When protestors at Columbia broke into a building and created illegal encampments, the student-led Columbia Law Review demanded that finals be canceled because of “distress.”
Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect opponents. Now those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. Rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will soon:
In Lawless, Ilya Shapiro explains how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institutional weakness. Shapiro met the mob firsthand when he posted a controversial tweet that led to calls for his firing from Georgetown Law. A four-month investigation eventually cleared him on a technicality but declared that if he offended anyone in the future, he’d create a “hostile educational environment” and be subject to the inquisition again. Unable to do the job he was hired for, he resigned.
This cannot continue. In Lawless, Shapiro reveals how the illiberal takeover of legal education is transforming our country. Unless we stop it now, the consequences will be with us for decades.
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and was a vice president of the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. His books include Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court, and he has contributed to a variety of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, USA Today, and National Review.