The American Bar Association forces CRT-based education into all accredited law schools
It’s probably somewhat fitting, I guess – although it took some forty years – for CRT to become part of the curriculum of every law school that wants accreditation. By saying it’s “fitting,” I don’t mean it’s good. I actually think it’s terrible, because I think CRT is not only a crock intellectually but very damaging to everyone and everything it touches. The reason I say it’s fitting, however, is that law schools were the birthplace of CRT in the very late 70s and early 80s, a phenomenon I noticed at the time because I wasn’t so far removed from my own law school years.
If you want to read a really excellent book on the subject of how CRT began in its law school manifestation known as Critical Legal Studies, please take a look at this book written in 1997 by Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry entitled Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law. Even though it’s about twenty-five years old, it presciently tells the story of how this happened and outlines the dangers. The liberal authors were highly alarmed, and the passage of time has proven their alarm fully justified and then some.
A pernicious and destructive philosophy had been introduced as a fringe idea, was gaining ground by the time the book was written, and has now – in the newer but highly related form of CRT – become entrenched not just in law schools across the country but in education as a whole and even in the workplace. The hour is late to be fighting back, but the right as well as many non-idealogical but concerned parents have been fighting it lately with some marginal success.
This move by the American Bar Association shows the vast reach of the power of the left:
In multiple proposals, one of which will be voted on by the ABA House of Delegates on February 14, 2022, and is all but certain to pass, ABA is forcing law schools to require that students take courses on race, particularly the CRT-driven systemic racism narrative. The hammer is that this is a requirement for the ABA to accredit the law school, so almost all law schools will have to comply.
Now, the traditional mandatory ‘building block’ courses on contracts, torts, constitutional law, and others will be accompanied by the mandatory study of race. Of course, courses on race — namely Critical Race Theory — are offered in many if not most law schools. But the study is voluntary. No longer. Ideological dogma will be enforced by the ABA.
ABA is abusing its accreditation power. States provided the ABA with this near-monopoly, and states need to act.
And here’s a longer piece on the subject. CRT is apparently not explicitly required in the law schools, but it is extremely likely to end up being what is taught:
The ABA pretended to address the problem by adding Interpretation 303-8: “Standard 303 does not prescribe the form or content” of the required education. This doesn’t fix the problem, because law school faculties overwhelmingly lean hard left. Only the naïve or dishonest would expect schools to teach anything other than CRT and a “systemic racism” approach.
This all reflects a politicized sea change. Existing ABA legal education standards stick to general principles of legal education. The ABA requires schools to inculcate “knowledge and understanding of substantive and procedural law,” “legal analysis and reasoning, legal research,” and legal writing (Standard 302). The only specific requirements are a professional responsibility course (added post-Watergate), an experiential course, and two legal writing experiences (current Standard 303).
By contrast, the proposed “bias” education requires specific and non-legal content. As the Yale professors observed, “mandating the content of [required courses] misconstrues the accreditation function.”…
he most important action that states can take is to stop requiring bar applicants to graduate from an ABA-accredited school. Because state structures vary, in some states this may require changes implemented through state supreme courts or quasi-independent bar agencies. States also can substitute state licensing, as already takes place in Alabama, California, Massachusetts, and Tennessee, which allow graduates of local non-ABA law schools take their bar exams. States also should consider whether a law school degree is needed, by revisiting self-study and apprenticeship in lieu of increasingly politicized law school curriculum and related student debt.
I agree that the ABA now has way too much power, and it’s time to remove that power.
I was driving around LA Harbor one time a few years ago with two of my daughters. We passed one of those enormous car carriers from Japan. Both girls commented on how huge they are. I commented that, after they unload 10,000 cars, we load them up with 10,000 lawyers to send back to Japan. One daughter, who is a lawyer, did not think it was amusing at all.
Somebody may be secretly sabotaging the legal profession. Graduates of these schools will be well equipped for HR but nobody in their right mind would want them as lawyers. Of course the Pentagon only had 10,000 lawyers a few years ago, so I assume there would jobs for some of them.
This is indeed a very unfortunate and truly disastrous development (although legal education in this country has been, for many years, corrupted by leftism), and it will cause even more sensible and rational Americans to be distrustful of the legal profession (and also of our increasingly two-tiered legal system), but the situation is every bit as depressing in the medical field, not simply in the medical journals, but in the obsession of more and more “woke” medical schools with incorporating the stupidity of D.I.E. into their admissions and even into the curriculum. Diversity, far from being a “strength”, will sound the death knell of a true meritocracy and of a color-blind society.
