J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky have been writing a series of articles about the distressing politicization of our top law schools. In the latest one, Adams puts New York University’s law school under the microscope and finds it to be badly diseased.
Here’s a sample:
Another topic you won’t find in any American courtroom but will see taught at the law school at NYU is the course called Economic and Social Rights. This course isn’t about torts, the rules of evidence, civil procedure, preparing witnesses, writing a brief, or anything lawyers out here in the real world do. Instead, the course catalog:
Rapidly growing inequality around the world, a growing awareness of the fundamental importance of the structural underpinnings of racism, sexism and many other systemic violations of human rights, are all starting to focus long overdue attention on the importance of economic and social human rights. These include the rights to food, health, housing and education, and also labor rights and cultural rights. All of these rights are part of the International Bill of Rights, many have been explicitly recognized in national constitutions, and they are increasingly subject to judicial implementation in a range of countries. By the same token, they have been systematically ignored by many human rights advocates and have been a major casualty of the triumph of neoliberalism in the economic sphere.
That has nothing to do with teaching prospective lawyers the nuts and bolts of their trade, but instead is reinforcement for the priors of social-justice-warrior types who want to use the law to demolish what is left of liberty and limited government.