Is this right?
posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger
A refrain I sometimes hear is that “there are no conservative organizations for law students, except for the Federalist Society.” For one recent example of this, see this comment at Confirm Them:
Most law schools (I went to a top 25 school) have a large, strong liberal activist groups which include the ACLU groups, Gay-Transgender groups, Environmental Groups, American Constitution Society (the anti-Federalist Society), and various “Human Rights” groups. The ONLY conservative group on most law campuses is maybe the Federalist Society and a Republican group here or there.
I don’t think this is correct, based on my own observation. At Columbia when I attended, there was a number of conservative or conservative-leaning student organizations: Christian law student society, Catholic law student society, LDS (Mormon) law student society, pro-life organization (Coalition for Life), plus the Republican student organization and the FedSoc. And I may be forgetting one or two. In any case, there’s at least six conservative organizations at that bastion of conservative thought Columbia University.
My current employer is Thomas Jefferson law school. It’s a school that an observer would almost certainly characterize as leaning left. Again, there is more than the FedSoc. TJSL has a Republican group, a Christian law student society, and the FedSoc; it also has an LDS law student society in the process of organization. (I know, because I’m their faculty advisor).
Over the tiny sample size that I’m particularly familiar with, the accusation that the FedSoc is the only conservative organization on campus is quite clearly not true. But perhaps my own lack of data is hindering me here. Are there any schools where the FedSoc is truly the only conservative voice on campus?
(Note — The broader argument — that left-leaning student organizations outnumber right-leaning organizations — is true at both of the schools with which I’m familiar, and I see no reason to believe it’s not true in many other schools. I’m speaking to the particular statement, which to me seems hyperbole, that the FedSoc is the only conservative organization at law schools.)
November 17, 2005 at 10:19 am
Posted in: Politics
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Responses (10)
John Jenkins - November 17, 2005 at 1:40 pm
I think the claim becomes much stronger when you modify it to, “there are no non-religious conservative or libertarian organizations for law students at most law schools.”
I know that to be the case at the school I attend and, from your list, it appears to be so at the two schools you cite as counterexamples.
At my law school there is an LDS group, a general Christian group, and the Federalists. On the other side there are BLSA, ACLU, OAWL, NALSA, APSLA & ACS that I can think of right now. That’s 6 non-sectarian left-leaning groups and one right-leaning.
Will Baude - November 17, 2005 at 2:21 pm
Is it obvious that religious student groups are conservative ones? I wouldn’t have thought so.
Here at Yale we have a basically moribund Republican group, the Fed Soc, and assorted religious groups, but despite plenty of ties with the folks in Fed Soc, I have no clue whatsoever what the political valence of the religious groups is.
Mike - November 17, 2005 at 2:32 pm
At Pepperdine, there was a weak Republican group and a good Fed-Soc chapter. Lots of religious groups (Jewish Law Students Ass’n, CLS, J. Reuben Clark), though I’m not sure religious means conservative. I went a few CLS meetings, and they usually talked about God.
Kaimi - November 17, 2005 at 2:34 pm
John, Will,
To the extent that we’re asking whether religious groups are actually conservative, then wouldn’t it also be appropriate to question whether BALSA, APALSA, etc., are actually left-leaning groups?
If the LDS law student organization is really just a group for LDS kids, then why is BALSA something other than just a group for Black kids?
In which case, the correct variables would be ACS, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, on one side of the ledger. And FedSoc, ACLJ on the other.
Will,
With regards to political valence, something like 90% of LDS church members vote Republican, and the numbers are pretty similar for Evangelicals. Less so for Catholics, but they are strongly pro-life.
Will Baude - November 17, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Kaimi,
The question of what the policial valence of a law school group is surely neither 1, a mere question about the political beliefs of the individual members, nor 2, a question about the necessary politics of the group. Instead, it must be a question about whether the group qua group tends to engage in political activities at the law school, and if so which way they lean.
So here, for example, where the Yale Law Women and Outlaw (gay-rights) groups complained that their leaders were not interviewed by Adam Liptak about opposing Alito (both oppose him) and where Outlaw has been involved in the solomon-amendment litigation and in protesting the military’s exclusion of gays, and so on, we have some evidence of their political leanings. I actually have no idea whether BALSA here engages in any sort of political activities, so it does seem leigitimate to question their alignment. So.
Is there evidence about whether LDS is just a group for LDS kids, or whether it also engages in some collective action on matters that have a political valence? I don’t even know if we have an LDS group here, and if we do, I have no idea what it does.
John Jenkins - November 17, 2005 at 6:18 pm
Prof. Wenger,
I’m not seeking to make generalizations about those groups at large (i.e. nationally). On the local level, those groups tend toward the left, and the others mentioned tend toward the right. This comes from knowing the actual members of the groups, and their personal political leanings.
Blaine - November 18, 2005 at 8:31 am
I agree that the religious groups should be thrown out, as should the identity groups. The discussions and events that BLSA organizes, at least at Columbia, are largely on liberal, activist-type topics; and the LDS group usually leads conservative-leaning discussions. But their purpose is to support the identity of the students, and the political/legal ideas are only outgrowths (though many more non-black liberals attend the BLSA events than non-LDS conservatives at the LDS events or non-jewish students at the JLSA events).
But at Columbia we have a host of organizations created for specific issues, and none of those issues is conservative. Besides the ACLU, ACS, Civil Rights Law Society, and the democrats, we have criminal justice action network, domestic violence project, Environment Law Society, For Enacting a Humane Drug Policy (though some libertarians are into this as well), IMPACT (voting), Lawyer’s Guild, RIGHTSLINK, Society for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Alliance for Gender Equality, Students for Choice, Tenants Rights Project, Unemployment Action Center, and Youth Justice Association. We collapse all of the issues that conservatives are interested under the tent of the Federalist Society. Every debate is one of these groups on one side, and FedSoc on the other.
Now, perhaps not all of these necessarilly belong in the distinctly “liberal” box, but there is no organization that is built around a decidedly “conservative” issue. No students for life, students for the family, students against an activist judiciary, students against implied rights of action, etc. But last year we got a Republicans and the year before a Libertarians, so that’s a start.
Niels Jackson - November 18, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Kaimi — why do you include all religious groups as “conservative”? In my experience, the Christian and Catholic student groups at my law school were about as apolitical they could get. Yes, some individual members were pro-lifers, but the groups qua groups were not politically active in any sense.
Kaimi - November 18, 2005 at 4:20 pm
Blaine,
It sounds like the environment at CLS is different than when I was there. There was a non-religious Students For Life association.
Niels,
As explained above, I was suggesting that religious organizations are probably about as political as organizations grouped on ethic lines. It is certainly true that not all religious student groups are political. The same goes for BALSA, APALSA, etc. When I was at Columbia, the main APALSA events that I remember being publicized were social events. And when I asked a gay friend if Outlaw did much political activism, he said that Outlaw was mostly social events as well.
Elizabeth - November 20, 2005 at 10:59 am
At Columbia there are a whole host of student groups that revolve around providing volunteer legal services and support. Is it no coincidence that the students who populate those groups are also left-leaning? It doesnt take a lot of time spent outside the ivory tower to recognize that low-income and otherwise difranchised communities are better served by more liberal political ideology.
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