Posted on 04/28/2005 6:22:36 AM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
The People v. Harvard Law
Harvard Law School graduate Andrew Peyton Thomas presents a different view of the influential school in his just-published The People v. Harvard Law (Encounter, 2005). Mr. Thomas, author of Crime and the Sacking of America: The Roots of Chaos and Clarence Thomas: A Biography, was a legal assistant for the Boston NAACP and lives in Phoenix, Ariz.
WORLD: Please tell our readers about Critical Legal Studies and the importance of that mode of analysis at Harvard Law.
THOMAS: Critical Legal Studies, an offshoot of Marxism, is a legal philosophy that has become highly influential in American law schools. The "Crits," as supporters of this philosophy are known, argue that the wealthy and powerful have used the law to promote white-male-dominated capitalism at the expense of the poor. They urge attorneys to use their influence—as litigators, judges, law professors—to redistribute rights and property to certain minority groups they view as victims.
WORLD: What happened to Professor David Rosenberg?
THOMAS: A single ill-phrased comment by Professor Rosenberg during a classroom discussion crippled his career at Harvard Law. A brilliant if crotchety scholar (and traditional liberal), Mr. Rosenberg once criticized Critical Legal Studies and its related theories by telling his students, "Feminists, Marxists, and the blacks have contributed nothing to torts." He later tried to explain his statement better but would not retract the substance of it.
The Black Law Students Association protested to the law school administration, which announced that henceforth students would no longer be required to attend his classes. They could watch them instead on videotape. In doing this, Harvard Law effectively repealed for Mr. Rosenberg's class the "Socratic method." This teaching method had been a Harvard innovation and trademark for over a century. Mr. Rosenberg's reputation has never recovered from this unprecedented humiliation.
WORLD: Readers who are familiar with the film and TV series The Paper Chase, which highlighted the rigorous in-class examinations of students that Harvard once was famous for, will be surprised to hear about the "difficult conversations" program. What is it?
THOMAS: The law school administration instituted in 2002 a "difficult conversations" program for first-year students, in response to a series of race-related controversies and protests earlier in the year (including those surrounding Professor Rosenberg). The program was intended to help students learn how to smooth over differences arising from race, religion, and gender. The course materials instructed students not to "argue about who's right." When confronted with evil, they were taught, students should first question their own attitudes and values.
Fortunately, Martin Luther King Jr. did not read from the same relativistic script when he denounced the segregation of his time. One graduate of Harvard Law noted that by creating this program, the school seemed to be stigmatizing conflict. He noted that this was certainly not very good training for future lawyers, whose profession inevitably entails a certain amount of conflict.
WORLD: What are the views of Elena Kagan, the current dean?
THOMAS: When Elena Kagan became dean in April 2003, most students and professors cheered the selection of the first female dean in the school's history. But she had a questionable political past. She had worked in the Clinton White House—first as Associate Counsel to the President, then in a policy role—during the period when President Clinton was embroiled in Filegate, Travelgate, and a succession of scandals involving official abuse of power (Clinton also began his relationship with Monica Lewinsky during this time). Ms. Kagan remained in the Clinton administration throughout the subsequent impeachment and Senate trial of the president.
Largely because of this record, Senate Republicans refused to vote on her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit when President Clinton nominated her in 1999. She has governed as a typical Harvard liberal since becoming dean. For example, she opposes allowing military recruiters to interview students at Harvard Law because of the military's ban on open homosexuals serving in the ranks.
WORLD: Should conservative students go to Harvard Law?
THOMAS: Yes, assuming they know what they are in for. Harvard Law remains America's most famous law school, and because of this status, future lawyers seeking to make a difference cannot afford to shun the school. Yet it also remains a law school in which conservatives are routinely hissed at in class (hissing being the Ivy League substitute for booing) and made to suffer other social persecutions.
Conservative viewpoints are almost completely absent from the Harvard Law faculty. But by the same token, conservatives who graduate from Harvard Law emerge with no intellectual flabbiness, having spent three years repeatedly defending their most basic beliefs in class and out. Put another way, what Frank Sinatra sang of New York is true of conservatives at Harvard Law: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. —•
This stuff about Critical Legal Studies and "difficult conversations" is absolutely alarming and I hope more people wake up to what's going on at Harvard Law School soon.
They seem to be openly and aggressively teaching Communism and preparing students to attack free enterprise. Unfortunately, Harvard is just one of many.
I predict and I think it has already begun, Harvard Law school status will diminish just the same as the MSM status as diminished, in the very near future.
You do not have to be a "Harvard Law" school graduate to make a difference in constitutonal law any longer.
Individuals do not even need a lawyer to properly and effectively argue for the protection of individual and property rights from violation by local, state, and federal legislators.
And individuals can file pro se law suits asking for judicial review of legislation that does violate their rights.
All you have to do is learn your rights and exert them, similar to what bloggers have done in news reporting and political commentary.
Thank God for the internet and forums such as FreeRepublic.com.
Since Harvard lawyers reside among the 95th percentile of income earners in the US... what stinking hypocrits! They want to redistribute OTHER peoples' money, apparently...
I sincerely hope you are right, tahiti, about the diminishing influence of HLS. Yes, there are many other law schools going down the same path, but if one begins to lose influence, others may change their ways.
It's like the New York Times. It's still the most influential newspaper in America because it helps to set the news agenda for all sorts of news media, but its credibility is tanking fast.
Those familiar with the activity of Cornell Law school would not be surprised that it is at the forefront of the Critical Legal Studies movment: http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/critical_theory.html
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