How Conservative Are Law Schools?

The Schuck-Leiter debate is pretty amazing. Prof. Schuck gives hard evidence on the paucity of donors to Republicans in top law schools and more evidence from the Lindgren survey that found that white Republican Catholic women were the most underrepresented group, and points out that while Prof. Leiter can name a few Republicans in law schools, he's skeptical Leiter can name any more. (At the ALEA conference last weekend, some law profs were trying to figure out if Berkeley had any except John Yoo, for example.) Schuck says that there are dozens on the left, to which Prof. Leiter replies:

I'm not sure about "dozens on the left," since I don't know of any top law faculty where social democrats, socialists, and Marxists outnumber conservatives and libertarians! But if you mean only that there are more Democrats, yes, that must surely be right—but my point was only that, even in the public law fields, there is no shortage of conservative viewpoints, and it just misleads the public to put out fake figures like "81% Democrats" based on shoddy studies.

Leiter says, " it has always struck me that law schools are far more intellectually diverse than, say, elite law firms, or the major media, or the U.S. Supreme Court, or the U.S. Senate." I'll give him the major media, but the other claims are fanciful. Does he really know about elite law firms? I bet they're at least 1/4 Republican, which is far more than any but a handful of law schools.

UVa-- one of the two most conservative according to Leiter, has a full 50% of its donors giving to Republicans.