Law Schools, Political Causes, and Exclusion:

Should law schools take sides on what they perceive as questions of justice and morality? Will Baude considers the dangers of doing so in a post you can access here.

  In my view, there are interesting parallels between this debate and Eugene’s recent posts on using religious views as the basis for political beliefs (see here, here, and, for an offshoot discussion, here and here). In both cases, the question is whether we should decide to exclude a set of views as illegitimate — simply beyond acceptable argument — and if so, when. I have no particular expertise on this question, but I wonder if attitudes here tend to reflect in-group, out-group identification more than the abstract principles they tend to trumpet.

  UPDATE: Will responds to my suggestion in an update to his post. To be a bit clearer, my guess is that those more willing to mark off sets of ideas as illegitimate would tend to have a strong sense of in-group/out-group identification. Exposure to ideological diversity tends to cut the other way, I think: my sense is that the more people you know well who think differently than you do, the likelier you are to recognize the legitimacy of a broader set of ideas.

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