Harvard Law & Policy Review: The American Constitution Society has launched an official journal, the Harvard Law & Policy Review. (This is not to be confused with the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a journal founded in 1978 that leans conservative/libertarian and is famous for its outstanding executive editing in Volume 20.)

  The HLPR is accompanied by HLPR Online, "a forum for progressive debate about new and unorthodox solutions to the most pressing problems facing the nation." There are a bunch of interesting essays up on the site's webpage by the like of Laurence Tribe, Robert Post & Reva Siegel, Joe Singer, and David Barron.

  I was particularly interested in this essay by Ian Bassin, former President of the Yale ACS student chapter. An excerpt:

Ask a group of self-described liberal law students to articulate what they stand for and you're likely to get either rambling, incoherent replies or blank stares. Those who do answer may touch upon issues ranging from equality to opportunity to reproductive freedom, but are unlikely to be able to unite these ideas under any consistent philosophical framework. Those who have a philosophical framework are lucky if they can explain it in less than 30,000 words.

The single greatest problem of contemporary legal liberalism is that too many of us are at a loss for words to describe what we stand for. One irony is that our past success may be to blame for this current failure. Many of us grew up in such liberal atmospheres that we were never challenged to defend liberal principles or to even grapple with the difficult questions at their core. As American society has polarized over the last generation—mine is the first for whom red and blue are defining traits—more of us have grown up in homogenous intellectual spheres. Instead of having our peers challenge our ideas, we play yes men to ourselves, nodding in agreement on what we believe without ever having to utter a definitive phrase. . . .

Compare this with what a conservative at many of today's left-leaning law schools must experience. In most of her classes, the only conservative voice she hears is her own. In order to cling to her beliefs, she must defend them tenaciously with both friend and foe. Confronted with a chorus of opposing arguments, her education is an intellectual boot camp. She's been tested, her positions forged in fire, and she's emerged a refined soldier for her cause. The liberal, on the other hand, has spent his period of intellectual maturation on the couch so to speak. Every once in a while either throwing or receiving that knowing look, but never having to exert too much effort to get it right. While the conservative emerges muscular and defined, the liberal is paunchy and a bit slow.

  I wonder, do law students (on the left or the right) agree that this is true?

  For a reaction to the new journal posted at the conservative Weekly Standard, click here.