But the prestige in law is always in the areas where politics rule. It has been long observed that the higher the court, the greater the opportunity to make political decisions and the less the ability (and inclination) to make a plumbing decision. In high courts now the cutting edge politics is that of the Federalist Society, and those so connected are in high demand. In contrast, members of a similiarly marginal fringe group, the National Lawyers Guild, remain in zero demand.

For the would be teachers,
the annointed clerked for a
Supreme Court Justice. (The Post Doc.)
The less talented can be annointed by working, for, say Ken Starr, which, position, like that of working for the Iraq provisional authority, requires a political partisanship test, does it not? (Remember how the most recent Supreme Court Justice lied about his beliefs by saying that when he said he was a conservative, to get a job in the Republican administration, he was just lying to get the job and did not really mean what he said? He will be hiring clerks who will be getting plum law school jobs. Think political bias might effect who he hires as clerks?)

Those of whatever bizarre political biases are preferred by Supreme Court members have a huge advantage in all legal job markets completely out of proportion to their relative merit as measured in either the academic legal community or in the professional legal community. In this field, if one’s biases are shared by a majority of judges, then one is on the frontier of the emerging Truth, and so a hot commodity. It is as if the student’s dissertation advisor himself will write the laws that retroactively establish as a matter of law that the student’s dissertation is right. Every school wants professors with that type of The Fix Is In brilliance.

So getting back to the GMU/Oakland A nonsense, John Yoo, that worthless crazy whore, works at famously conservative Berkley, does he not? http://www.law.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/facultyProfile.php?facID=235

Why does Berkley want Yoo? Because Yoo’s politics matched those of people with power, which he used to make connections, so that he got the positions where his politics made him useful, which gave him the credentials that that made him desirable to Berkley’s frugal search for conservative intellectual excellence. After all – Oakland is Berkley’s neighbor.

In short, what a load.

Not in the same way, but quite possibly to the same intensity.

I think this variation might be true too. My prescription for affirmative action hiring in either case is the same.

But it seems to me correct that conservatives have moved into professions where they can make more money. I don’t think this is because academics are deluded lefties—I think most damn well we could make more money as lawyers—but because we value other things besides money. And do you know what that means? That means that there’s a plausible hypothesis for why academia is liberal even if there’s no discrimination against conservatives. So those who are tempted to kick about that awful liberal bias in hiring, provide some evidence please.

LMAO? Classroom? It never even entered my mind. I meant in general. And I meant it as a compliment.

But if you were a sociologist or history or anthropology or law or economics or literature professor basic political assumptions might very well be part of the discussion and it is easy to see how having the wrong set of assumptions might impact students.

Jerky? No. I really didn’t care. Personally I liked Professor Markowitz. He didn’t seem that dangerous to me. More short and maybe not in the best shape and this was years ago. But what do I know? Maybe he is dangerous. Well he never hurt me or was jerky. I guess I was lucky. Whew!

I thought Leiter’s essay on the topic was very well done and right on target. Suck it up whiny conservatives, pull your selves up by your boot straps and overcome. But it really cuts both ways.

The discussion is a lot like the current Becker-Posner discussion of how universities are and are not (should/should not be) analogous to corporations. The original analogy is shameless rhetoric, the discussants tearing it apart is revealing, but ultimately the whole conversation lends too much intellectual legitimacy to unimpressive rhetoric.

How’s that for stating an opinion without argument!?

It’s also what Chis Uggen said—beauty contest rankings aren’t very effective at identifying what we think we mean when we talk about research potential, but they do mean a lot for departments looking to improve in the ratings. Which leads to the PR game of announcing “look at the overlooked value we’ve found!, followed by the internalization of the ideas underwriting the PR, followed by the necessary justification of law and economics as good, solid, persecuted work. I guess that is Bordieu, without a rueful shrug to gallicize.

A few contrary points. The big one is raised in the initial post—that perception of departments is in large part built on reputation and status, so in a sense it’s impossible for anything to be over or undervalued. The value of a faculty memeber is what people think it is. This isn’t 100% true, but is partially.

Also, stretching the baseball analogy, free agency tends to maintain the status of the top schools. If an opportunity presents itself, most top physicists will take tha chance to jump from, say, Nebraska to MIT or Caltech. So even if Nebraska is successful in finding value at the initial hire, the best faculty will leave once they’ve established their reputation to the point that other offers are available.

Well, they generally require a JD degree, and the “D” in “JD” stands for “doctor,” although in practice we don’t usually call ourselves “doctors” unless we’re trying to get restaurant reservations. See several posts down . . .