Are Law Schools Now Woke Factories?

Richard Reinsch (Heritage Foundation), Are Law Schools Now Woke Factories?:

Students at three recent college events threatened violence against conservative speakers, along with the student groups that invited them to speak on campus.

This may be commonplace today, but what makes this hostility so much more shocking is that it occurred at colleges once considered eminent law schools: Georgetown University Law Center, Hastings College of Law at the University of California, and Yale Law School.

These future lawyers and their professors have shown us precisely what they think of free speech and open inquiry when the wrong people with the wrong views come to campus. ...

The pedagogical process, one that initiates students into the world of lawyering and its demands for civility, must be defended by academics and deans of law schools. Here there can be no neutrality.

That we are having this conversation is another sign that identity politics—its thorough envelopment of many law school students and school administration members—always manifests itself in an authoritarian, illiberal style. Our constitutional order needs to develop antibodies quickly to ward it off.

Some could be forgiven for concluding that to protect it we need to defund law schools.

Jeremiah Poff (Washington Examiner), Law Schools Are the New Front Lines in Free Speech Wars:

High-profile instances of attempted censorship at prestigious U.S. law schools have placed the training grounds for the nation's lawyers at the center of the campus free speech wars.

Georgetown:

• Christine Charnosky (Law.com), Ilya Shapiro, On Heels Of Georgetown Law Hiring, Faces Uproar Over Tweeting That Biden's SCOTUS Pick Will Be A 'Lesser Black Woman' (Jan. 28, 2022)
• Georgetown BLSA, Incoming Professor's Job Offer Should Be Rescinded Over Tweet That Biden's SCOTUS Pick Will Be A 'Lesser Black Woman' (Jan. 31, 2021)
• New York Times, Georgetown Suspends Lecturer Who Criticized Biden's Vow To Put Black Woman On Supreme Court (Feb. 1, 2022)
• Commentary, The Ilya Shapiro Controversy At Georgetown (Feb. 3, 2022)
• Michelle Goldberg & John McWhorter (New York Times), Georgetown Law School Should Not Punish Ilya Shapiro For His Tweets (Feb. 5, 2022)
• John Hasnas (Georgetown; Wall Street Journal), Why Colleges (And Law Schools) Don’t Care About Free Speech—And How To Make Them Care (Feb. 8, 2022)
• David Cole (Georgetown; New York Review), Paul Butler (Georgetown; Washington Post) & Warren Geary (Georgetown 1L; The Hoya), Georgetown Law Faculty And Students Debate Ilya Shapiro's Fate (Feb. 21, 2022)

Hastings:

• David Lat, Is Free Speech In American Law Schools A Lost Cause? (Mar. 18, 2022)
• Ilya Shapiro (Wall Street Journal), Mob Rule And Cancel Culture At Hastings Law School (Mar. 23, 2022)
• Josh Blackman (South Texas), Ilya Shapiro Is Shouted Down At U.C. Hastings (Mar. 3, 2022)
• Howard Wasserman (FIU), Heckling, Counter-speech, and Heckler's Vetoes (Again) at UC-Hastings (Mar. 3, 2022)
• Josh Blackman (South Texas), U.C. Hastings Faculty Send Letter To Concerned Students (Mar. 5, 2022)
• Inside Higher Ed, Law Students Shout Down Controversial Speakers at UC-Hastings and Yale (Mar. 23, 2022)

Yale:

• Yale Daily News, Yale Law Students Protest Alliance Defending Freedom Speaker At FedSoc Event, Prof Tells Them To 'Grow Up'; Armed Police Presence Triggers Backlash (Mar. 16, 2022)
• David Lat, Is Free Speech in American Law Schools a Lost Cause? (Mar. 18, 2022)
• Derek Muller (Iowa), Federal Judges Have Already Begun To Drift Away From Hiring Yale Law Clerks (Mar. 21, 2022)
• Wall Street Journal & David Lat, The Right And Left Agree: It Is Time For Yale Law School To Stand Up To Progressive Opponents Of Free Speech (Mar. 22, 2022)
• Aaron Sibarium (Common Sense with Bari Weiss), Law School As A 'Panopticon'; Yale's Kate Stith: 'Law Schools Are In Crisis' (Mar. 23, 2022)
• David Lat, Free Speech At Yale Law School: One Progressive's Perspective (Mar. 24, 2022)
• Kristen Waggoner (General Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom), 'Keep the Faith': How A Hostile Encounter With Yale Law Students Emboldened Me To Speak The Truth With Kindness (Mar. 27, 2022)
• Yale Law School News, A Message From Dean Gerken On The March 10 Protest (Mar. 30, 2022)
• Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, UC-Berkeley) & Howard Gillman (Chancellor, UC-Irvine), Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Hecklers Get to Shut Down Campus Debate (Mar. 30, 2022)
• Yale Daily News, Unlike Dean Gerken, Professor Stith Says Law Students' Disruption Of Speaker At FedSoc Event Violated Yale’s Free Expression Policy (Apr. 4, 2022)
• Philadelphia Statement, Over 1,400 Political, Legal, And Academic Leaders Urge Yale Law School To Protect Free Speech (Apr. 11, 2022)