The Tax Lawyer's Blog

Are you sitting down? Get ready for a real shocker.

Paul Caron reports that law Schools overwhelmingly hire liberals as law professors:

Following up on my prior post, Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring (July 20, 2010): National Jurist (Nov. 2010), Law Schools Hiring Liberal Educators:

A new study shows that law schools overwhelmingly hire liberals as law professors.

There has been much discussion about liberal bias in higher education, and now a new study confirms that law schools are indeed hiring more openly liberal law professors than those who are conservative.

The study [Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring], conducted by two University of California, Berkeley law students — James Phillips and Douglas Spencer — shows that 52 of 60 hires in 2005, 2007, and 2009 were liberal — a ratio that “doesn’t speak well of the intellectual diversity of American law school hiring.”

The two students compiled a sample of 149 entry-level, tenure-track hires and assigned a measure of ideology for each based on political donations, Facebook profiles, work experience, publications and the political party of the president who appointed any federal judge for whom the professor clerked.

 

Liberal law professors and fellow tax bloggers Linda Beale and Jim Maule have written extensively on what they perceive to be the miseducation of the public about America’s tax laws. I wonder whether this study concerns them.

For instance, do they think having law faculties that are almost exclusively comprised of law professors holding a liberal world view fosters the proper education of law students? Do they favor ideological diversity with the same dramatic fervor with which they favor racial, religious and gender diversity?

I would love to hear from them.

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