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Walter K. Olson

Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America Hardcover – March 1, 2011

by Walter Olson (Author)

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From Barack Obama (Harvard and Chicago) to Bill and Hillary Clinton (Yale), many of our current national leaders emerged from the rarefied air of the nation's top law schools. The ideas taught there in one generation often shape national policy in the next.

The trouble is, Walter Olson reveals in Schools for Misrule, our elite law schools keep churning out ideas that are catastrophically bad for America. From class action lawsuits that promote the right to sue anyone over anything, to court orders mandating the mass release of prison inmates; from the movement for slavery reparations, to court takeovers of school funding—all of these appalling ideas were hatched in legal academia. And the worst is yet to come. A fast-rising movement in law schools demands that sovereignty over U.S. legal disputes be handed over to international law and transnational courts.

It is not by coincidence, Olson argues, that these bad ideas all tend to confer more power on the law schools' own graduates. In the overlawyered society that results, they are the ones who become the real rulers.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest book from Olson (The Excuse Factory) is part historical overview and part cutting-edge commentary examining corporate case studies and public and tort law with a sharp analysis of the academic system and the internal and external forces shaping its agenda. Law schools mould the future leaders of America, shaping the nation and influencing consensus. Recent legal scholars have infiltrated politics, journalism, and broadcasting, claiming greater authority and creating potentially serious social repercussions. The author explores perceived political bias at Harvard and Yale, their dependence on "left-tilting philanthropy," and the tendency of professors to permeate the curriculum with their own values. Additionally, Olson argues, the commercialization of American universities creates markets of intellectual property and a culture of one-upmanship. Often with tongue firmly in-cheek, Olson addresses the "American disease" of dubious injury claims and product liability lawsuits, the ever-spurious "recovered memory" litigation, and other legal precedents. This hard-hitting, witty account reveals the effect of law on the individual and the collective and astutely forecasts the future of law reform, in the academy, in politics, and across the globe.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

About the Author

"Perhaps America's leading authority on over-litigation". That's what Investor's Business Daily has called Walter Olson, whose books and writings have helped set the terms of debate about the excesses of the nation's civil justice system. Olson's book The Litigation Explosion was reviewed favorably in the New York Times by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger and subsequently cited by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a major Supreme Court opinion; the Washington Post dubbed Olson an "intellectual guru of tort reform". The Excuse Factory, his book on litigation in the workplace, was met with accolades everywhere from The American Lawyer ("engaging, witty and provocative") and the London Times ("riveting") to the A.B.A. Journal ("wittily scathing") and The American Spectator ("devastating and eloquent"). His new book The Rule of Lawyers has already been hailed in the American Lawyer as "wry, amusing" as well as "provocative and enjoyable".

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the think tank in New York City, Mr. Olson is a frequent contributor to the magazine Reason, and his writing appears regularly in such publications as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He has appeared numerous times before Congress, federal agencies and state lawmakers and has approximately 300 broadcast appearances under his belt, including "Crossfire", "MacNeil-Lehrer", "Oprah", "Donahue", and NPR. His website Overlawyered.com, launched in 1999, has won wide acclaim for its mix of entertaining and serious commentary.

Walter Olson is an author and critic whose acclaimed books have changed the way we think about the American legal system. A senior fellow at the Cato Institute, he is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other leading newspapers and has written columns for Great Britain's Times Online and Reason. His online work includes Overlawyered.com, widely cited as the oldest blog about law.

Product details

Hardcover: 296 pages
Publisher: Encounter Books (March 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594032335
ISBN-13: 978-1594032332
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 11 customer ratings
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #776,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #344 in Legal Education Profession

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Joseph P. Silvestri

revealing look at a parasitic and poisonous ivory tower

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2014

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Not a book for everyone, but I highly recommend it. Walter Olson presents a revealing look (and history) of how the hated lawyer class has expanded their influence over the decades. You don't need to be a lawyer to appreciate. To understand how much power and influence legal academia has had (and continues to wield) in our world today, read this book.

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Connecticut Commentator

Penetrating and long overdue expose

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2014

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An illuminating expose of the ideologically slanted culture that pervades most American law schools by one the country’s leading critics of the American legal system. Olson, whose previous books--The Litigation Explosion and The Rule of Lawyers—paint a less than flattering portrait of the litigation and class action-obsessed legal profession, now directs his attention to the legal education culture that is its breeding ground. In the author’s view, with a few notable exceptions, such as the conservative and libertarian Federalist Society, the political culture of most American law schools is decidedly left-of-center, an irrefutable fact revealed by examining faculty voter registration records, opinions expressed from the professorial lectern, the leanings of student legal clinics, and, as Judge Richard Posner has observed, the frequently bizarre and tendentious titles of law review articles. In contrast to the real world of practical law, Olson argues that this culture is informed by an obsession with legal theory (e.g. critical race theory, feminist jurisprudence, critical legal studies, deconstructionism, identity politics, etc.), its associated inscrutable jargon, intellectual conformity, and political agendas advancing claims of victimization. Ideas that would be considered extreme and over-the-top among the population at large, are likely to find acceptance in the rarefied and hermetically sealed halls of the legal academy. Olson attributes this culture to three kinds of pressure: the ABA accreditation process and its associated pressures for “diversity,” fear of litigation, and donors with ideological agendas. Drawing upon critiques from both inside and outside the academy, Olson points out that the elite schools are often the ones where a student is least likely to learn the practical side of the law. Nor does Olson neglect the pervasive influence of such law professors as William Prosser, whose seminal hornbook, Prosser on Torts, was instrumental in ushering in the trend towards strict liability for defective products, and the accompanying wave of class action litigation. And with the fruits of the multi-million dollar verdicts garnered in class action lawsuits, successful litigators have purchased the naming rights for law school buildings, classrooms and libraries, or supported clinical programs likely to advance the boundaries of future litigation. Moreover, the culture of the modern law school is predisposed to pressure government to expand in an effort to satisfy the full panoply of interest groups and special pleaders who seek governmental largesse, and with barely a thought as to the ultimate and unsustainable costs to the society as a whole. Olson’s book will appeal to those concerned with the state of legal education in the United States today, including law students interested in learning the law, fair-minded individuals interested in the restoration of a modicum of intellectual balance to the academy, and taxpayers and businesses concerned about the astronomical costs of litigation and their deleterious effects upon the economy. Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, where he is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other publications, and author of the blog Overlawyered.com.

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Every law student should read this!

Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2012

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I don't normally write reviews, but after being exposed to law profs who preach the wonders of class actions and debase the "horrific" case of Citizens United (and that's just this particular term), I run home to find solace in Olson's book. Law school can be alienating for a Libertarian, but it is heartening to know that people like Olson exist. Every law student should read this book--I hope it will open their eyes to the Left's monopoly on academic law.

6 people found this helpful

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D. C. Carrad

Great topic poorly handled

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2011

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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).

34 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Great insights

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2011

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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.

8 people found this helpful

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Ira E. Stoll

The Problems With Law Schools

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2011

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.

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