Paul Caron has the data:
FundRace 2008 on The Huffington Post lists 635 "law professors" as having made contributions to candidates in the 2008 Presidential election totalling $623,472. Of this amount, 92.7% ($577,924) has been contributed to Democratic candidates, 7.3% ($45,548) to Republican candidates. $487,772 has been contributed to the nominees of each party — 94.7% ($461,754) to Barack Obama, 5.3% ($26,018) to John McCain.
He also has the breakout for some leading law schools.
Notice that the percentage giving Republican actually slightly exceeds the percentage giving to McCain (although probably not in a significant fashion). This is consistent with my observation that among the small number of confessed "conservative" law professors (or people in the "ideas business" generally), John McCain was not a candidate who generated a great deal of excitement. Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney all seemed to be relatively more ideas-driven candidates (note that I did say "relatively") and who garnered more law prof support and excitement. And, of course, for many libertarian and conservative law profs McCain-Feingold and the view of the Constitution that it implies was basically disqualifying, at least at the time there were other apparently viable Republican options available.
Caron's report is also consistent with a hypothesis that I have heard others express, that although schools like Harvard are supposedly hiring more self-professed "conservatives" these days, they tend to be (with a small handful of notable exceptions) of a certain ilk who can make it through the meat-grinder of the appointments process--"well-behaved" conservatives who aren't going to rock the boat or otherwise challenge the prevailing culture, such as by taking public political stances or otherwise speaking out on controversial issues. I haven't done any sort of systematic analysis of this hypothesis, which presumably would require substantial first-hand knowledge.
Update:
The Harvard reference was triggered (subconsciously at least) by Steve Bainbridge's similar observations, which he makes here.
Who knew that so many libertarian and conservative professors hated originalism, and instead embraced a jurisprudence invented by the Supreme Court in the 1970s? ;-)
Alternatively, it's also consistent with what you alluded to earlier about the disparity in contributions to McCain and to Republicans generally, i.e., conservative professors may be less excited about their candidate than liberal professors are about theirs.
Look on the bright side: You'll still get to read it in the Northwestern and Mason law reviews.
Either way, it makes serious hash out of comments implying that no self-respecting scholar of law would endorse Obama's judicial philosophy. And by hash, I mean a much more unpleasant word.
You would, if you knew nothing about either legal academia or enforcing the law. Bending the law is the hallmark of Critical Race Studies and their leftist academic brethren. It's all about 'changing the law to make the world more like we want it'. Good or bad, that ain't exactly paying homage purely to "law enforcement."
This may be right, but it is a good thing, not an indictment. The should be hiring "well-behaved" liberals, too. Law professors do not have unique insights on politics or many other controversial issues. And the more they speak out on same, the more they demean the value of the issues on which they have expertise.
It would be helpful to have law professor insight on Supreme Court appointments, but that input is pretty much worthless once they make themselves into partisans.
Which, of course, Prof. Obama never taught. How much respect for the Constitution freedom of association does McCain-Feingold reflect?
There are many courses Obama never taught -- when deciding whether the Republican party should "most solicitous" to legal academia, (the point of my comment)whether or not Obama taught a particular academic specialty has little relevance.
But the "of course" makes up for the knee-jerk reaction.
Is that the blog thread equivalent to reading Hebrew?
I don't see the connection. Whether a law is enforced (or to what extent) is largely a budgetary decision. How many cops, district attorneys, DOJ staff etc. that you want to hire has very little to do with the study or teaching of law.
I suspect you think he was a crank, but some of us gave money to Ron Paul too! (And don't forget Barr in November!)