Scalia Says U of C Law School Has Lost its Conservative Edge

U.S. Supreme Court

Scalia Says U of C Law School Has Lost its Conservative Edge

Posted Sep 17, 2008, 06:29 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Updated: The University of Chicago Law School has changed since Justice Antonin Scalia used to teach there, and he is not happy about it.

Responding to a question at a Federalist Society event in Chicago, Scalia said the school is no longer the conservative bastion it once was, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

"I don't think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time,” he said. “I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school."

Scalia also decried the spread of esoteric law courses. “I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not ‘Law and Poverty’ ” or other made-up stuff, Scalia said. He had this advice for law students: "Take serious classes. There's so much law to learn. Don't waste your time."

Two professors who teach a law and poverty seminar at U of C took exception to Scalia’s remarks in a letter to the editor published in the Sun-Times. “We are dismayed that one of the smartest, most powerful and most influential jurists in the country does not consider poverty law a serious or worthwhile subject,” wrote Lawrence Wood and Richard Wheelock.

They defended the “vitally important work” of lawyers who help the more than 12 percent of the population who live in poverty. Even lawyers who do not work full-time in the field can help this population through pro bono work, they said.

Updated on Sept. 19 to include the letter to the editor.

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Posted by b - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes ago

Say what you will about Scalia, but he’s absolutely right about the so-called “seminars” law schools put out these days. A complete waste of time, and way to artificially pump up your GPA, and nothing to do with the law.

Now, bring on the liberal screeds.
Posted by Disgusted with the ABA - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes ago

I love how the line “other made-up stuff” is purely editorialized on the part of the ABA and not part of Justice Scalia’s actual quote. No matter. The sentiment is true. Half the courses offered in law schools today are made up garbage, justifying a third year of boredom and even larger debt.
Posted by J R - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes ago

As a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, I take great offense to Justice Scalia’s criticism that it is not as “conservative” and therefore is somehow a lesser school. Obviously the legal market has changed significantly since Justice Scalia taught at the University of Chicago, and the school has been trying to change with the times. The fact that he would call “Law and Poverty” a “made-up” class is offensive both to the scools, the distinguished professor who teaches the class, and to the area of law and policy that class is designed to address. Offering courses that are not strict “core” law classes is not unique to the University of Chicago (Harvard has a Poverty Law class, as well as classes such as Law and Literature, which I am sure are not as “conservative” as Justice Scalia would like). The school is extraordinarily rigorous, so Justice Scalia need not be concerned that the students are not put through the proverbial ringer. I applaud the University of Chicago for providing its students with a breadth of choices in its curriculum, and I know I am a better lawyer because of it.
Posted by BM - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 16 hours, 1 minute ago

Dear J.R.-

Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh
Posted by Barry Obama - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 16 hours ago

Interestingly, there are enough substantive courses at most every law school to easily fill 2.5 years of school. The problem is that alot of students take the cowards way out, in, as the noted by #1, an attempt to inflate the GPA.

Although I never intend to practice in certain areas, and my GPA suffered slightly as a result of having taken substantive classes, I consider myself much better off and my educational experience than much richer simply because I chose to take family law, antitrust, trusts and estates, employment law, admin law, etc. as opposed to law & medicine, law & psychology, and animal law.

The Justice is right (in re: his point about bread and butter courses).
Posted by Skeptical - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 55 minutes ago

I hear this topic is being added to the Illinois bar this year:
Women Living Under Muslim Laws 96112
—————————————————————————————
Current scholarship posits an inherent conflict between women s rights and religion; the conflict is presented as particularly stark in the context of Muslim women s rights. But on the ground, women s human rights activists in Muslim communities are piercing the veil of religious sovereignty. Betraying a growing disconnect between human rights law and human rights practice, a close study of women s human rights activists working in Muslim communities and countries demonstrates that, despite law s formal refusal to acknowledge claims of reason and equality, women are nonetheless claiming their rights to challenge religious and cultural authorities and to imagine religious community on more egalitarian and democratic terms. This seminar will study these movements in light of current scholarly and political debates about fundamentalism, democracy, equality, secularism, universalism, and multiculturalism. This is a limited enrollment seminar. A student’s grade will be based on reaction papers and class participation.
Autumn (2) Madhavi Sunder ()
Posted by DCEsq - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 52 minutes ago

