A few days ago, I posted about Peter Schuck’s essay on ideological diversity on law-school faculties. (Thanks, by the way, to all those who commented). Now, over at Larry Ribstein’s Ideoblog, Henry Manne has this interesting post, asking “[c]ould we get (and do we even want) intellectual diversity within law schools?” That is, do we really want to “diversify[] viewpoints” on faculties and, if so, how should / could we do it? Manne asks:
In the divisive times we live in, it is not at all clear that students will really benefit from hearing different ideologies propounded by faculty members on a reasonably “balanced” faculty. They are, after all, in no position to judge the correctness of one position over another, and the odds are that students will feel obliged to “take sides” one way or the other in the way that politics is popularly discussed. The most likely result of any attempt (by whom?) to balance a faculty ideologically will be a truce among the faculty (who after all prize the quiet life above all else) and an implicit agreement not to argue disruptive issues publicly or privately.
Manne is also skeptical about the suggestion that one solution is for professors — whatever their views — to “present impartially and thoroughly all sides of any controversial issue”:
I think the best teaching, and therefore the best preparation for lawyering, is done by professors who are intellectually committed to the views they propound and who present their case as strongly as they can.
Discussing his own experiences and work at George Mason in the 1980s, Manne says:
[T]he last thing I was interested in was “balance” or any concern with ideology at all. I simply wanted to create an entire faculty devoted to the Law and Economics paradigm in law teaching, and I would not have been a responsible custodian of my position had I been willing to hire professors who I thought did not meet certain intellectual standards. . . .
So when the ABA and the AALS came knocking (and I mean that in two senses) and arguing (undoubtedly for the first time in their existence) for intellectual diversity, I responded that intellectual diversity was best served by having diversity among the various law schools and not within them.
I think there is a lot to this. This is not to deny that, with respect to the vast majority of our law schools, public and private (including — thinking of the FAIR case — Yale Law School, I think), there is no clear and coherent “mission” or “identity” that might justify some ideological consistency or homogeneity in hiring. But maybe it would be a good thing if there were more distinctive law schools — intentional communities of legal education and scholarship with a clear (and contestible) vision to propose for consideration, acceptance, or rejection?
Posted by Rick Garnett on December 8, 2005 at 11:34 AM
Comments
Rick . . . my problem with all this focus on intellectual diversity is an underlying belief that there is indeed an anti-conservative bias in the legal academia. I can’t speak for the elite schools, but what I can say is that here at Ole Miss we have a very intellectually diverse faculty, with a remarkable amount of collegiality and fellowship. The problem with making someone’s ideological background the focus of attention is that it leads to situations like the recent William Bradford case, which I (and many others) have posted on (see http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2005/12/beware_the_wrat_1.html). At some point, it is not about whether your a liberal or conservative, a progressive or neo-con, or even a federalist or ACS member, what matters (and always has) is character and integrity. In our profession especially, there are no substitutes.
Posted by: Paul M. Secunda | Dec 8, 2005 3:19:24 PM
I think Manne’s solution was a good result for George Mason, but that it doesn’t really diminish the need for intellectual diversity in most law schools.
1. Outposts like George Mason where one type of scholarship is emphasized are good for students because they give students who are interested in one type of thinking a place to go. However, most students don’t go to law school with a preset ideology. So, just as there is space for specialist schools, there is market (and a dominant market share) for generalist schools. If this is what students are after (good education in a diversity of ideas), then schools should work to provide it.
2. The next question is about scholarship — does a specialist school produce better work than a generalist one? Following Cass Sunstein’s argument about group polarization, we should assume that a specialized school would produce more radical scholarship and a diverse one would produce more moderate scholarship. This, of course, assumes that the relevant peer group that ideas are bounced off against is someone’s faculty. However, if we assume that professor live in two worlds — their field and cohort of people who generally agree with them (mentors, students etc) and the faculty at their school — a diverse faculty might have a pleasing moderating effect given that individual fields are given to group polarization.
Posted by: BuddingProf | Dec 8, 2005 12:46:24 PM