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Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America

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Of all the possible explanations for Barack Obama, one of the most intriguing is that, like Bill Clinton before him, he was both a law school graduate and a law school professor.

As such, Walter Olson explains in his new book, Mr. Obama was subjected to an environment of overwhelming leftism.

Democrats outnumber Republicans 28 to 1 on the Stanford law school faculty, 23 to 1 at Columbia, Mr. Olson reports.

Mr. Olson's book describes the various ways that law schools have shaped public policy. Clinics on the law school campuses get involved in political issues. He writes that Yale's Legislative Advocacy Clinic "attempts to move the state of Connecticut toward 'a more progressive agenda in taxing.'" CUNY law school, meanwhile, is "itself a unit of the same New York City government it regularly sues on welfare issues. The website of Fordham's Community Economic Development clinic says it works to "limit gentrification."

Law schools, including professors who profited personally from their work on anti-tobacco litigation, helped shape changes in product liability law. They also helped spawn "public law litigation" suits under which, Mr. Olson recounts, courts "in more than half the states took control of school financing systems" and "took over control of child welfare departments in thirty-five states, prisons in more than forty, and jails in all fifty..... The process thrust courts deeply into management, with reform orders often going on for hundreds of pages specifying such details as the required square footage of prison cells, the wattage of light bulbs, the temperature at which food had to be served, and so forth."

Mr. Olson quotes one law professor acknowledging that such litigation is meant to "further a decarceration strategy" by making incarceration "both difficult and expensive." The professor has since joined the Obama administration.

Mr. Olson notes drily that "Frequently, many members of the ostensible beneficiary class neither want nor welcome the changes ushered in by court order. Overcrowding suits often result in inmates' transfer from a camped and rundown in-town facility to a more modern but remote facility that is harder for friends and family to visit....In one consent decree, New York City agreed to elaborate new rules restricting its ability to evict disruptive families from its housing projects. But most residents in fact feared the crime spawned by such households, with the result that leaders of the projects' tenant councils wound up hiring lawyers to intervene in the proceedings against their 'own' side."

Mr. Olson, who is a fellow at the Cato Institute and editor of Overlawyered.com, excels at outlining the problems. He's more reticent about possible solutions. He notes that the Ford Foundation had helped to reshape law school curricula and "from 1966 to 1969 contributed start-up funding for Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (which changed its name to EarthJustice) and the Natural Resources Defense Council."

So perhaps large-scale philanthropy could have some effect; the book might have mentioned the Olin Foundation's work in spreading Law and Economics to law school campuses. Any donor or foundation wanting to reshape legal education would find Mr. Olson's book a fine place to begin.

In the meantime, the schools are unlikely to reform on their own so long as they have more applicants than they can handle lined up for the chance to pay (or borrow) hefty tuition payments. Never mind that the students may be motivated less by the education provided than by the attendant chances at high-paying law firm jobs in which the students can labor for clients that include the very corporations their professors demonized.

And for all this, the picture may not be entirely as grim as that painted by Mr. Olson with all his usual lucidity and flashes of humor. Justices Alito and Thomas are both Yale Law graduates, after all, while Justice Scalia, a Harvard Law graduate, taught at Stanford and the University of Chicago.

In the meantime, if the law professors are too far to the left, the rest of Americans, while living with the public policy consequences, can at least know that while the law professors have their wins in court, they are often less successful in the court of public opinion. Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton both managed to get elected, but they were quickly hemmed in by Republican congresses elected after they overreached. In the end, in the American system, the politicians who write the laws, and the voters who put them there, have a way of outranking even the law professors.

Disclosure: The publisher sent a review copy of this book.

This is a great idea for a book but, alas, falls very short in the execution. First, it is much broader than an analysis of what is wrong with US law schools -- it meanders off into tort cases, "public interest" law, UN NGOs, etc. and loses focus too soon. Second, it is very poorly written and full of awkward sentences and simple grammatical errors which should have been caught had even the most rudimentary editorial attention been paid to the manuscript. There are lots of interesting - and depressing! - bits, but overall the souffle fails to rise. (I am a Harvard Law graduate, '72, so was caught in the middle of many of the evil developments addressed here and am painfully aware of the many shortcomings of American legal education).

Upon opening this excellent book, I soon found that I couldn't put it down. Overall, this is an outstanding document showcasing the ideological corruption of our law schools and how they have completely compromised and rendered dysfunctional the practice of law in America while also seriously debilitating the nation as a whole. What I, and conservative slash libertarians most often critique...is statism, and what do a legion of lawyers perpetually produce? Statism...ad infinitum and they breed increased regulations, edicts, taxes and guidelines that automatically restrict our liberty. The influence of the law schools over the past 70 years has turned my country into the United States of FUBAR. Olsen reveals the big picture here along with the specific issues behind this erosion of freedom. Now I'm not interested, myself, in the field of law but anyone who is concerned about the advance of socialism and a government whose spending is so outrageous that it will soon result in our bond rating being lowered will be enthralled by this book. Its simply superb. Schools for Misrule is really an education and a half. For example, I ran into in college debate, what was termed a Strict L case, as sophomore, now, two decades later, I finally understand--from reading this--what those jerks were actually pushing via Olson's discussion on the Prosser Tort revolution and how much Strict Liability has functioned as a plague on America's businesses. A brilliant read.

Maybe Shakespeare was right, "first kill all the lawyers" but unfortunately that is not an option.

In Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and An Overlawyered America by Walter Olson, the author makes the case how our society has systematically gotten more litigious for the wrong reasons. Stemming from the future lawyers, law students, learn in the institutionalized law schools. This has led to a systematic system of mistrust.

Multi track, this book examines a broad view of the law on our society. Starting off that many of our leaders, like President Obama are lawyers.
Olson goes into examples of legends of frivolous law suits that have placed a strain on our system.

He also ventures into universal jurisdiction that blurs national boundaries and cause havoc to sovereignty.
This book also examines the united consequences of policies that attempt to fix one program but end up creating others.
Over all Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and An Overlawyered America by Walter Olson is an insightful analysis into our modern legal system for anyone wondering out loud "How the heck did we get here?"

The author writes in a balanced and often witty manner about law schools and their effect on US Law - and thus on all Americans.

Highly recommended.

It's clear from the first few pages that the author doesn't know what really goes on in law schools or what lawyers actually do for a living, and simply has an ideological ax to grind.

Law students learn the fundamentals: contracts, torts, civil procedure, property, criminal law, business associations, taxation, constitutional law, legal research and writing, and ethics and professional responsibility. They learn basic technical skills such as briefing cases, writing research memos, and written and oral advocacy.

This takes about 1.5 to 2 out of the 3 years of law school.

In their remaining time, students take electives, which are usually business law classes such as commercial law, bankruptcy, securities regulation, payment systems, environmental law, insurance, and banking. They may take advanced tax classes such as corporate tax or trusts and estates where they learn how to reduce their wealthy clients' tax burdens. They may take advanced litigation classes such as federal courts or conflict of laws. They may take specialty classes in employment and labor law, family law, etc. There are even a few "fluff" classes like "law & film" for students who are interested-- just as there are fluff classes in business schools and colleges--but very few students from top schools pursue careers in those areas.

Grading is anonymous, so the chances of the professors' views affecting a student's grade are minimal. Students are graded according to their knowledge and skills as advocates, not according to the side for which they choose to advocate.

After students graduate, most of them--especially at the top schools--go to work for high-powered corporate law firms that serve large corporations and high networth individuals. The students in the environmental law classes Olson rails against will go on to help businesses buy and sell real estate without unwittingly taking on liability. The students in the labor and employment law classes Olson rails against will go on to help corporations win court and administrative battles with employees who were laid off or who are attempting to organize unions.

Only a small minority of students are willing or able to make the financial sacrifice required to pursue public interest or government work after graduation, unless you count brief stints as judicial clerks for one or two years. Apparently, even a small handful of public interest lawyers is too many for Olson.

If you're interested in understanding what really goes on at law schools, I suggest reading Law School Confidential (Revised Edition): A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience: By Students, for Students, Planet Law School II: What You Need to Know (Before You Go), But Didn't Know to Ask... and No One Else Will Tell You, Second Edition, or Getting To Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams.

Or apply to law school and see for yourself.

I read this book, then saw the author speak on CSPAN at The Heritage Foundation.

I rate if FAIL (1 star) for good reason. Olson churns out yet another of his one sided banal books of false analysis about the growth in litigation over the last several decades. However, he fails to mention once again that the number of law suits have remained nearly exactly in ratio (no growth more than the population rate) to the growth of the US population since 1965. All these "litigation explosion" books have this in common, along with great sales to business leaders who are seeking confirmation bias for the stories they want to tell to justify no regulation. In short, he sells the stories that members of The Chamber of Commerce want to hear.

Olson talks like he writes, in a very stilted, aloof, if not strangely arrogant manner. Robotic, really. He even mentions and notes the use of "propaganda", which is nice, since he uses propaganda by (A) offering one side of the story; (B) name calling individual professors of law; and (C), stacking the deck with factoids that support his very markable claims (talking points that managers, leaders and any business school graduate would love to recall as they tell their "business prevention units" stories).

The fact is that most law suits are businesses suing businesses, as the Public Interest groups have been pointing out since Olson started hacking his propaganda out in the early 1990s. Olson has basically set himself up as a one man propaganda machine for business lobbyists in search of justification for un-regulated, no limit, windfall profits.

Walter Olson does not have a legal education. He did mention that he set out and intended "to make fun of the high and mighty". Nevertheless, in 2000, Olson actively campaigned for George W. Bush, so maybe it's useful to think of him as about as "objective" as one of those conservative talk radio show DJs.

This is another attempt for a prejudiced person to attempt to polarize the population into "left" and "right" people. WE ARE ALL "AMERICANS" OR AT LEAST "NORTH AMERICANS". We all agree that SOME government is a necissity, we ALL agree that some taxation is needed to provide SOME services such as defense and street repair, we ALL agree that democracy and capitalism is a good form of government and economics, and we ALL believe there must be "police" to make sure people obey the laws which includes some amount of regulation of banks and the stock exchanges. So, what's all this about "leftists" and "rightistst"....WE HAVE MORE IN COMMON THAN WE HAVE DIFFERENCES.

The main thesis, as I understand it, is that these VERY INTELLIGENT people like Barak Obama, Clinton, and others who go to law school can be "indoctrinated" by some "leftist professors" if any exist. THESE GUYS ARE SMART....THEY CANNOT BE "INDOCTRINATED" INTO ANYTHING! If these intelligent guys and ladies come to believe in certain values or certain priorities THEY COME TO THESE BELIEFS OF THEIR OWN ACCORD....not because they are "brain washed" by their elders! It's just common sense.