How sad it is that lawyers who support co-called “conservatism” in law schools post infantile commentary. I applaud the post by JR, which appears to show the writer’s support for current conservatism at that law school and also support for classes that are not “bread-and-butter,“ meaning the basic mechanics of law. If law schools remained as they were 150 years ago, I would not be surprised to see graduating lawyers even more inept at handling, for instance, the challenges of conflict resolution in today’s modern social and economic climate, for “Law and Poverty” is as necessary today as “Law and Economics,“ a course that is certainly new relative to the long history of the law school curriculum. I think that Justice Scalia’s lament, while not surprising given the source, really does not acknowledge that law school in the modern world are more than factories that churn out civil procedure and contracts automata.
Posted by JG - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 44 minutes ago

Um, he didn’t have any options other than “bread and butter” classes, so it’s not as if he high-mindedly chose to take them. Give me a break. And for someone who won’t practice in many of the so-called “bread and butter” fields of the 1960s, some of those classes aren’t useful. I agree that you can’t fill up three years with core courses - so law school should be 2 years and a mandatory year of apprenticeship/internship. That summer associate or whatever job between 2L and 3L year should just be a whole year. The Bar would be stronger, the whining would diminish, and debt would shrink. Done.
Posted by Big Daddy - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 42 minutes ago

Amen to Justice Scalia’s comments about the need to focus on serious, bread-and-butter cases. My daughter is currently a second-year student at my alma mater, which no longer requires a course in evidence in order to graduate. I am a transactional lawyer who rarely darkens the courtroom door, but I told my daughter I would refuse to recognize her J.D. if she did not take a class in evidence.
Posted by DCEsq - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 30 minutes ago

I certainly hope Big Daddy’s comments were in jest - no one would value Justice Scalia over the classes that his daughter chooses to take while in law school. I am certain that the important point is the gratitude that a parent must feel that his child has entered law school and will be graduating with her own vision of what she wishes to be as a lawyer.
Posted by PovLaw Prof - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes ago

Comment #2 says the ABA made up the “otjher made up stuff” quote. But that language was attributed to Scalia in the Sun-Times article of 9/17/08. It also said that the audience of 500 members of the Federalist Society laughed when he said it. Since Poverty Law courses study constutuional law, health law, housing law, consumer law, family law, welfare law, and other “bread and butter” subjects, it is a terrific course for any law student to take. Many “poverty law” cases have been decided by the Supreme Court. It also teaches about statutory interpretation, administrative law, the judicial process, ethics and values which are valued by the legal profession and the public.
Posted by Jeremy D Sussman - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 8 minutes ago

Why doesn’t Scalia just tell us what the Founding Fathers expected law school to be like in 1789, as only he knows.

I was a student of Scalia’s in his one year of teaching at Univ. of Va. Law School and I never encountered a more narrowly opinionated person in my life.
Posted by Lil - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 6 minutes ago

It’s funny, I took Law and Literature at the U of C. It was taught by Judge Posner, not exactly a liberal lightweight or an easy course.
Posted by VDJ Chicago '98 - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 15 hours, 6 minutes ago

Chicago (U) training tells me there’s probably good reason to lift our minds beyond the Rule Against Perpetuities while we have the luxury of time in school (but still to master it, to the extent possible), so that perhaps those expected to say “how the law ought to be” will have some cogent thoughts, when asked. Chicago (street) training leads me to suspect there has been some sort of (non-ideological) falling-out between Scalia and the faculty.
And yes, I had to take “Evidence.“
Posted by U of C Person - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 57 minutes ago

See the comments of a current U of C faculty member about Justice Scalia’s remarks:

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2008/09/justice-scalia.html
Posted by gatsby - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 53 minutes ago

Law and Poverty is not as bad as the course entitled “Thinking about Thinking” that is offered at Harvard Law and taught by Alan Dershowitz. Give me a break!
Posted by U of C Law Grad - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 45 minutes ago

As an alum of U of C Law, I’m glad the school is not as “conservative” as when Scalia taught there. I believe the school as attempted, successfully, to balance its faculty. If you desire the full press of conservative teaching, Epstein, Posner, and Easterbrook are all still there. What’s so wrong with encouraging intellectual diversity?

As for the Law and [fill in blank] classes, I have to agree that substantive courses are generally better, but why focus on “Law and Poverty”? If you intend to focus in public interest law, and the course is well taught, why would this be a waste of time? To me, this was a veiled attempt to attack Obama’s Race and the Law course.