Again, the state legislatures can address this problem. Simply debar all the public law schools from seeking accreditation from the ABA. State governments can offer subsidized credit to aspirant law students as readily as the federal government, so if the feds debar such credit to those attending non-ABA accredited schools, the state can make up the slack. Start with Texas and Florida. A future Republican Administration at the federal level can strip the ABA of its franchises.
Another target should be NCATE.
Mike K:
Oh, someone will want them as lawyers. They can be employed in Lawfare for the enormous numbers of leftist activist groups who have found the legal system to be a great way to get what they cannot get done through legislatures. They can be employed as activist judges all over the country, and as lawyers for government agencies of all kinds. They can be “prosecutors” who refuse to prosecute.
You get the idea.
You are required to believe that: ‘Race is not real, but we must study race. All God’s children are exactly the same under the skin, except that they are not. There are no innate behavioral or moral differences among populations taken on average except when we say there are. If we say it, it is not racist, if you say it, it is racist. Racism is defined as a systemic power differential between these races which may or may not exist.‘
The only thing we are expected to believe that is more absurd than that, is that such a social arrangement is worth preserving, or that it is somehow in your interest to do so.
If I were to find myself on a jury in a case where a lawyer either offers up a race-based argument or hints at such, I’m quite sure which way it would influence me.
I often arrive here harping the same old chord.
But sometimes a fundamental question is so glaring that it just cannot be stepped around.
In just two postings, Neo finds herself forced to essentially ask the same question twice:
and
Yeah, what were they thinking all this time, these precious, soulful, enlightened, beings of progress and light?
The real tragedy here is that there is so much REAL law to learn that wasting time on this non-legal topic is a huge waste of time. And considering how much law school costs, it is doubly tragic.
I never took any labor or administrative law courses in law school, but worked as an Administrative Law Judge for the NE Dept of Labor for years. Just not enough time to take all the courses I was interested in or needed. I did take Future Interests; what a waste!
The real tragedy here is that there is so much REAL law to learn that wasting time on this non-legal topic is a huge waste of time. And considering how much law school costs, it is doubly tragic.
I never took any labor or administrative law courses in law school, but worked as an Administrative Law Judge for the NE Dept of Labor for years. Just not enough time to take all the courses I was interested in or needed. I did take Future Interests; what a waste!
You can say that again, Cornhead! 😉
I got my J.D. in 1976. Can’t recall any CRT in my courses. Became a software entrepreneur in 1989; haven’t practiced since. Maybe It’s time to start practicing again . . .
The American Bar Association forces CRT-based education into all accredited law schools and, in doing so de-legitimizes itself.
But also ensures that both the rule of law is dead and that legal reform is now untenable.
I agree about medical schools. I taught students for 15 years after I retired from surgery. It was a program, widely imitated nationwide, that used actors and actresses to simulate patients. The students would interview patients and take a history. The actors had learned medical histories based on real cases the instructors knew. Physical examination was more standard but every few times I would find an actor or actress with an abnormal physical exam. The technique originated at the medical school I attended when I was a student. It has spread all over the country and even the specialty boards use similar methods.
I finally retired 5 years ago when I moved to Arizona and I wonder what has happened since. I suspect I quit at the right time. I did meet the new Diversity Dean before I left.
The real tragedy here is that there is so much REAL law to learn that wasting time on this non-legal topic is a huge waste of time. And considering how much law school costs, it is doubly tragic.
People I know who went to law school have told me that (a) you don’t really learn how to be a lawyer; and (b) what you do learn about law could easily be condensed into two years. The 3-year program is just an extra barrier to more people becoming lawyers. And now it’s become an opportunity to indoctrinate.
MikeK:
It is insanely difficult to become a ‘real’ lawyer (Bengoshi) in Japan. The examination pass rate is miniscule. They get by mainly with a system of very specialised agents/notaries for things like taxation matters and the slapping of their equivalents of apostilles all over the landscape.
And nearly all of them are fanatically unimaginably indecently honest. I once tried to float a pretty innocent (I thought) but ‘creative’ trial balloon past a Tokyo Immigration Lawyer-type Not-a-Lawyer and the look of shock and then barely concealed disdain for Gaijin slipperiness was something to behold.
Consequently Japan is more than a half-decent place to live.
