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What law schools have a predominance of conservative faculty, other than Northwestern and the University of Virginia? I suppose Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA, which is owned by Pat Robertson, would qualify. I understand Tom Monaghan, the ownr of the Domino's Pizza chain, is in the process of establishing a conservative oriented law school. Does anybody know of any others?

What an illuminating essay. The authors' work raises further questions:

1) What other faculty activity can be examined as a surrogate marker of political ideology, other than publicly available lists of donations to political parties ?

2) What are the political donation patterns of other faculty members -- particularly the business schools and economics departments ?

3) Would it be instructive to know what the political leanings are of certain other institutions' leaders , such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc ?

4) What are the political donation patterns of college and university administrators ?

The problem with law schools like Pat Robertson's and Managhan's is that you cannot get a decent job coming out of them, assuming they are even sufficiently accredited to allow you to take the bar in all states.

Unless you want to be a solo practicitioner, a small town lawyer where you grew up, or have a parent who is a partner in a law firm that will take you in, the employment record of a law school's graduates has to be an important factor in your decision which law school to attend.

The sad fact is that unless you attend one of the 25 or so "top ten" national law schools, you will have great difficulty (even as the top 5%/law review editor) getting a job at a major national or regional law firm or a reasonable federal or state judicial clerkship. My advice, after some 20+ years of practice, is to go to the best law school you can get into and finance/afford. If you had a choice between Harvard Law and $50,000 in debt vs. University of the Pacific Law School and no debt, you would be absolutely crazy not to go to Harvard.

In California, Stanford trumps everything, then Berkeley, then UCLA, then USC, then Hastings and UC Davis. From there, it isn't competitive.

In the South, Univesrity of Virignia, UNC-Chapel Hill and Vanderbuilt, are tops, followed by William & Mary and Washington & Lee. Emory and Wake Forest are wannabes

In the Midwest, there's Chicago, then Northwestern and Michigan, and then Notre Dame. Wisconson is also national.

In the Northeast, it's the usual suspects: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, and Cornell, then Georgetown and NYU.

If you want to stay local, you could go to the best state university law school in your state.

I graduated from University of Virginia law school in teh early 90s, and I did not get the feeling that the faculty were overwhelmingly conservative, except as compared to the far-out-leftist faculties of so many other top law schools.

Yes, our business law professors tended to think that capitalism and the US Constitution were a good thing, overall, which made them pretty conservative. And the law school did host excellent Federalist Society seminars in which some of our faculty participated, so I guess it was an outright bastion of the right wing when compared to some other top law schools.

Still, my sense about most of my fellow students was that they were center-left folks who wanted to "do well while doing good." They were very supportive of our public interest fellowships fund which helped to subsidize law students who chose to forego big summer salaries and spend their summer internships working for "public interest" organizations. Most "public interest" jobs are not for conservative causes. This may have changed in recent years, so perhaps someone has gotten a Student Funded Fellowship while working for a pro-life organization or for teh Rutherford Foundation (which is in Charlottesville).

I got the impression that the ideal person for most people at that law school, when I attended, would be a rich, articulate Democrat. In DC, rich Democrats have always been in style, and the law school definiteley partakes of DC tastes and styles.

I attended a Student Legal Forum dinner at a former Dean's house. He was married to a DuPont heiress, like a suprising number of prominent men in Virginia of his era. There must have been a generation there when the DuPonts had a lot of daughters. He went on and on about how great Bobby Kennedy had been. Bobby Kennedy had been a President of the Student Legal Forum when he was at UVA, and another Kennedy was head of it one year while I was there or right after I graduated. Kennedys are good at getting big name speakers, but you can imagine that the speakers are not going to be Clarence Thomas or Newt Gingrich.

Basically, my point is that UVA may be conservative for a top law school, but it is not an overwhelmingly conservative school, with Freepers (and Freeper-like people) amounting to anything like 51 percent of its students and faculty.

U of Chicago has a 'conservative' reputation, in the broadest sense. Other than that, I don't know of any.

Notre Dame is conservative. George Mason, now ranked number 40 in the Country out of 180 Law Schools, is probably one of the most Conservative of any non-private law schools. It's faculty is conservative/libertarian. The student body tends to be about as conservative as one can find in law schools.

The Board of Visitors (Governors), appointed to run the University as a whole, are very conservative and have their roots at the Law School . Ed Meese is the current Rector, and William Kristol served on their recently as well. (I served the Board as a student rep chosen by the Visitors)

At 9K per-yer, or so, George Mason Law is one of the best bargains in the nation, and one of the better conservative law schools.

I understand Tom Monaghan, the ownr of the Domino's Pizza chain, is in the process of establishing a conservative oriented law school.

He already did it -- several years ago. It's called Ave Maria.

Ave Maria School of Law is an orthodox Catholic law school.

There is NO campus ACLU or Democrat Party student organization.

The first three student organizations: a pro-life organization, a Federalist Society chpater, and a student chapter of the Republican National Lawyer's Association.

The women students have a women's group whose mission statement focuses on Pope John Paul II's descriptions of authentic femininty - the antithesis of NOW.

One of the dean's is a leader of the Nationa Lawyers Association (a group that rejects the ABA for its partisan stance.

The four professors who founded the school each have at least 5 kids in their family. Most of the additional faculty also have very large families. Two faculty families homeschool. Most families attend very conservative Catholi schools.

The women who work on campus must wear below the knee skirts. Men who work on campus must wear a jacket and tie - normally a suit.

Robert Bork is on the tenured faculty.

University of Michigan (also in Ann Arbor) frequently calls the school to get token conservatives for debates.

Mood on campus is EXTREMELY supportive of President Bush - and we discuss in detail that there is no religiou or moral duty to agree with the pope on this issue.

And most of us can spell, but we tend to type fast while surfing the net and posting on FR.