Law, Betrayed | City Journal
Today, many, if not most, law schools, like English departments, have become ideologically and structurally committed to the Left, especially on issues of race and gender. Since the new ideology of race and gender claims to affect almost everything, almost everything that law schools do is now distorted; the freedom of speech and inquiry that makes the adversary system work for society s benefit is threatened. A focus on identity rather than argument leads directly to cancel culture even at law schools, where debate should be central, because ideas that some believe threaten identity are rendered off-limits. And the circle of cancellation is ever widening: Stanford students shouted down Judge Kyle Duncan and prevented him from speaking at a recent Federalist Society event, not even because of what he was to talk about there but because of his past writings on other subjects.
Liberal professors have predominated in law schools for a long time, but their dominion did not conflict with the adversary system. These professors remained committed to hearing ideas with which many liberals disagreed, and they appreciated the importance of separating rules from politics. These older-style liberals may have pursued social justice in their legal work, but they did not impose a definition of it on their schools. Further, the social justice that they sought more power for labor unions, say, or higher taxes on the rich was compatible with freedom of speech and inquiry about such things. Nowadays, by contrast, the rise of political commitments focused on identity in law schools condemns many statements of fact and value as part of the subordination of women and minorities. Freedom of speech and inquiry gets rejected as oppression.
Prof. John McGinnis.
It’s all true.