Kerr: Why Are So Many Populist GOP Leaders Graduates Of Harvard And Yale Law Schools?

Orin Kerr (UC-Berkeley; Google Scholar), The Populist GOP and its Yale Law and Harvard Law Leaders:

The nomination of J.D. Vance as the Republican party's Vice-Presidential candidate in the upcoming election brings up an interesting contrast.  On one hand, today's GOP embraces a heavy dose of populism.  It's pretty standard for Republican politicians to rail against elites who are against the average Joe. On the other hand, if you look at the younger generation of GOP leaders, the politicians who are likely to lead the party in coming years, there sure are a lot of Harvard Law School [Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis] and Yale Law School [Josh Hawley, Vivek Ramaswamy, JD Vance] graduates.  ...

[H]ow is it that the GOP has embraced both populism and a set of prominent figures, at least among the younger generation, who are Harvard Law and Yale Law graduates?  Or maybe more specifically, why is it that going to an elite law school seems to be a significant advantage within the GOP? ...

What's striking to me is that Harvard, Yale, and other "top" law schools have only a very small number of conservatives. ... The odds of a politically ambitious conservative at an elite law school actually becoming a big deal in American politics is unusually high, it seems to me—all the more striking given the GOP's populist turn.

What might explain that?   I don't know.  I'm curious about what explanations you might have.  But let me offer three possibilities, just to get the conversation started:

(1) There's an inside lawyer track that works in GOP politics (Examples: Cruz and Cotton). In some of the cases, the individuals seem to have taken a role as elite lawyers within the party before running for office— using that legal role as a key conservative credential for later political campaigns. ...

(2) Elite law school graduates come off as battle-hardened.  Another explanation, more specifically about populism, is that populist conservative voters are fine with voting for conservative graduates of elite law schools because having attended those school affords conservative politicians a sort of veteran status of its own. ...

(3) Adding elite law school credentials to military service creates a powerful combination (Examples: Vance, DeSantis, Cotton). ...

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