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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.