of the most frequently cited legal scholars in the country, called on the administration to apologize for its actions toward Colbert, the Yale Law student who invited classmates to his "trap house." "I am not and have never been a member of the Federalist Society," Amar said, adding that he is a life-long liberal Democrat. But "ideological diversity" is important for challenging "implicit bias"—not just against members of other...

American journalist H.L. Mencken once observed, “Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.” Despite an unending respect for Mencken, this is an occasion in which I found him mistaken, after I violated the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.” Worse yet, I am a recidivist sinner, after testifying as a constitutional expert in both the Clinton and Trump impeachment hearings. Like all mortal sins, the violation of the Eleventh Commandment comes with not just eternal but immediate damnation. What is most...

For years, many have bemoaned the slide of America’s higher education system down the slippery slope of moral relativism and the embracing of virtually all facets of progressive dogma. ... Nowhere is this truth more prevalent than at our most prestigious law schools, and the products of those schools are now reflecting that decades-long liberal drift. Individuals from this new class of legal eagles have advanced in all branches of government and at all levels -- local, state, and federal. They have attended notable law schools, they are African-American, and they are hellbent on ushering in an era of seeking...

People without college degrees, or even high school diplomas, appear to understand property rights. Why can't law school professors? Evidence of the former can be found trend can be found in the number of signs one sees that read, "This house protected by shotgun three nights a week. You guess which three." Fences and walls are other good indicators of this cognizance. Evidence of the latter phenomenon seems almost as overwhelming. "Property is just a bundle of sticks, according to law professors," Adam Macleod, a professor at Faulkner University's Jones School of Law said at the annual meeting of the...

If you are looking for a root cause of American lawlessness, you might look at America's law schools. The American Association of Law Schools (AALS) held its annual conference in January in San Francisco to examine the theme "Why Law Matters." "I asked myself, would the American Medical Association have a conference on 'Why Medicine Matters,'" Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit asked archly at the annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Dallas last weekend. The Philadelphia Society is a group of conservative intellectuals formed in the wake of the...

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...

What is to be done? Comrade Tushnet explains it all (Everett Historical/Shutterstock) “To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class.” — Lenin.You really have to read this post by Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet, in which he advises his fellow legal liberals to take the gloves off and hit conservatives with bare-knuckle force. Excerpts: Several generations of law students and their teachers grew up with federal courts dominated by conservatives. Not surprisingly, they found themselves wandering in the wilderness, looking for any sign of hope. The result: Defensive-crouch...

“March madness” holds a different meaning in the legal world. While most of the country looks forward to fast breaks and Cinderella upsets, law schools are bracing themselves for another type of madness: the annual carnage left by the U.S. News & World Report rankings. This year’s rankings drop on March 10, to be followed by the usual chaos. Deans at highly placed law schools will issue news releases; deans with less fortunate rankings will have their already hectic lives turned upside down. The lucky ones will get fired. The unlucky ones will have to deal with the fallout. A...

The presidents of the nine Massachusetts state colleges today called on the state Board of Higher Education to approve a UMass proposal to create the Commonwealth’s first public law school. A public law school would create an “affordable pathway that allows for and encourages the pursuit of public service careers in the law,” the presidents said in a letter to Board of Higher education chairman Charles Desmond and higher education Commissioner Richard Freeland. Under the UMass plan, the school would be part of UMass-Dartmouth. The nearby private Southern New England School of Law is donating its campus and assets to...

He garnered some sympathy from two lower courts, but a three-judge appeals panel isn't letting a Minnesota lawyer off the hook from repaying his massive student loan debt. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a bankruptcy court and a district court and found that attorney Mark Allen Jesperson could not discharge more than $360,000 in student loan debt in a Chapter 7 proceeding. The two lower courts had found that repaying the "shockingly immense" debt would create an undue hardship for Jesperson. But the appeals court on Wednesday determined that his "self-imposed limitations," which resulted in a gross...

Law students will be available at the University of Nebraska College of Law on Sunday, November 16 from 1-5 p.m. to provide free help to eligible foreign nationals who want to take part in the diversity visa lottery. The diversity visa lottery is conducted once per year by the U.S. State Department. The lottery offers a chance at permanent residency for foreign nationals whose home country is under-represented in the United States' population. To participate in the lottery applicants must ensure that they are eligible and must fill out an online form. For several years the College of Law's Immigration...

On September 13-14, 2008, Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, plans to convene a 'convention' at the school's facilities; the attendees of which will plan strategies to prosecute members of the Bush administration for war crimes. "This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," stated Velvel in a press release. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends...

Former College President Gene Nichol has accepted an offer to teach at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill School of Law. College spokesperson Brian Whitson released a statement from Interim College President Taylor Reveley Thursday morning, announcing that Nichol and his wife, law professor Glenn George, will return to the Chapel Hill law school faculty. Before becoming president of the College, Nichol had been the dean of the UNC law school, where George was a professor. Nichol resigned his position as College president Feb. 12, following the Board of Visitors’ decision to not renew his contract. In an interview with...

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Gene Nichol, who resigned as president of the College of William and Mary last month, is heading back to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to teach law. W. Taylor Reveley III, William and Mary's interim president, offered his best wishes to Nichol in a statement Thursday. Nichol's wife, Glenn George, also will teach at UNC. She has been teaching law at William and Mary. Nichol resigned abruptly on February 12th after learning the Board of Visitors did not plan to rehire him after a series of controversies, including the removal of a cross...