The People V Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech [Hardcover]

Andrew Peyton Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005 | ISBN-10: 1893554988 | ISBN-13: 978-1893554986

In 2002, Kiwi Camara, a Filipino-American at Harvard Law School, joined most of his classmates in posting his class outlines for the previous year on the school web site. Controversy ensued because some found aspects of Camara's shorthand racially insensitive. In response, school administrators proposed a speech code. Harvard Law Graduate Andrew Peyton Thomas uses this controversy to take readers inside the administrative offices, faculty lounges, and classrooms of the nation's oldest and most prestigious law school. He finds freedom of speech and basic constitutional liberties clashing with racial demagogues, Marxist-inspired professors, and a smothering orthodoxy that seeks to silence student dissent. Thomas also ventures brilliantly off campus to reveal how what happens at Harvard Law affects the nation whose most powerful institutions are filled with its graduates.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Polemicists in America's political wars often pick an institution (e.g. the media) and attack it for being dominated by an unwholesome ideology. Thomas, a warrior on the right, targets Harvard Law School, which he sees as in thrall to the mindless radicalism of the left and in particular to the ideology called critical legal studies. Adherents of this theory, according to Thomas, believe in tearing down the country's existing legal system and educating law students to become agents of leftist social change. The legal radicalism at Harvard was revealed most clearly, says Thomas, in 2002, through an incident in which two students and two professors made public statements regarded by black students as offensive. Protests and condemnations followed, leading to support for the adoption of a speech code at the law school. The code, as envisioned by its proponents, would have punished anyone who used words deemed offensive by members of selected minorities, such as African-Americans, women, the disabled or gays. Such a code subverts freedom of speech, says Thomas. (And he suggests that conservatives are the actual threatened minority at Harvard Law.) However, no speech code was enacted, as pressure for it evaporated under criticism from traditional liberals and because of widespread student indifference. The outcome undermines the book's thesis, but that scarcely deters the author from energetic pursuit of his attack. (Mar.)
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Review

"A brutal assessment of the betrayal of liberal ideals by self-styled liberal idealists." -- David Frum author of The Right Man

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893554988
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554986
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,063,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, April 22, 2006

By 

HLStudent - See all my reviews

This review is from: The People V Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech (Hardcover)

I found this book much too polemical. Thomas also fails to fully address the situation his book is supposed to describe- the Kiwi Camara incident. For example, Thomas makes it sound as if Camara was completely ruined when he actually went on to become a Stanford Law professor. The wikipedia entry on Camara does a better job at explaining what happened.

9 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Every American Should Know About Law Schools, May 20, 2005

By 

Michael Young "Author, The Man's Guide to the... (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The People V Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech (Hardcover)

From personal experience and as a professional, I know that this book is not only an accurate indictment of Harvard Law but also most of America's other law schools. This book should be read by anyone considering a career as a lawyer or any interaction with the legal system.
What leftist social activists have failed to achieve through the legislative and executive branches, they have been very successful at achieving through the selection and indoctrination of future attorneys and judges. Reading Thomas' work gives one full appreciation of the 'why' behind
current debates over abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage, illegal immigration, and other issues dominating the news and clogging our judicial system. The way these issues are handled in law school shape the legal arguments and judicial decisions interpreting our constitutional and statutory rights.

9 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IntellectualConservative.com strongly recommends this book, May 11, 2005

By 

Rachel Alexander "Co-Editor, IntellectualCons... (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The People V Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech (Hardcover)

Andrew Peyton Thomas, the district attorney for Maricopa County, Arizona, and a graduate of Harvard Law School, has put together a well-written, intriguing expose on the state of free speech at his alma mater, providing an insider's perspective of the top law professors in the country. Oddly enough, the friction over free speech is not between the political "left" and the "right," because there are practically no conservatives in the administration or on the law faculty, and the majority of students offered admission are also of the leftist persuasion. The battle over free speech is between the "left" and the "far left." (p. 170) Conservatives are rarely mentioned in the book; the major players consist of traditional leftists like Alan Dershowitz versus the new leftists, known as "Crits."

To read the rest of this review, go to http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4340.html