I do not consider myself a liberal by any means, but Scalia goes over the top. His refusal to recommend U of C is one of the best advisements for my old school, in my opinion.
Posted by Dan - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes ago

Good gads, now Scalia wants to control what law schools teach. It’s bad enough that he has badly perverted the Supreme Court with his opinions that discard precedent and conveniently ignore even his own theories of law to get the result he wants. Now he can’t resist attacking the U of C Law School because it’s not far right enough. Give me a break. Then again, this is coming from one of the most narrow-minded and incompetent Supreme Court justices the Court has ever known.
Posted by bhead jones - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 30 minutes ago

All this time (28 years) I had the notion that law is neither liberal nor conservative (policy yes, law no). Of course, this changed with my reading of the decision in Bush v Gore.
The notion that a law school should have a political bent seem antithetical to the notion of blind justice. Coming from Scalia, however, it’s not a surprise….
Posted by Class of 1995 - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 28 minutes ago

I won’t express an opinion on the so-called “made-up stuff,“ but I do agree that the “core curriculum” is a lot bigger than most schools make it. It should probably include (besides the first-year courses) Constitutional Law, Corporations/Business Associations, Taxation, Administrative Law, Evidence, Remedies, Agency, Trial Prep/Trial Advocacy, Appellate Advocacy, and (because of its pervasiveness) a course on Law and Economics and its critics.
Posted by JAB - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 23 minutes ago

JG is right - the basic problem is that three years of law school are unnecessary. Two years is plenty plus some sort of mandatory apprenticeship or practical training tacked on at the end. But that would require law schools to admit that they are professional trade schools rather than intellectual institutions of higher learning. Don’t hold your breath.
Posted by Wyo - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes ago

Do we really have a US Supreme Court Justice that is mocking Law and Poverty. Look, I’m as grateful as Scalia is for having taken 12 years of Latin and for being forced to read the classics but most people (errr, many of those those in poverty) aren’t so lucky. Heaven forbid we explore issues of access to legal representation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The King needs a dose of humility.
Posted by DCEsq - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 17 minutes ago

We should take care not to sink into the ad hominem mud, as maintaining composure leads to sustained credibility. That said, I would not call Scalia incompetent, for he is not that as a judge. He is, however, a fervent ideologue, whose zeal constricts his ability to view the world through the various lenses that exist in modern times (post, say, 1789). It is this fixation on ideology that marks him as one of the least broad-thinking Justices on the Supreme Court. One of the marks of zealotry, I have found, is the desire to paint all areas of life with the same broad brush. In this sense, Scalia would differ little from the religious fundamentalists of all stripes darkening the world today - and religious fundamentalism has never been accused of being broad-minded.
Posted by john - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes ago

So what’s wrong with taking non-core courses? Whether its law & poverty or fed tax. If you’re against fluff courses, then don’t take them and enjoy slogging through a semester of fed tax, con law, evidence, and corporatons. Then, be happy and secure in your belief that you’ll get that job at Heller instead of the “slacker” that took law & poverty or whatever. Really, this is just a question of live and let live. If you don’t want to take a course, fine, don’t take it. But don’t try to dictate what your classmates should be interested in.
Posted by U of C '95 grad - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 13 hours, 25 minutes ago

To those who say a third year of law school is a waste of time, I say the law school experience (as in the case of anything in life) is what you make of it. There were far more course offerings at U of C that I would have loved to have taken than I could fit into three years. The seminars that I took (both out of interest and to help fulfill writing requirements) bear little on what I do now as a transactional attorney, but the same can be said for the required criminal law, torts, real property, evidence and civil procedure courses. It is true that most of my practical training has come from 13 years of on-the-job experience, but the three years of academic study at the U of C was one of the best experiences of my life.
Posted by DCEsq - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 13 hours, 21 minutes ago

Re: post #23 - hear, hear! Ditto for my experience at Georgetown.
Posted by Lon Sobel - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes ago

Congratulations to the University of Chicago for changing its “conservative bastion” mindset. It’s a better law school for doing so. And there’s no higher praise than criticism from Justice Scalia.
Posted by JG - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes ago

