J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky: Yale Law Isn't Teaching the Law Anymore, Only Hardcore Leftwing Political Activism

Everything woke turns to sh*t, as a man once said.

Note: This is the first in a ten-part series at PJ Media examining what our nation's top ten law schools are teaching. Hans von Spakovsky and I will undertake a deep dive into what is being taught in America's top ten-ranked law schools.

Elite law schools have become training academies not so much for effective and competent lawyers, but instead for militant transformational radicals with a law degree.

Mainstream consumers of legal services, otherwise known as paying clients, would be shocked by the evolution that has taken place in the nation's elite law schools. Instead of producing lawyers capable of helping clients, these schools now turn out leftist activists who are most competent at using transformational designs to upend centuries of legal traditions and institutions, including, ultimately, the U.S. Constitution itself.

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The next generation of lawyers at these schools isn't focused on learning contracts, torts, civil procedure, and evidence as much as they are learning how to destroy treasured American institutions such as tolerance, liberty, and free speech.

This is important. Too many Americans still think a law degree from Harvard means that the graduating lawyer is competent to practice law. The opposite is becoming more true.

Harvard, Yale, and the elite law schools are graduating increasing percentages of incompetent lawyers, at least when it comes to what lawyers have long done: practice law.

Graduates from the elite law schools are mighty good activists, but lawyers? Not so much. The law students shouting down free speech at Stanford today are the leftist activists of tomorrow.

It may be that clients would be better off hiring lawyers from a Southeastern Conference law school like University of Tennessee, University of Alabama, or a more mainstream program like Pitt, Arizona, or Miami.

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Hans von Spakovsky and I will march through the top ten rankings by U.S. News and World Report and share with you what is taking place inside these law schools. The militancy and uselessness of the curriculum may astound many of you. Others, like the leftists who dominate law school professors, may cheer "Bravo!" at a transformational job well done.

But regular American citizens have seen their values and treasured American liberties threatened and eroded by chanting mobs at Stanford assailing an esteemed federal judge. We are losing the ability to freely speak at college, and the right to freely exercise our religion.

This assault on American values, constitutional liberties, and our treasured limits on government power almost always starts with a lawyer, somewhere. And the lawyers from elite law schools are leading this assault.

Let's explore what students at these schools are being taught. Strap in.

Our first stop is in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale sits atop the U.S. News and World Report as the nation's top-ranked law school. What a shame, then, to see the radical leftist courses being taught at Yale. Here are a few examples.

What better place to start than with abortion? Despite significant pro-life legal victories in courts, I could find no courses dedicated to litigating for pro-life causes. Of course, the opposite was true at Yale.

The Advanced Reproductive Rights and Justice Project is taught by Priscilla Smith, who heads Yale's "Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice." We could find no pro-life counterpart. The course description offers Yale students work experience in a legal area where:

Established doctrine is under siege. Students advocate for reproductive health care providers and their patients, learning the vital importance of client confidentiality, as well as the impact of political movement strategy and management of press and public messaging.

For litigation matters, students work in small teams representing reproductive health care providers and/or patients in cases being handled by attorneys at national organizations. Projects and case assignments will vary according to the posture of the cases, but all will require top-notch legal research, analysis, and writing, as well as strategy meetings with team members. Some cases involve trial level work, including informal fact development, drafting pleadings, discovery, motion practice, and negotiations. Other matters involve appellate briefing.

Students also have an opportunity to develop non-litigation skills by undertaking non-litigation matters involving legislative and regulatory work, public education, and strategic planning, at the federal, state, and local level.

In other words, abortion activist groups directly benefit from the classwork of Yale law students.

If Yale students get shut out of classes promoting abortion, they can always take courses to help put more felons on the streets:

Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic. In the field work, students represent clients in two types of cases: federal sentencing proceedings and Connecticut state parole hearings. Students will learn advocacy strategies aimed at mitigating or ameliorating their clients' punishment, both prospectively during sentencing and retrospectively during post-conviction proceedings.

After completing "Challenging Mass Incarceration," Yale law students are eligible to take "Advanced Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic: Fieldwork."

I'm majoring in Defund the Police with a minor in Transgenderism. U?

The article continues examining the Yale Law School's Twitter Activism Preparatory School curriculum. Worth the read!

Within a couple of years people will realize these privileged but ignorant Yale Law graduates don't actually know anything about the law, and that will be a wrap for Yale Law.

I mean, for Yale Twitter Prep.

Your semi-regular reminder that the bloodthirsty, proto-communist Reign of Terror was led by 1, journalists, and 2, lawyers.

posted by Ace at 02:30 PM

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