Why would a person who believes that the justice system is inherently racist want to practice law? Why would someone who believes the constitution is racist swear an oath to uphold it? How many lawyers even believe in the system they’re part of anymore?
Zaphod:
Japan’s such a great place to live that their young people don’t seem to want to have sex or reproduce.
Jimmy:
Law students have been indoctrinated for many decades already.
But I disagree that the actual work could be easily condensed into 2 years. That was not my impression at all when I was in law school.
I think Japan’s economy has been pretty screwed up for a few years. The “salarymen” may not be interested in kids and marriage.
Z mourns for Tojo and what his fellows did to Asia, including the Han. Feels sorry for the poor poor pitiful “hes,” and of course finishes with his signature, zenophobia (misspelled intentionally). What problem can’t be solved by Z? But Z may have pulled that last gem.
My son is taking the LSAT tomorrow and his practice scores and GPA have been high enough for the top schools. He’s hoping to eventually work for a conservative organization that defends free speech. Being forced to study CRT won’t change his mind about anything but he won’t be happy about it.
j e on February 10, 2022 at 3:28 pm
Lets take over D.I.E. as our own, say as Determination, Integrity, and Excellence; or perhaps Deplorable, Insignificant, Entity.
DNW on February 10, 2022 at 4:03 pm: I see a great future for you in writing legal textbooks. And at 4:24pm: “the same old chord” I thought discussions of chords was reserved for the Open Thread postings.
But I disagree that the actual work could be easily condensed into 2 years. That was not my impression at all when I was in law school.
I think their point is more based on the first criticism, that law school doesn’t prepare you to practice law, so from that point of view the three years seems unnecessary. You learn how to be a lawyer when you start working. But I also know people who really enjoyed law school intellectually (including my mother, who went in her 40s after she and my father divorced) and didn’t complain about the duration.
“I disagree that the actual work could be easily condensed into 2 years. That was not my impression at all when I was in law school.” neo
Something like 20 years ago, I read that just the State of California alone, averages passing 1200 new laws each year.
They say that no matter how law abiding one may be, we are in violation of numerous laws and, ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of ‘the law’.
The need for mountains of laws is a reflection of how badly, on average, a society’s individuals have lost their moral compass. In the aggregate, the more moral a society, the less need for laws.
There are only Ten Commandments. Jesus only offered one new Commandment and there is only one Golden Rule.
Imagine a society where the great majority diligently practiced those 12 principles. And when someone violated any of those principles responded promptly with proportionate consequence.
No matter how many new laws we create, no matter how tightly we seek to cover every manner in which men may act dishonestly, it will never be enough.
We knew the law schools were going to be the cause of trouble back in the late 1970s, when AesopSpouse’s class on Constitutional Law never required the students to actually read the Constitution.
And that was at a conservative university.
I’ll say it: Law school has become a path for many people who want a career, but don’t know what else to do. There are no required undergraduate majors or courses. It’s not easy to get into a T14 school, but if you’re halfway bright it is quite easy to get into an okay school. For the first year, your only obligation is to sit in lecture halls and read books. To young people who don’t want the college experience to end, or who hate their dead-end first job, that’s appealing. So I think you have more and more people going to law school who don’t really care about the principles behind the legal system all that much.
This is happening in medical schools. I know for certain that in a red state adjacent to me the curriculum is changing to delete medical training in order to have more time for DIE.
Seriously, after a lifetime of indoctrination, admission essays, monitoring of social media, and other means of weeding out those impure of thought, if they haven’t bought in to this crap by medical school admission, what’s the point?
of course crt or die is like malware, it contaminates and corrupts every institution,
law already had a tenuous relation to logic, with dread pirate roberts, trying to be ‘on the right side of history’
shadow:
I don’t think that’s a new phenomenon.
I would think state law would trump the ABA, so conservatives should push to make sure that prohibitions on racist CRT teaching should apply to all levels of education, and if a public law school in that state complies with the ABA’s requirements on CRT, they lose ALL funding. I’m sure they can also put pressure on private law schools by withholding benefits from those schools, or providing that the state and any subdivisions may not hire any graduates from law schools that promote CRT.
@ John W Dorman –
I agree with your prescription, but don’t think it will ever be actuated, because legislatures and their staffs are predominantly comprised of law school graduates (not necessarily practicing lawyers), and the ABA has massive lobbying power.
They don’t necessarily have as much clout on the K-12 and general college level education. However, I assume they will exercise as much arm-twisting as they can.