@23, I don’t think law school is a waste of time. In fact, I had a wonderful experience and enjoyed it very much. However, if I had the opportunity to way $25,000 of debt against that year (as an option), I’d have to choose work experience and being debt-free. Perhaps I spoke too strongly above - an option for a year of apprenticeship versus a third year spent indulging in curiosity? Most people I know spent most of third year trying to get experience with clinics and internships (I spent a semester full-time with a federal district court judge and the other part-time in the state legislature). I learned a lot from doing that, but why did I have to pay tuition for those experiences?
Posted by JG - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 12 hours, 46 minutes ago

Eek - typos are embarassing. I was trying to say “...the opportunity to take away $25,000 of debt…“
Posted by Brett - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes ago

Scalia is so full of it. Good forbid we talk about the effects of law on poor people, or how the law is used by some to maintain power over others. His true motive is to minimize these discussions in law school so that fewer law graduates are prepared and motivated to help poor people. As someone else said, criticism by Scalia is the highest praise.
Posted by U of C '95 grad - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 12 hours, 32 minutes ago

JG:

Fair enough. I was fortunate to have good summer jobs after both my 1L and 2L years, plus I worked part time at a law firm during my 3L year to help keep my overall debt at a sane level.
Posted by Justice Scalia - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 12 hours, 6 minutes ago

I am the law!

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/supreme_court_rules_death_penalty
Posted by ziggy - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes ago

Perhaps this is Scalia’s way of indirectly ‘returning fire’ to Obama who said during the Saddleback Forum, that he would not have appointed Scalia to the Supreme Court bench? (Along with Thomas and perhaps Roberts) Obama did point out that both taught at U of C but that they had differing worldviews. The Honorable Justice is coming dangerously close to making it known who he backs to become the next president. As if we didn’t know…
Posted by look in the mirror, pros - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 9 hours, 42 minutes ago

I wonder why students would try to take classes that allow them a better GPA?

It couldn’t be due to legal professionals telling them all the time that law school doesn’t really help with actual legal practice combined with the high priority the GPA number holds in the minds of hiring partners and committees…no…..what could make students do everything they could to get a high GPA…...hmmmm
Posted by notassmartastherestofyou - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 9 hours, 24 minutes ago

I don’t know what ziggy is talking about when you mention Obama and Poverty and the Law. Scalia is a Conservative; nothing he does ever veils that conservatism, so what makes any of you think he’s hiding his support for anyone behind comments about fluff legal courses. But then again, I went to one of those dumb law schools that teached theory AND practice and leaves the ideology alone. What’s next: “Law and Being a Better Person”? “Law and How to Apologize for Taking a Position”? Maybe if we all bothered to take real courses you wouldn’t think 3 years was too long. But then, us dumb practicing lawers needed the help learning stuff like evidence and courtroom skills, and it irks us somewhat to see “the best and the brightest” fumbling around the courtroom looking for orders and trying to figure out the basics of procedure while looking down their noses at us because of the school they attended, where they learned fluff instead of substance. And by the way; I went to one of the Nation’s most-liberal law schools, and still was required to take “real” courses, so its possible to have a liberal tenet and still teach real law without the ideology.
Posted by Diana - 2 months, 1 week, 5 days, 9 hours, 1 minute ago

Wait a minute, why should a law school be either liberal or conservative? Isn’t the goal of any law school to teach the law in a neutral manner?

I went to a Chicago Catholic (allegedlly) law school where the Constitutional Law prof spemt 9 months teaching about being pro-abortion. This single minded prof would not allow any discussion on anti-abortion cases and even threatened to fail anyone who opposed her. By not allowing both sides of the issue the students lost out—I didn’t know there was any other topics in Constitutional Law until I took the bar review.

Any law school that teaches from only one side is ripping off the students and imho committing fraud.
Posted by George Sly - 2 months, 1 week, 4 days, 11 hours, 25 minutes ago

Justice Scalia is within his rights to criticize the University of Law School for a lack of intellectual rigor, whether he’s wrong or right is another matter. However, as a sitting justice he has no right to speak as to its political persuasion. Nor should he be speaking at the convention of a political organization like the Federalist Socieity any more than he should be speaking at the Republican convention. In New Jersey Justice Scalia’s conduct would be a breach of the Rules of Judicial Conduct. We do not allow our judges to engage in political activity and I was under the impression that a similar rule applied in the Federal Courts.
Posted by n simpson - 2 months, 1 week, 4 days, 10 hours, 37 minutes ago

