Once upon a time, law schools promoted legal ethics and a belief in the rule of law. Now, some of them teach students to believe that the law is just a form of “white supremacy” to be subverted or dismantled.
“I chose CUNY School of Law for its articulated mission…to recognize that the law is a manifestation of White supremacy,” said the commencement speaker at the City University of New York’s School of Law. The speaker also attacked the police and the military, who protect us from violent criminals and foreign invaders, and called for a “fight against capitalism.”
Fox News reports:
The City University of New York’s (CUNY) public law school’s commencement featured a speech from a graduating student calling for a “revolution” to challenge “oppressive” institutions in America. The speaker mentioned institutions of law and order such as the military, the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. prison system.
“I come to you all from the rich soil of Yemen, raised by the humble streets of Queens,” said future lawyer Fatima Mousa Mohammed, who was selected by the 2023 class to speak at the May 12 CUNY Law ceremony…..”I chose CUNY School of Law for its articulated mission [as one of the] few legal institutions… to recognize that the law is a manifestation of White supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world.”…Those who brought the ferocity of the violence, those who carry the revolution, the people, the masses, those who brought the ferocity of the violence…They will carry this revolution.”….
The speaker then called for the graduating class to dismantle capitalism. “The joy and excitement that fills the auditorium… may it be the fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.”….The future lawyer proceeded to rip American institutions such as jails for purportedly murdering Black and brown prisoners daily. She then derided agencies of law and order –calling the military and the New York City Police Department “fascist.”
CUNY is full of left-wing professors, including those who root for anti-American terrorists. To get the best possible grade, students may need to pander to their professors’ left-wing ideology.
Professors are much more likely to be progressives than they are to be moderate or conservative. Law professors are no exception. Progressive professors view progressive views as a sign of intelligence, and conservatism as a sign of stupidity. For example, Prof. Robert Brandon, head of Duke University’s philosophy department, argued that conservatives are rare in academia because they are stupid.
So to get a good grade, moderate or conservative law students should pretend to be progressives when taking their final exam. That will make them seem more intelligent to their left-wing professors. They should echo their professor’s left-wing ideology in answering exam questions — such as questions about what a vague provision of the Constitution means, or about who should win a lawsuit where both sides have a plausible legal argument.
Parroting professors’ left-wing ideology works for law students. For example, a Harvard law graduate got a good grade in his tort law class, despite not understanding tort law as well as most of his classmates, because he parroted the left-wing professor’s male-bashing and left-wing extremism. Moderate and conservative law professors themselves have advised students to parrot their progressive professors’ views to get a good grade on their final exam. Law professor Robert Anderson advises:
Law students: Remember to echo your professor’s ideology on your final exams! If you haven’t noticed this on Twitter, many profs are incapable of separating “is” from “ought,” acknowledging trade-offs, or recognizing the validity of counterarguments.
Law professor Orin Kerr agrees. He is America’s leading expert on computer crimes and the Fourth Amendment. He notes that while “there are exceptions,” what Anderson recommends “is often good advice. I took several exams in law school while rolling my eyes about the absurdity of the nonsense I was writing. But it worked.”
As he recounts, “My grades jumped considerably after [my first] year [in law school], when I realized that I should be infusing my exam answers with the professor’s ideology to do well.” His “law professors sure brought their politics into the classroom. For some of them, it was essential to understand their politics if you wanted to get a good grade.”
Kerr is not very conservative, but he is conservative compared to the typical law professor. He publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. He was a law clerk to the moderate Republican Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the Supreme Court, and before that, he was a law clerk to moderate Republican judge Leonard Garth.
There are a few conservative professors. But not many. Professors are becoming more and more left-wing over time. As economic historian Phillip Magness notes:
[S]urvey data point to a sharp and overwhelming leftward shift in faculty political self-identification starting around the year 2000 and persisting to the present day. While self-identified liberals comprised a relatively stable plurality of about 40 percent [in the 1970’s], that number grew to a clear 60 percent majority in the last two decades. Conservative faculty, by contrast, dwindled away from one-third of the faculty as recently as 1984 to just 12 percent today. Furthermore … the recent shift does not come from gradual ideological drift toward mainstream left-of-center politics. Its primary driver is an explosion in the number of faculty who identify on the far left — a category that includes Marxists, socialists, and adherents of derivative ideological positions such as critical theory.
Even moderate Republicans are often deemed too conservative in academia. Moderate Republicans with Ivy League degrees and genius level IQs sometimes can’t find a job as a professor at a good university. The general counsel of the Center for Individual Rights had a degree from the highest-ranked law school (Yale) and had published scholarly articles in multiple law reviews. He had also practiced law at a big-name Manhattan law firm. Yet law schools turned down his job applications and hired progressive applicants with inferior credentials instead. Even though his intelligence was such that he successfully argued a landmark Supreme Court case.
