Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites

(Hardback)

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In the past, Columbia Law School produced leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Now, it produces window-smashing activists.

What happens when Americas top law schools stop believing in legal education 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. At Stanford, chanting activists, egged on by an associate dean, drove away a federal judge. Yales hostility to free speech led more than a dozen federal judges to boycott the school for clerkship hiring.

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. And yet, rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will hold important government positions, fight constitutional lawsuits, and advise Fortune 500 companies.

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 facultyits 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 future, hed create a hostile educational environment and be subject to the inquisition again. Not being able to do the job he was hired for, he resigned.

This cannot continue. In Lawless, Shapiro reveals how the warping of higher edand especially the illiberal takeover of legal educationis transforming our country. Were handing the reins of power to lawless radicals who will be Americas future judges, prosecutors, politicians, and presidents. Unless we stop it now, the consequences will be with us for decades.

Reviews

Ilya Shapiro takes the academy to court--and wins. In this thoughtful new book, he makes the case that legal education has been captured and corrupted by left-wing ideologues. He knows it from observation, but also from experience. He pulls no punches and tells it like it is.
-- Christopher F. Rufo

When did breaking windows become an acceptable activity for lawyers-in-training Lawless is the shocking story of how our most prestigious law schools were overtaken by student mobs, enabled by faculty and bureaucrats who care more about diversity quotas and "safety" than truth-seeking and the robust exchange of ideas. A sobering must-read. -- William P. Barr

Author Bio

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.