Justice Scalia’s opinion—as usual—is WAY over in Right Field and, when considered with that fact, must be accorded little weight . Regrettable, especially for such a bright jurist.
Posted by Mark Brown, San Angelo, Texas - 2 months, 1 week, 4 days, 9 hours, 20 minutes ago

I feared the clear-eyed objectivity at UC might be slipping when I read it had allowed alumni to set up a scholarship fund for students who wanted to study legal issues relating to being sodomitically-active. This tends to be an emotional area for its advocates. Objective study of such legal issues is about as likely as, well, December sunshine on the Midway.
Posted by LawStudent - 2 months, 1 week, 4 days, 28 minutes ago

It is not much of an exaggeration to observe that but for North Korea, Red China, and Vietnam, there are probably more left wingers in American academe than anywhere else in the world. The law school I attended in my early 40s employed a teaching staff who were, to a person, either marinated in left wing soup or were so afraid of the consequences of not pretending to be they may as well have been. The student body was the same. I once had lunch with a young man who was extremely popular with the distaff side and I took the opportunity to ask him if he actually believed the liberal feminist clap-trap that came out of his mouth from time to time or did he do it so he could continue to roll up amorous conquests. He just looked at me and smiled a knowing smile. He was too honest to lie to me, but at the same time he was too savvy to verbalize an admission that his commentaries were intellectual drivel. He wanted me to understand that that was precisely what he was doing. Many instructors and students at law schools across this country do not subscribe to the left wing mantra, but they are too afraid not to go along with the pervasive ethos. It may be that the same thing has happened to the U of C.
Posted by Richard Wadsworth - 2 months, 1 week, 3 days, 16 hours, 51 minutes ago

What makes this guy, Scalia, such an expert? Who gives him the right to critize U of C?
I spent many a good year there.
Posted by Mario O. - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 17 hours, 35 minutes ago

As usual, Justice Scalia is absolutely correct in his analysis of U of C and many other law schools as well. Unfortunately, he is the only intellectually honest member of the Supreme Court. Too bad he is always demonized by the loonie left-wingers in the media.
Posted by kathleen kauffmann - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 15 hours, 13 minutes ago

As a sitting state court judge, I am perplexed as to why Justice Scalia seems to feel very comfortable weighing in on political issues - it seems to me inappropriate for a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice to publicly discuss his political opinions. I sincerely doubt that the framers of the Constitution envisioned Justice Scalia’s frequent public sharing of his political ideals…....
Posted by Jeremy D Sussman - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 14 hours, 13 minutes ago

The proposed Scalia curriculum
The Law of Master and Slave
Constitutional Law I—1787-1789; the Founders as Interpreted by Myself
Constitutional Law II—Marbury v. Madison and its Pernicious Liberal Offspring
Ethics I—When to Recuse Yourself in Important Cases
Ethics II—Hunting Expedtions with the Vice President While Deciding Cases In Favor of the Administration
Posted by Richard Hegger - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes ago

My first day at Columbia (1978) included a lecture by the dean that we were going to be in the 99 percentile of income earners in the U.S. Now that’s what I call a “conservative” law school! Unfortunately, I never made it to the percentile, probably because I took French 101 as an elective in my third year (I had to do something other than just play poker!).
Posted by Zelig Starchaser - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes ago

Scalia is dead on! What a load of crap that is being shoveled in law schools, particularly in the supposed “prestigious” schools.

These “classes,“ sponsored by the Greivance Industrialists, are nothing more than therapy sessions for angry narcissists with little talent and no aptitude for mental work.

How does a conservative get a good grade in “Transgender Poetry and the Heterohegemony of Amerikkka” without completely selling out their values? The only way to succeed is to vomit the tired leftist bile spewed by the professor.
Posted by Zelig Sussman - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes ago

Jeremy Sussman demonstrates the predictable and lazy conclusion-based logic of the Left.

I don’t agree with Scalia.
Therefore, Scalia is an evil racist.
Posted by zelig starchaser - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours, 43 minutes ago

Kathleen Kaufman wonders how Scalia can take political positions and be on the Court. Under this analysis, all of the Liberal justices would be unable to serve, as their opinions are by definition their political opinion.

Perhaps the conservatives should make the Constitution a “Living Document” and watch the liberals try to kill it.
Posted by Jeremy D Sussman - 2 months, 1 week, 1 day, 13 hours, 3 minutes ago

To #47, who had the courage to borrow my name: Scalia invents his position and then uses left-baiting barbs to reach it—much the way you do.

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