The Yale Daily News has what strikes me as a balanced profile of Koh [the first of a two-parter], who is by all accounts a nice guy, a good fundraiser, and beloved by his students, but is also a highly partisan liberal Democrat under whose tenure as dean conservative and libertarian students have felt increasingly uncomfortable, and conservative and libertarian alumni have, at least in some cases (as noted in the Daily News piece) grown increasingly alienated.
The article paraphrases a post I wrote for the VC mentioning that, by contrast to when I was a student, Harvard Law School under Dean Kagan now has a reputation as a far friendlier place than Yale for Federalist Society types, and that Harvard is now much more open-minded than Yale about hiring non-liberals. While I don't object to the paraphrase, it would have been better form if the Daily News writer had made it clear that he never actually spoke to me, but just cribbed some comments from the VC.
Meanwhile, Professor Bainbridge piles on. Noting that Koh is on everyone's short list for the Supreme Court in a Democratic administration, Bainbridges predicts that "Koh's appointment to the SCOTUS would be an unmitigated disaster."
Except maybe that calculus lecturer who fails you for something silly like not passing the exams. Or having to pay extra for your chosen religiously-mandated diet.
Seriously, Fletcher, Sotomayor, Tatel, Garland, Wood, Kagan... who would choose Koh over these people?
Why did Koh join the administration responsible for a law he finds uniquely reprehensible?
But I think it's hilarious that conservatives whine about "not being comfortable" at Yale Law School, as if the purpose of law school were to be comfortable and as if their feelings on the matter were somehow more important than the far more serious issues of racial and gender inclusion that they continue to deny and denigrate. Woe is the poor conservative!
So you're quoting an anonymous professor who made an unsupported factual assertion that you then immediately admit to be false?
Macey teaches "Law, Econimics, and Organization"
Amar teaches "Constitutional Law I"
Stuart Banner (Kozinski, O'Connor) teaches "Property Rights and Indigenous People"
Schuck teaches "Groups, Diverty, &Law" and "Immigration Law &Policy: Selected Issues"
Priest teaches "Antitrust" "Capitalism," and "Regulation of Industry."
What's your definition of public law? Is it law and basketweaving cases? How many conservatives do you know really want to teach that kind of law? If you throw in Con Law, Admin Law, Legislation, and Federal Courts, exactly how many openings do you think Yale Law gets in those fields on a regular basis?
BTW, Justin, I'm growing weary of comments of yours that criticize me for something I didn't say as in this one (implying that I wrote that no one conservative ever teaches a public law class at Yale) and the one on Finkelstein (posting from the false premise that I wrote that I think Finkelstein should not get tenure for ideological reasons). You've been warned.
Are you also claiming that Amar is to the left of Bruce Ackerman? I've never seen Amar's name on a Democratic short list, even ones that are somewhat conservative pipe dreams of a Democratic short list. If you're making a different claim, please let me know exactly what the claim is.
And now I'm not even sure of your claim at all. Is it that someone needs to be hired, under Koh, and directly fed into the position of teaching public law, as their primary reason for being, with public law defined as Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Legislation, and Law &Basketweaving?
If so, then
a) Banner applies
b) There's probably almost no qualified conservative law professor who wants to teach primarily law &basketweaving (I assume the basketweaving of economics is excluded as not sufficiently public, and I am not aware of any professor other than Priest who teaches that at Yale)
c) The remaining classes - Legislation, Federal Courts, and Constitutional Law - how many people have been hired primarily to teach those classes under Koh? I honestly don't know the answer (or who was chosen), but I'd be surprised if there was any number large enough from which to draw any statistical conclusions.
And someone should ask Jack Goldsmith about Koh. He was a bit of a Koh protege at YLS.
b)"There's probably almost no qualified conservative law professor who wants to teach primarily law &basketweaving" -- What's the basis for this? If basketweaving includes economics, then there are probably more conservatives than liberals in this category.
c) DB's claim is that the atmosphere at Yale is such that professors believe that no one to the right of Ackerman can get hired to teach public law. It's not fully responsive to say that there probably aren't that many openings these days anyway.
This is a stupid debate anyway. I'm not sure why non-Yalies feel the need to debate a Yale alum about Yale's hiring practices.
My claim was, and is, that Harvard under Kagan has been a lot more open to hiring conservatives than Yale has been under Koh. Your retort was that the article doesn't say that Yale is "not open" to hiring non-liberals, which is a separate point from whether they are less open than is Harvard. The latter point is clearly true, not just from the hiring Harvard has done, but from serious visitors they have entertained.
But even on the broader point you attribute to me, while acknowledging that Macey has been hired, I pointed out that even a liberal professor at Yale thinks that the school has a problem specifically with regard to public law. It didn't start with Koh, but there's no evidence that he's gone out of his way to change things.
As for Amar, his being hired over 20 years ago under the generally ideologically ecumenical deanship of Guido Calabresi has little bearing on whether someone of his views would be hired today. For that matter, who knows if the faculty then even knew much about his views when he was hired; as I recall, he was hired directly out of an appellate clerkship and didn't have much of a paper trail.
Is the fact that Stuart Banner used to be a (full) member of the VC at all relevant?
I'm not sure the fact how the fact that Banner's visiting from UCLA (presumably on trial), is relevant at all.
I don't have a dog in this fight--I have no idea who's right or wrong on which point here. But I'm curious what you mean by "You've been warned" in this comment:
BTW, Justin, I'm growing weary of comments of yours that criticize me for something I didn't say as in this one (implying that I wrote that no one conservative ever teaches a public law class at Yale) and the one on Finkelstein (posting from the false premise that I wrote that I think Finkelstein should not get tenure for ideological reasons). You've been warned.
Sometimes Justin behaves like a startlingly pugilistic, presumptuous boor.
As an observer with no particular ideological dog in this fight, this clearly seems to be one of the latter situations.
Sorry Justin: while DB comes off as a bit tetchy by saying "you've been warned," you are clearly reading statements into DB's posts that are neither explicit nor implied, and then using them as a jumping-off point for an attack the aggressiveness of which seems rather wrongheaded given 1.) its basis upon statements unmade by DB; 2.) statements made by DB in the comments (e.g. re: Banner) and unresponded to.
I love ya bro, and think you're a pillar of the VC commenting community. But SRSLY...look before you leap.
"Sometimes Justin provides a valuable counterpoint to the prevailing viewpoint of VC's posters and commenters; he's a sharply stinging gadfly who keeps people honest, himself included."
He may be nice to some and beloved of some, but "by all accounts" is a ridiculous overstatement. The man can be an incredible jerk, and his jolly smarmy charm is a mere facade, easily penetrated by others, and willingly discarded by him when it becomes inconvenient.
Knowing his character, and judging by your characterization, "by all accounts," Koh's not-so-veiled campaign for a Supreme Court seat is going very well.
So you say that by "You've been warned," you're letting Justin know
just that i may exercise mymoderator prerogatives
And here I thought that a commitment to open debate was a critical part of your threads, and VC in general.
It's particularly ironic that you make censoring threats in a thread in which you bemoan someone else's (personal and institutional) lack of open-mindedness.
Personally I'd be embarrassed to have written what you did.
Am I interpreting DB correctly?
So obvious Democratic choices for the Supreme Court should all be.. liberals who hire as many conservatives as possible?
This is a great argument, as long as you openly admit that it's nakedly partisan, lacking in non-explicitly-partisan merit, and the reason you oppose Koh is that you want to browbeat Democrats into appointing conservatives, just like republicans do.