Law School Faculties: Have Less Diversity of Views, and are Left Leaning - Major New Study

WASHINGTON - March 21, 2015 - PRLog -- A major new study shows that, among law professors, the groups whose numbers were boosted by affirmative action are now at or above parity with full-time lawyers; WASPS are the most under represented group, along with Republicans, Protestants, and Catholics; whereas the most over represented groups are White Democrats, Jews, and those who aren't religious.

        Surprisingly, the study concluded that the "three underrepresented groups (Republicans, Protestants, and Catholics) make up 91% of the U.S. population ages 30-75, but only about half of the law professor population.  Put another way, people who are neither Christian nor Republican make up only 9% of the U.S. population, but account for about half of law professors (51%). . . . In the 2010s, the dominant group in law teaching remains Democrats, both male and female. Democrats make up nearly 82% of law professors, but only 41% of the English-fluent full-time working population."

        Amazingly, the author calculated that: "To reach parity with the general population, the average law faculty of 42 members would have to hire only 2 new African-American faculty members. Yet to reach parity with the general population, every law faculty would have to hire 146 Christians tomorrow (bringing the average faculty size to 188 members)."

        A major argument for giving preference in hiring to certain traditional minority groups was to increase the diversity of views to which law students - many of whom will later become very influential in setting policy - would be exposed in the classroom, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

        Yet, the study notes that gender has much less impact on viewpoints than race, whereas politics and religion "are moderately strong predictors of views."

        Thus, the emphasis on hiring more women, and to a lesser extent various ethnic groups, appears to have led to less diversity of the views to which students are exposed, concludes the study.

        As the study notes: "Diversity hiring does not necessarily lead to a diversity of viewpoints - and regarding political views, usually leads in the opposite direction."

        It also shows that "after four decades of hiring to make law professors more representative of American society, law faculties are probably less representative ideologically than they have been for at least several decades."

        Some may argue that having law faculties made up disproportionately of Democrats and other left-leaning groups is not a cause for major concern because it doesn't affect how they teach and the viewpoints they express in the classroom and elsewhere.

        However, Banzhaf notes that one of the strongest reasons for giving preference in hiring to factors like race and gender was the argument that it would result in more diverse viewpoints being expressed, both in the classroom and in the public media, by law professors.

        Also, there are several blatant examples where left-leaning political bias seems to have seriously affected the views expressed by law professors.

        For example, many if not most leading law school academics espoused the notion that it was unconstitutional for the government to cut off funds to colleges which kept military recruiters off campus.

      But all of their theories were rejected without a single dissent by the U.S. Supreme Court, and even by many leading liberal publications: “the best minds in the legal business struck out. The vote was 8-to-0 against them -- a shutout, a rout, a humiliation.” [NEW YORK TIMES]; “this litigation is something of a misfire. . . .  As a legal matter, the [law schools'] claim seems wrong.” [WASHINGTON POST]; “how could the nation's top law schools, overflowing with brilliant legal scholars, have agreed to make such an absurd argument?” [LA TIMES]

        Or, as Prof Banzhaf put it in INSIDE HIGHER ED: "how [could] so many nationally known law professors at top law schools like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia (and my own [GWU] law school) have been so very wrong . . . .  When all of their predictions turn out to be so wrong, it only leads credence to the arguments . . . that our publicly expressed opinions are based more on liberal guilt than hard-nosed meaningful real-world analysis.”

        A more recent example is that the two major arguments against the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act were initially ignored - and then ridiculed - by law professor pundits, although both have now led to major U.S. Supreme Court cases, one very narrowly decided and the other recently argued.

        At a time when we are graduating about twice as many lawyers as society can absorb, and there is rising concern about huge law school debt which might leave taxpayers holding a lot of the bag if many law students cannot pay off all of it, people may reasonable begin to wonder if these are the kinds of law school professors we want teaching so many of the leaders of tomorrow, says Banzhaf.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2000 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052, USA
(202) 994-7229 // (703) 527-8418
http://banzhaf.net/ @profbanzhaf